Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,87

‘people can live in Siberia, too. There’s happiness in Siberia, too. Look,’ he says, ‘what a daughter I have! I bet you won’t find one like her for a thousand miles around!’ The daughter’s nice, I say, it’s really true … And to myself I think: ‘Just wait … She’s a young girl, her blood is high, she wants to live, and what kind of life is there here?’ And she began to languish, brother … She pined and pined, got all wasted, fell ill, and took to her bed. Consumption. There’s Siberian happiness for you, damn its soul, there’s ‘people can live in Siberia’ for you … He started going for doctors and bringing them to her. As soon as he hears there’s some doctor or quack within a hundred or two hundred miles, he goes to get him. He’s put an awful lot of money into these doctors, and in my view it would have been better to drink the money up … She’ll die anyway. She’s absolutely sure to die, and then he’ll be totally lost. He’ll hang himself from grief or run away to Russia—it’s a fact. He’ll run away, get caught, there’ll be a trial, hard labor, a taste of the whip …”

“Good, good,” the Tartar muttered, shrinking from the chill.

“What’s good?” the Explainer asked.

“The wife, the daughter … Hard labor, yes, grief, yes, but still he saw his wife and daughter … Need nothing, you say. But nothing—bad. His wife lived with him three years—that was a gift from God. Nothing bad, three years good. How you don’t understand?”

Trembling, straining to find Russian words, of which he did not know many, and stammering, the Tartar began to say that God forbid he get sick in a foreign land, die and be put into the cold, rusty earth, that if his wife came to him, be it for a single day and even for a single hour, he would agree to suffer any torment for such happiness and would thank God. Better a single day of happiness than nothing.

After that he told again about what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home, then, clutching his head with both hands, he wept and began assuring Semyon that he was not guilty of anything and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his uncle stole horses from a peasant and beat the old man half to death, but the community gave them an unfair trial and sentenced all three brothers to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, stayed home.

“You’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon.

The Tartar fell silent and fixed his tear-filled eyes on the fire; his face showed bewilderment and fright, as if he were still unable to understand why he was there in the dark and the damp, among strangers, and not in Simbirsk province. The Explainer lay down near the fire, grinned at something, and struck up a song in a low voice.

“What fun is it for her with her father?” he said after a while. “He loves her, takes comfort in her, it’s true; but don’t go putting your finger in his mouth, brother: he’s a strict old man, a tough one. And young girls don’t want strictness … They need tenderness, ha-ha-ha and hee-ho-ho, perfumes and creams. Yes … Eh, so it goes!” Semyon sighed and got up heavily. “The vodka’s all gone, that means it’s time to sleep. Eh, I’m off, brother …”

Left alone, the Tartar added more brushwood, lay down, and, gazing at the fire, began thinking of his native village and his wife; let his wife come for just a month, just a day, and then, if she wants, she can go back! Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if his wife keeps her promise and comes, what will he give her to eat? Where will she live here?

“If no food, how live?” the Tartar asked out loud.

Because now, working day and night with an oar, he earned only ten kopecks a day; true, travelers gave them tips for tea and vodka, but the boys divided all the income among themselves and gave nothing to the Tartar, but only laughed at him. And need makes one hungry, cold, and afraid … Now, when his whole body aches and trembles, it would be nice to go into the hut and sleep, but there he has nothing to cover himself with, and it is colder than on the bank; here he also