"I shan't be a minute, fellows . . ." he says, and lies do^ on the floor.
Everybody is nonplussed. They call to him, he does not answer.
"Stepan, maybe you are feeling bad, eh?" the soldier with the bandaged arm asks him. "Perhaps we had bet- ter call the priest, eh?"
"Have a drink of water, Stepan . . ." says the sailor. "Here, brother, drink."
'Why are you knocking the jug against his teeth?" says Gusev angrily. "Don't you see, you cabbage-head?"
"Wiat?"
"What?" Gusev mimicks him. "There is no breath in him, he's dead! That's what! Such stupid people, Lord God!"
III
The ship has stopped rolling and Pavel lvanych is cheerful. He is no longer cross. His face wears a boast- ful, challenging, mocking expression. It is as though he wants to say: "Yes, right away I'll tell you something that will make you burst with laughter." The round port- hole is open and a soft breeze is blowing on Pavel Ivanych. There is a sound of voices, the splash of oars in the water . . . Just under the porthole someone is droning in a thin, disgusting voice; must be a Chinaman singing.
"Here we are in the harbor," says Pavel lvanych with a mocking smile. "Only another month or so and we shall be in Russia. M'yes, messieurs of the armed forces! 111 arrive in Odessa and from there go straight to Khar- kov. In Kharkov I have a friend, a man of letters. I'll go to him and say, 'Come, brother, put aside your vile sub- jects, women's amours and the beauties of Nature, and show up the two-legged vermin . • • There's a subject for you."
For a while he reflects, then says:
"Gusev, do you know how I tricked them?"
"Tricked who, Pavel Ivanych?"
"Why, these people . . . You understand, on this steamer there is only a first class and a third class, and they only allow peasants, that is, the common herd, to go in the third. If you have got a jacket on and even at a distance look like a gentleman or a bourgeois, you have to go first class, if you please. You must fork out five hundred rubles if it kills you. 'Why do you have such a regulation?' I ask them. 'Do you mean to raise the prestige of the Russian intelligentsia thereby?' 'Not a bit of it. We don't let you simply because a decent person can't go third class; it is too horrible and disgusting there.' 'Yes, sir? Thank you for being so solicitous about decent people's welfare. But in any case, whether it's nasty there or nice, I haven't got five hundred mbles. I didn't loot the Treasury, I didn't exploit the natives, I didn't traffic in contraband, I flogged nobody to death, so judge for yourselves if I have the right to occupy a first class cabin and even to reckon myself among the Russian intelligentsia.' But logic means nothing to them. So I had to resort to fraud. I put on a peasant coat and high boots, I pulled a face so that I looked like a com- mon drunk, and went to the agents: 'Give us a little ticket, your Excellency,' said I—"
"You're not of the gentry, are you?" asked the sailor.
"I come of a clerical family. My father was a priest, and an honest one; he always told the high and mighty the truth to their faces and, as a result, he suffered a great deal."
Pavel Ivanych is exhausted from talking and gasps for breath, but still continues:
"Yes, I always tell people the truth to their faces. I'm not afraid of anyone or anything. In this respect, there is a great difference between me and all of you, men. You are dark people, blind, crushed; you see nothing and what you do see, you don't understand • • • You are told that the wind breaks loose from its chain, that you are beasts, savages, and you believe it; someone gives it to you in the neck—you kiss his hand; some animal in a racoon coat robs you and then tosses you a fifteen-kopeck tip and you say: 'Let me kiss your hand, sir.' You are outcasts, pitiful wretches. I am different, my mind is clear. I see it all plainly like a hawk or an eagle when it hovers over the earth, and I understand everything. I am protest personified. I see tyranny—I protest. I see a hypocrite—I protest, I see a triumphant swine—I protest. And I cannot be put down, no Spanish Inquisition can silence me. No. Cut out my tongue and I will protest with gestures. Wall me up in a cellar—I will shout so that you will hear me half a mile away, or will starve myself to death, so that they may have an- other weight on their black consciences. Kill me and I will haunt them. All my acquaintances say to me: 'You are a most insufferable person, Pavel Ivanych.' I am proud of such a reputation. I served three years in the Far East and I shall be remembered there a hundred years. I had rows there with everybody. My friends wrote to me from Russia: 'Don't come back,' but here I am going back to spite them . . . Yes . . . That's life as I understand it. That's what one can call life."
Gusev is not listening; he is looking at the porthole. A junk, flooded with dazzling hot sunshine, is swaying on the transparent turquoise water. In it stand naked Chinamen, holding up cages with canaries in them and calling out: "It sings, it sings!"
Another boat knocks against it; a steam cutter glides past. Then there is another boat: a fat Chinaman sits in it, eating rice with chopsticks. The water sways lazily, white sea gulls languidly hover over it.
"Would be fi.ne to give that fat fellow one in the neck," reflects Gusev, looking at the stout Chinaman and ya^ing.
He dozes off and it seems to him that aU nature is dozing too. Time flies swiftly by. Imperceptibly the day passes. Imperceptibly darkness descends . . . The steamer is no longer standing still but is on the move again.
IV
Two days pass. Pavel lvanych no longer sits up but is lying down. His eyes are closed, his nose seems to have grown sharper.
"Pavel lvanych," Gusev calls to him. "Hey, Pavel Ivanych."
Pavel Ivanych opens his eyes and moves his lips.
"Are you feeling bad?"
"No . . . It's nothing . . ." answers Pavel Ivanych gasping for breath. "Nothing, on the contrary ... I am better . . . You see, I can lie down now . . .I have improved . . ."
"Well, thank God for that, Pavel Ivanych."
"When I compare myself to you, I am sorry for you, poor fellows. My lungs are healthy, mine is a stomach cough ... I can stand hell, let alone the Red Sea. Be- sides, I take a critical attitude toward my illness and the medicines. While you— Your minds are dark . . . It's hard on you, very, very hard!"
The ship is not rolling, it is quiet, but as hot and stifling as a Turkish bath; it is hard, not only to speak, but even to listen. Gusev hugs his knees, lays his head on them and thinks of his home. God, in this stifling heat, what a relief it is to think of snow and cold! You're driving in a sleigh; all of a sudden, the horses take fright at something and bolt. Careless of the road, the ditches, the gullies, they tear like mad things right through the village, across the pond, past the pottery, across the open fields. "Hold them!" the pottery hands and the peasants they meet shout at the top of their voices. "Hold them!" But why hold them? Let the keen cold wind beat in your face and bite your hands; let the lumps of snow, kicked up by the horses, slide do^ your collar, your neck, your chest; let the runners sing, and the traces and the whippletrees break, the devil take them. And what delight when the sleigh upsets and you go flying full tilt into a drift, face right in the snow, and then you get up, white all over with icicles on your mustache, no cap, no gloves, your belt undone . . . People laugh, dogs bark . . .
Pavel Ivanych half opens one eye, fixes Gusev with it and asks softly: "Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?" "Who can tell, Pavel Ivanych? We can't say, we didn't hear about it."
And after that, a long time passes in silence. Gusev broods, his mind wanders, and he keeps drinking water: it is hard for him to talk and hard for him to listen, and he is afraid of being talked to. An hour passes, a second, a third; evening comes, then night, but he doesn't notice it; he sits up and keeps dreaming of the frost.