Stories

Vassily Sergeich silently gave him a tip, got into the tarantass, and drove off.

“There, galloping for a doctor!” said Semyon, hunching up from the cold. “Yes, go look for a real doctor, chase the wind in the field, catch the devil by his tail, damn your soul! Such odd birds, Lord, forgive me, a sinner!”

The Tartar came up to the Explainer and, looking at him with hatred and revulsion, trembling and mixing Tartar words into his broken language, said:

“He good … good, and you—bad! You bad! Gentleman a good soul, excellent, and you a beast, you bad! Gentleman alive, and you dead … God created man for be alive, for be joy, and be sorrow, and be grief, and you want nothing, it means you not alive, you stone, clay! Stone want nothing, and you want nothing … You stone—and God not love you, but love gentleman.”

Everybody laughed. The Tartar winced squeamishly, waved his arm and, wrapping himself in his rags, went towards the fire. The boatmen and Semyon trudged to the hut.

“It’s cold!” croaked one of the boatmen, stretching out on the straw that covered the damp clay floor.

“Yes, it’s not warm!” another agreed. “A convict’s life! …”

They all lay down. The wind forced the door open, and snow blew into the hut. Nobody wanted to get up and shut the door: it was cold, and they were lazy.

“And I’m fine!” Semyon said as he was falling asleep. “God grant everybody such a life.”

“We know you, a convict seven times over. Even the devils can’t get at you.”

Sounds resembling a dog’s howling came from outside.

“What’s that? Who’s there?”

“It’s the Tartar crying.”

“Look at that… Odd bird!”

“He’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon, and he fell asleep at once.

Soon the others also fell asleep. And so the door stayed open.

MAY 1892

WARD NO. 6

I

In the hospital yard stands a small annex surrounded by a whole forest of burdock, nettles, and wild hemp. The roof is rusty, the chimney is half fallen down, the porch steps are rotten and overgrown with grass, and only a few traces of stucco remain. The front facade faces the hospital, the back looks onto a field, from which it is separated by the gray hospital fence topped with nails. These nails, turned point up, and the fence, and the annex itself have that special despondent and accursed look that only our hospitals and prisons have.

If you are not afraid of being stung by nettles, let us go down the narrow path that leads to the annex and see what is going on inside. Opening the first door, we go into the front hall. Here whole mountains of hospital rubbish are piled against the walls and around the stove. Mattresses, old torn dressing gowns, trousers, blue-striped shirts, worthless, worn-out shoes—all these rags are piled in heaps, crumpled, tangled, rotting and giving off a suffocating smell.

On top of this rubbish, always with a pipe in his mouth, lies the caretaker Nikita, an old retired soldier with faded tabs. He has a stern, haggard face, beetling brows, which give his face the look of a steppe sheepdog, and a red nose; he is small of stature, looks lean and sinewy, but his bearing is imposing and his fists are enormous. He is one of those simple-hearted, positive, efficient, and obtuse people who love order more than anything in the world and are therefore convinced that they must be beaten. He beats them on the face, the chest, the back, wherever, and is certain that without that there would be no order here.

Further on you enter a big, spacious room that takes up the entire annex, except for the front hall. The walls here are daubed with dirty blue paint, the ceiling is as sooty as in a chimneyless hut— clearly the stoves smoke in winter and the place is full of fumes. The windows are disfigured inside by iron grilles. The floor is gray and splintery. There is a stench of pickled cabbage, charred wicks, bedbugs, and ammonia, and for the first moment this stench gives you the impression that you have entered a menagerie.

In the room stand beds bolted to the floor. On them sit or lie people in blue hospital gowns and old-fashioned nightcaps. These are madmen.

There are five of them in all. Only one of them is of noble rank, the rest are tradesmen. First from the door, a tall, lean tradesman with a red, gleaming mustache and tearful eyes sits with his head propped on his hand and gazes at a single point. Day and night he grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly; he rarely takes part in conversation and usually does not reply to questions. He eats and drinks mechanically, when offered. Judging by his painful, racking cough, his thinness and the flush of his cheeks, he is in the first stages of consumption.

Next to him is a small, lively, extremely agile old man, with a pointed little beard and dark hair curly as a Negro’s. During the day he strolls about the ward from window to window, or sits on his bed, his legs tucked under Turkish-fashion, and whistles irrepressibly like a bullfinch, sings softly, and giggles. He displays a childlike gaiety and lively character at night as well, when he gets up to pray to God, that is, to beat his breast with his fists and poke at the door with his finger. This is the Jew Moiseika, a half-wit, who went crazy about twenty years ago when his hatter’s shop burned down.

Of all the inhabitants of Ward No. 6, he alone is allowed to go outside the annex and even outside the hospital yard. He has enjoyed this privilege for years, probably as a hospital old-timer and a quiet, harmless half-wit, a town fool, whom people have long been used to seeing in the streets surrounded by boys and dogs. In a flimsy robe, a ridiculous nightcap and slippers, sometimes barefoot and even without trousers, he walks about the streets, stopping at gates and shops and begging for a little kopeck. In one place they give him kvass, in another bread, in a third a little kopeck, so that he usually returns to the annex feeling rich and well-fed. Everything he brings with him Nikita takes for himself. The soldier does this rudely, vexedly, turning his pockets inside out and calling God to be his witness that he will never let the Jew out again and that for him disorder is the worst thing in the world.

Moiseika likes to oblige. He brings his comrades water, covers them up when they sleep, promises to bring each of them a little kopeck from outside and to make them new hats. He also feeds his neighbor on the left, a