Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,64

a man’s going to die soon. You don’t eat, you don’t drink, you’ve grown so thin it’s frightening to look at you. Consumption, in short. I say it not to alarm you, but in case you may want to take communion and be anointed.3 And if you have any money, you should place it with a senior officer.”

“I haven’t written home …” sighs Gusev. “I’ll die and they won’t know.”

“They’ll know,” the sick sailor says in a bass voice. “When you die, they’ll record it in the ship’s log, in Odessa they’ll give an extract to the military commander, and he’ll send it to the local office or wherever …”

Gusev feels eerie after such a conversation and begins to suffer from some sort of yearning. He drinks water—it’s not that; he leans to the round window and breathes the hot, humid air—it’s not that; he tries thinking about his homeland, about the frost—it’s not that … In the end it seems to him that if he spends another minute in the sick bay, he will surely suffocate.

“It’s bad, brothers …” he says. “I’m going topside. Take me topside, for Christ’s sake!”

“All right,” the soldier with the sling consents. “You won’t make it, I’ll carry you. Hold on to my neck.”

Gusev puts his arm around the soldier’s neck, the soldier grasps him with his good arm and carries him topside. 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