Stories

Discharged soldiers and sailors are lying asleep on deck; there are so many of them that it is hard to pick your way.

“Stand on your feet,” the soldier with the sling says softly. “Follow me slowly, hold on to my shirt …”

It is dark. There are no lights on deck, nor on the masts, nor on the surrounding sea. Right at the bow the man on watch stands motionless, like a statue, and it looks as if he, too, is asleep. As if the ship has been left to its own will and is going wherever it likes.

“They’ll throw Pavel Ivanych into the water now…” says the soldier with the sling. “In a sack and into the water.”

“Yes. That’s how it’s done.”

“It’s better to lie in the ground at home. At least your mother can come to the grave and cry a little.”

“That’s a fact.”

There is a smell of dung and hay. Oxen are standing along the rail, their heads hanging. One, two, three … eight head! And here is a little horse. Gusev reaches out to stroke it, but it tosses its head, bares its teeth, and tries to bite his sleeve.

“Cur-r-rse you …” Gusev says angrily.

The two of them, he and the soldier, quietly make their way to the bow, then stand side by side and silently look up, then down. Above them is the deep sky, bright stars, peace and quiet—exactly as at home in the village— but below is darkness and disorder. The high waves roar for no known reason. Each wave, whichever you look at, tries to rise higher than all, and pushes and drives out the last; and noisily sweeping towards it, its white mane gleaming, comes a third just as fierce and hideous.

The sea has no sense or pity. If the ship were smaller and not made of thick iron, the waves would break it up without mercy and devour all the people, saints and sinners alike. The ship, too, has a senseless and cruel expression. This beaked monster pushes on and cuts through millions of waves as it goes; it fears neither darkness, nor wind, nor space, nor solitude, it cares about nothing, and if the ocean had its own people, this monster would also crush them, saints and sinners alike.

“Where are we now?” asks Gusev.

“I don’t know. Must be the ocean.”

“There’s no land to be seen …”

“Land, hah! They say it’ll be seven days before we see land.”

The two soldiers look at the white foam gleaming with phosphorus, and think silently. Gusev is the first to break the silence.

“There’s nothing frightening,” he says. “It’s just eerie, like sitting in a dark forest, but if, say, they lowered a boat now, and the officer told me to go fifty miles out to sea and start fishing—I’d go. Or say a Christian fell into the water now—I’d fall in after him. I wouldn’t go saving a German⁴ or a Chink, but I’d go in after a Christian.”

“But isn’t it frightening to die?”

“It is. I’m sorry about our farm. My brother at home, you know, he’s not a steady man: he gets drunk, beats his wife for nothing, doesn’t honor his parents. Without me it’ll all be lost, and my father and the old woman, for all I know, may have to go begging. Anyhow, brother, my legs won’t hold me up, and it’s stifling here … Let’s go to bed.”

V

Gusev goes back to the sick bay and lies down on his cot. As before he suffers from some vague yearning, and he cannot figure out what he wants. There is a weight on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth is so dry that he can hardly move his tongue. He dozes and mutters and, tormented by nightmares, coughing, and stuffiness, falls fast asleep towards morning. He dreams that they have just taken the bread out of the oven in the barracks, and he gets into the oven and has a steambath, lashing himself with birch branches. He sleeps for two days, and on the third day two sailors come from topside and carry him out of the sick bay.

He is sewn up in canvas and, to weight him down, two iron bars are put in with him. Sewn up in canvas, he comes to resemble a carrot or a black radish, wide at the head, narrow towards the foot … Before sunset he is taken out on deck and laid on a plank; one end of the plank rests on the rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. Discharged soldiers and the ship’s crew stand around him with their hats off.

“Blessed is our God,” the priest begins, “always, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages!”

“Amen!” sing three sailors.

The discharged soldiers and the crew cross themselves and keep looking askance at the waves. It is strange that a man has been sewn up in canvas and will presently be thrown into the waves. Can it really happen to anyone?

The priest sprinkles Gusev with some soil and bows. They sing “Memory Eternal.”⁵

The man on watch lifts the end of the plank. Gusev slides off, falls head down, then turns over in the air and— splash! Foam covers him, and for a moment he seems to be wrapped in lace, but the moment passes—and he disappears into the waves.

He goes quickly towards the bottom. Will he get there? The bottom, they say, is three miles down. After some ten or twelve fathoms he begins to go slower and slower, sways rhythmically, as if pondering, and, borne by the current, drifts more quickly sideways than down.

But now he meets on his way a school of little fish, which are known as pilot fish. Seeing a dark body, the fish stop stock-still, and suddenly they all turn around at once and disappear. In less than a minute, swift as arrows, they rush back at Gusev, piercing the water in zigzags around him …

After that another dark body appears. It is a shark. Grandly and casually, as if not noticing Gusev, it swims under him, and he comes down on its back, then it turns belly up, basking in the warm, transparent water, and lazily opens its jaws with their twin rows of teeth. The pilot fish are delighted; they have stopped and wait to see what will happen. After playing with the body, the shark casually puts its jaws under it, touches it warily with its teeth, and the canvas rips open the whole length of the body, from head to foot; one of the bars falls out and, frightening the pilot fish, striking the shark on the side, quickly goes to the bottom.