“And you, Matryona, well…,” he mutters. “If Pavel Ivanych asks you if I beat you or not, say: ‘No, never!’ And I won’t beat you anymore. I swear to God. Do you think I beat you out of spite? I beat you just so, for nothing. I pity you. Another man wouldn’t care much, but see, I’m driving…I’m trying hard. And the blizzard, what a blizzard! Lord, Thy will be done! Only grant we get there and don’t lose our way…What, your side hurts? Matryona, why don’t you say anything? I’m asking you: does your side hurt?”
It seems strange to him that the snow does not melt on the old woman’s face, that the face itself has become somehow peculiarly long, acquired a pale-gray, dirty-wax color, and become stern, serious.
“What a fool!” mutters the woodturner. “I speak to you in all conscience, like to God…and you…What a fool! I just won’t take you to Pavel Ivanych!”
The woodturner lets go of the reins and falls to thinking. He cannot bring himself to turn and look at the old woman: scary! To ask her something and not get an answer is also scary. Finally, to put an end to the uncertainty, without turning to look, he feels for the old woman’s cold hand. The raised hand drops back limply.
“So she died! What a chore!”
And the woodturner weeps. Not so much from pity as from vexation. He thinks: how quickly it all gets done in this world! His grief had barely begun, and the ending was already there waiting. He had barely begun to live with his old wife, to talk with her, to pity her, when she up and died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those forty years had passed as if in a fog. With all the drinking, fighting, and poverty, life had not been felt. And, as if on purpose, the old woman died just at the very moment when he felt that he pitied her, could not live without her, was terribly guilty before her.
“And she went begging,” he recalls. “I sent her out myself to ask people for bread—what a chore! She should have lived a dozen more years, the fool, but she probably thinks this is how I really am. Holy Mother of God, where the devil have I got to? It’s not treatment she needs now, it’s burial. Turn around!”
The woodturner turns around and whips up his nag with all his might. The road gets worse and worse every moment. Now he cannot see the shaft bow at all. Occasionally the sledge rides over a young fir tree, a dark object scratches his hands, flashes before his eyes, and the field of vision again becomes white, whirling.
“To live life over again…,” thinks the woodturner.
He remembers that forty years ago Matryona was young, beautiful, cheerful, from a rich family. They gave her to him in marriage because they were seduced by his craftsmanship. There were all the makings for a good life, but the trouble was that he got drunk after the wedding, dropped off, and it was as if he never woke up until now. The wedding he remembers, but of what came after the wedding—for the life of him, he cannot remember anything, except maybe that he drank, slept, fought. So forty years vanished.
The white snowy clouds gradually begin to turn gray. Darkness falls.
“Where am I going?” The woodturner suddenly rouses himself. “I’ve got to bury her, not go to the hospital…I must be in a daze!”
He turns around again and again whips up the horse. The mare strains with all her might and, snorting, trots along. The woodturner whips her on the back again and again…He hears some sort of knocking behind him, and though he does not turn around, he knows that it is the deceased woman’s head knocking against the sledge. And it grows darker and darker around him, the wind turns colder and sharper…
“To live it all over again,” thinks the woodturner. “To get new tools, take orders…give the money to the old woman…yes!”
And here he drops the reins. He feels for them, wants to pick them up and cannot; his hands no longer obey him…
“Never mind…,” he thinks. “The horse will go by herself, she knows the way. I could do with some sleep now…till the funeral or the memorial service.”
The woodturner closes his eyes and dozes off. A short while later he hears that the horse has stopped. He opens his eyes and sees something dark in front of him, like a hut or a haystack…
He ought to climb down from the sledge and find out what it is, but there is such laziness in his whole body that he would rather freeze to death than move from his place…And he falls peacefully asleep.
He wakes up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight pours through the windows. The woodturner sees people around him and wants first of all to show that he is a man of dignity and understanding.
“What about a little Panikhida, brothers, for the old woman?” he says. “The priest should be told…”
“Well, enough, enough! Just lie there!” Someone’s voice interrupts him.
“Good Lord! Pavel Ivanych!” The woodturner is surprised to see the doctor before him. “Y’ronor! My benefactor!”
He wants to jump up and throw himself at the feet of medicine, but feels that his arms and legs do not obey him.
“Your Honor! Where are my legs? My arms?”
“Say goodbye to your arms and legs…They got frozen. Now, now…what are you crying for? You’ve lived, thank God for that! You must have lived some sixty years—that will do you!”
“Grief!…Y’ronor, it’s such grief! Kindly forgive me! Another five or six little years…”
“What for?”
“I borrowed the horse, I’ve got to return it…Bury the old woman…How quickly it all gets done in this world! Your Honor! Pavel Ivanych! A cigar box of the best Karelian birch! Croquet balls…”
The doctor waves his hand and walks out of the ward. Woodturner—amen!
1885
THE EXCLAMATION POINT
A Christmas Story
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Efim Fomich Perekladin, a collegiate secretary,1 went to bed offended and even insulted.
“Stop bothering me, you she-devil!” he barked angrily at his wife when she asked why he was so gloomy.
The trouble was that he had just come back from a party where many things had been said that he found unpleasant and offensive. At first they talked about the benefits of education in general, then they moved on imperceptibly to the educational requirements for civil servants, about the low level of which a great many laments, reproaches, and even gibes were voiced. And here, as is customary in all Russian gatherings, they moved on from the general to the personal.
“Take you, for instance, Efim Fomich.” A young man turned to Perekladin. “You occupy a respectable post…but what kind of education did you receive?”
“None, sir. For us no education’s needed,” Perekladin said meekly. “Just write correctly…”
“And where did you learn to write correctly?”
“Habit, sir…After forty years of service you get the knack of it, sir…Of course, it was hard at first, I made mistakes, but then I got used to it, sir…no problem…”
“And punctuation?”
“Punctuation’s no problem…Just put it in correctly.”
“Hm!…” The young man became embarrassed. “But habit’s not the same as education. It’s not enough to put in punctuation correctly…not enough, sir! You should put it in consciously! When you put in a comma, you should know why you’re putting it in…yes, sir! And this unconscious…reflex orthography of yours isn’t worth a kopeck. It’s mechanical production and nothing more.”
Perekladin held his tongue and even smiled meekly (the young man was the son of a state councillor and had the right to the tenth rank), but now, on going to bed, he was all transformed into anger and indignation.
“I’ve served for forty years,” he thought, “and no one has ever called me a fool, but now just look what critics have turned up! ‘Unconscious…Lefrex! Mechanical production…’ Ah, you, devil take you! Anyhow, maybe I understand more than you do, even if I didn’t study in your universities.”