Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,85

… Easter’s long past, but there’s ice drifting on the river, and it snowed this morning.”

“Bad! Bad!” said the Tartar, and he looked around fearfully.

Some ten paces away from them the dark, cold river flowed; it growled, splashed against the eroded clay bank, and quickly raced off somewhere to the distant sea. Close to the bank a big barge loomed darkly. The boatmen called it a “barridge.” On the far bank, lights crawled snakelike, flaring up and dying out: this was last year’s grass being burnt. And beyond the snakes it was dark again. Small blocks of ice could be heard knocking against the barge. Damp, cold …

The Tartar looked at the sky. The stars were as many as at home, there was the same blackness around, but something was missing. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were not like that at all, nor was the sky.

“Bad! Bad!” he repeated.

“You’ll get used to it!” the Explainer said and laughed. “You’re still a young man, foolish, not dry behind the ears, and like a fool you think there’s no man more wretched than you, but the time will come when you say to yourself: ‘God grant everybody such a life.’ Look at me. In a week’s time the water will subside, we’ll set up the ferry here, you’ll all go wandering around Siberia, and I’ll stay and start going from shore to shore. It’s twenty-two years now I’ve been going like that. And thank God. I need nothing. God grant everybody such a life.”

The Tartar added more brushwood to the fire, lay down closer to it, and said:

“My father is a sick man. When he dies, my mother and wife will come here. They promised.”

“And what do you need a mother and wife for?” asked the Explainer. “That’s all foolishness, brother. It’s the devil confusing you, damn his soul. Don’t listen to the cursed one. Don’t let him have his way. He’ll get at you with a woman, but you spite him: don’t want any! He’ll get at you with freedom, but you stay tough—don’t want any! You need nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no bag, no baggage! You need nothing, damn it all!”

The Explainer took a swig from his bottle and went on:

“I’m no simple peasant, brother dear, I’m not of boorish rank, I’m a beadle’s son, and when I was free and lived in Kursk, I went around in a frock coat, and now I’ve brought myself to the point where I can sleep naked on the ground and have grass for my grub. God grant everybody such a life. I need nothing, and I fear nobody, and to my way of thinking there’s no man richer or freer than I am. When they sent me here from Russia, I got tough the very first day: I want nothing! The devil got at me with my wife, my family, my freedom, but I told him: I need nothing! I got tough and, you see, I live well, no complaints. And if anybody indulges the devil and listens even once, he’s lost, there’s no saving him: he’ll sink into the mire up to his ears and never get out. Not only your kind, foolish peasants, but even noble and educated ones get lost. About fifteen years ago a gentleman was sent here from Russia. He quarreled with his brothers over something, and somehow faked a will. They said he was a prince or a baron, but maybe he was just an official—who knows! Well, this gentleman came here and, first thing, bought himself a house and land in Mukhortinskoe. ‘I want to live by my own labor,’ he says, ‘by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he says, ‘I’m no longer a gentleman, I’m an exile.’ Why not, I say, God help you, it’s a good thing. He was a young man then, a bustler, always busy; he went mowing, and fishing, and rode forty miles on horseback. Only here’s the trouble: from the very first year he started going to Gyrino, to the post office. He used to stand on my ferry and sigh: ‘Eh, Semyon, it’s long since they sent me money from home!’ No need for money, Vassily Sergeich, I say. Money for what? Give up the old things, forget them as if they’d never been, as if it was only a dream, and start a new life. Don’t listen to the devil—he won’t get you anything good, he’ll only draw you