Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Orlóff took the glass, dipped up water from the pail, and swallowed it at one gulp. In his ears the dead words were ringing:

"I ... am ... dying...."

But Tchízhik hovered round him with swift darts, feeling himself thoroughly in his proper sphere.

"Give me a drink...." said the accordeon-player, moving himself and the table about on the floor.

Tchízhik hopped up to him, and held a glass of water to his black lips. Grigóry, as he leaned against the wall by the door, listened, as in a dream, to the sick man noisily drawing in the water; then he heard Tchízhik propose that they should undress Kislyakóff, and put him to bed, then the voice of the painters' cook rang out. Her broad face, with an expression of terror and compassion, was gazing in from the court-yard through a window, and she said in a snivelling tone:

"You ought to give him lamp-black and rum: a tea-glass full--two spoonfuls of lamp-black, and fill it with rum to the brim."

But some invisible person suggested olive-oil with the brine from cucumbers, and _aqua regia._

Orlóff suddenly became conscious that the heavy, oppressive gloom within him was illuminated by some memory. He rubbed his brow hard, as though endeavoring to increase the brilliancy of the light, and all at once, he went swiftly thence, ran across the court-yard and disappeared down the street.

"Heavens! And the shoemaker has got it too! He's run off to the hospital,"--the cook commented upon his flight in a plaintively-shrill voice.

Matréna, who was standing beside her, gazed with widely opened eyes, and turning pale, she shook all over.

"You're mistaken," she said hoarsely, barely moving her white lips,--"Grigóry won't fall ill of that accursed sickness.... He won't yield to it...."

But the cook, howling wofully, had already disappeared somewhere, and five minutes later a cluster of neighbors and passers-by was muttering dully around the Petúnnikoff house. Over all faces the same, identical sentiments flitted in turn: excitement, which was succeeded by hopeless dejection, and something evil, which now and then made way for active audacity. Tchízhik kept flying back and forth between the court and the crowd, his bare feet twinkling, and reporting the course of events in the accordeon-player's room.

The public, collected together in a dense knot, filled the dusty, malodorous air of the street with the dull hum of their talk, and from time to time a violent oath, launched at someone, broke forth from their midst,--an oath as malicious as it was lacking in sense.

"Look ... that's Orlóff!"

Orlóff drove up to the gate on the box of a wagon with a white canvas cover which was driven by a surly man all clad in white, also. This man roared, in a dull bass voice:

"Get out of the way!"

And he drove straight at the people, who sprang aside in all directions at his shout.

The aspect of this wagon, and the shout of its driver, rather subdued the high-strung mood of the spectators,--all seemed to grow dark at once, and many went swiftly away.

In the track of the wagon, the student who had visited the Orlóffs made his appearance from somewhere or other. His cap had fallen back on the nape of his neck, the perspiration streamed down his forehead in large drops, he wore a long mantle, of dazzling whiteness, and the lower part of its front was decorated with a large round hole, with reddish edges, evidently just burned in some way.

"Well, Orlóff, where's the sick man?"--he asked loudly, casting a sidelong glance at the public, which had assembled in a little niche by the gate, and had greeted his appearance with great ill-will, although they watched him not without curiosity.

Someone said, in a loud tone:

"Look at yourself ... you're just like a cook!".

Another voice, which was quieter and had a tinge of malice in it, made promises:

"Just wait ... he'll give you a treat!"

There was a joker in the crowd, as there always is.

"He'll give you such soup that your belly will burst on the spot!"

A laugh rang out, though it was not merry, but obscured by a timorous suspicion, it was not lively, though faces cleared somewhat.

"See, they ain't afraid of catching it themselves ... what's the meaning of that?"--very significantly inquired a man with a strained face and a glance filled with concentrated wrath.

And under the influence of this question, the countenances of the public darkened again, and their murmurs became still duller....

"They're bringing him!"

"That Orlóff! Akh, the dog!"

"Isn't he afraid?"

"What's it to him? He's a drunkard..

"Carefully, carefully, Orlóff! Lift his feet higher ... so! Ready! Drive off, Piótr!" ordered the student. "Tell the doctor I shall be there soon. Well, sir, Mr. Orlóff, I request that you will help me to exterminate the infection here.... By the way, you will learn how to do it, in case of need.... Do you agree? Can you come?"

"I can," said Orlóff, casting a glance around him, and feeling a flood of pride rising within him.

"And so can I," announced Tchízhik.

He had escorted the mournful wagon through the gate, and returned just in the nick of time to offer his services. The student stared at him through his glasses.

"Who are you, hey?"

"Apprentice ... to the house-painters...." explained Tchízhik.

"And are you afraid of the cholera?"

"I?" asked Sénka in surprise.--"The idea! I'm ... not afraid of anything!"

"Re-eally? That's clever! Now, see here, my friends."--The student seated himself on a cask which was lying on the ground, and rolling himself to and fro on it, he began to say that it was indispensably necessary that Orlóff and Tchízhik should give themselves a good washing.

They formed a group, which was soon joined by Matréna, smiling timidly. After her came the cook, wiping her wet eyes on her dirty apron. In a short time, several persons from among the spectators approached this group, as cautiously as cats approach sparrows. A small, dense ring of men, about ten in number, formed around the student, and this inspired him. Standing in the centre of these people, and briskly gesticulating, he began something in the nature of a lecture, which now awoke smiles on their faces, now aroused their concentrated attention, now keen distrust and sceptical grins.

"The principal point in all diseases is--cleanliness of the body, and of the air which you breathe, gentlemen,"--he assured his hearers.

"Oh Lord!" sighed the painted cook loudly.--"One must pray to Saint Varvára the martyr to be delivered from sudden death...."

"Gentlemen live in the body and in the air, but still, they die too,"--remarked one of the audience.

Orlóff stood beside his wife, and gazed at the face of the student, pondering something deeply the while. Someone gave his shirt a tug, from one side.

"Uncle Grigóry!"--whispered Sénka Tchízhik, raising himself on tiptoe, his eyes sparkling, blazing like coals,--"now that Mítry Pávlovitch is going to die, and he hasn't any relatives ... who'll get his accordeon?"

"Let me alone, you imp!" Orlóff warded him off.

Sénka stepped aside, and stared through the window of the accordeon-player's little room, searching for something in it with an eager glance.

"Lime, tar,"--the student enumerated loudly.

On the evening of that restless day, when the Orlóffs sat down to drink tea, Matréna asked her husband, with curiosity:

"Where did you go with the student a little while ago?"

Grigóry looked into her face with eyes obscured by something, and different from usual, and, without replying, began to pour his tea from his glass into his saucer.

About mid-day, after he had finished scrubbing the accordeon-player's rooms, Grigóry had gone off somewhere with the sanitary officer, had returned at three o'clock thoughtful and taciturn, had thrown himself down on the bed, and there he had lain, face upward, until tea-time, never uttering a single word all that time, although his wife had made many efforts to draw him into conversation. He even failed to swear at her for nagging him, and this, in itself, was strange, she was not used to it, and it provoked her.

With the instinct of a woman whose whole life is bound up in her husband, she began to suspect that her husband had become interested in something new, she was afraid of something, and therefore, was the more passionately desirous of knowing what that thing was.

"Perhaps you don't feel well, Grísha?"

Grigóry poured the last gulp of tea from his saucer into his mouth, wiped his mustache with his hand, pushed his empty glass over to his wife without haste, and knitting his brows, he said:

"I went with the student to the barracks ... yes...."

"To the cholera barracks?" exclaimed Matréna, and tremblingly, with lowered voice, she asked: "are there many of them there?"

"Fifty-three persons, counting in our man...."

"Well?"

"They're recovering by the score.... They can walk.... Yellow, thin...."

"Are they cholera-patients too? They're not, I suppose? ... They've put some others in there, to justify themselves: as much as to say--"look, we can cure!'"

"You're a fool!" said Grigóry with decision, and his eyes flashed angrily.--"You're all stupid folks! Lack of education and stupidity--that's all! You're enough to kill a man with your ignorance.... You can't understand anything,"--he sharply moved toward him his glass freshly filled with tea, and fell silent.

"Where did _you_ get so much education?"--inquired Matréna viciously, and sighed.

Her husband, paying not the slightest heed to her words, remained silent, thoughtful and morose. The samovár, which had burned out, drawled a squeaking melody, full of irritating tediousness, an odor of oil-paints, carbolic acid, and stirred-up cesspools floated through the windows from the court-yard. The semi-twilight, the screeching of the samovár, and the smells--everything in the room became densely merged with one another, forming around the Orlóffs a setting which resembled a nightmare, while the dark maw of the oven stared at the husband and wife exactly as though it felt itself called upon to swallow them when a convenient opportunity should present itself. The silence lasted for a long time. Husband and wife nibbled away at their sugar, rattled their crockery, swallowed their tea.[10] Matréna sighed, Grigóry tapped the table with his finger.

[10] By way of economizing, the peasants do not put sugar into their tea, but nibble at it, and thus sweeten their mouths, an inelegant and inconvenient, but highly satisfactory method of operation.--Translator.

"You never saw such cleanliness as they have there!"--he suddenly began, irritably.--"All the attendants, down to the very last one--wear white. The sick people keep getting into the bath all the time.... They give them wine ... six bottles and a half! As for the food--the very smell of it would make you feel full-fed.... Care, anxiety.... They treat them in a motherly way..? and all the rest of it.... So they do. Please to understand: you live along upon the earth, and not even one devil would take the trouble to spit on you, much less call in now and then to inquire--what and how and, in general,... what your life is like, that is to say, whether it suits you, or whether it is the right sort for a man? Has he any means of breathing or not? But when you begin to die--they not only do not permit it, but even put themselves to expense. The barracks ... wine ... six bottles and a half! Haven't people any sense? For the barracks and the wine cost a lot of money. Couldn't that same money be used for improving life ... a little every year?"

His wife made no attempt to understand his remarks, it was enough for her to feel that they were new, and thence to deduce, with absolute accuracy, that something new concerning her was also in progress in Grigóry's mind. Convinced of this, she wished to learn, as promptly as possible, how all this concerned her. Fear was mingled with this desire, and hope, and a sort of hostility toward her husband.

"I suppose the people yonder know even more than you do,"--said she, when he had finished, and pursed up her lips in a sceptical way.

Grigóry shrugged his shoulders, cast a furtive glance at her, and then, after a pause, he began in a still more lofty tone:

"Whether they know or not, that's their business. But if I have to die, without having seen any sort of life, I can reason about that. Now see here, I'll tell you this: I don't want any more of this sort of thing--that is to say, I won't consent to sit and wait for the cholera to come and seize hold of me. I won't do it! Piótr Ivánovitch says: 'go ahead, and meet it half way! Fate is against you--but you can oppose it,--who'll get the upper hand? It's war! That's all there is to say about it....' So, what now? I'm going to enter the barracks as an orderly--and that's the end of it! Understand? I'm going to walk straight into its maw.--You may swallow me, but I'll make a play with my feet!... I shall not earn any the less there ... twenty rubles a month for wages, and they may add a gratuity besides.... I may die?... that's so, but I should die sooner here. And again, it's a change in my life...." and the excited Orlóff banged the table so vehemently with his fist, that all the crockery bounced up and down with a clatter.

Matréna, at the beginning of her husband's speech, had stared at him with an expression of uneasiness, but by the time he had finished, she had screwed up her eyes in a hostile manner.

"Did the student advise you to do that?" she asked staidly.

"I have wits of my own ... I can judge,"--for some reason, Grigóry evaded a direct reply.

"Well, and did he advise you to separate from me?"--went on Matréna.

"From you?"--Grigóry was somewhat disconcerted--he had not yet succeeded in thinking out that matter. Of course, one can leave a woman in lodgings, as is generally done, but there are different sorts of women. Matréna, was one of the dangerous sort. One must keep her directly under his eyes. Settling down on this thought, Orlóff went on with a scowl:--"The student ... what ails you? You will live here ... and I shall be earning wages ... ye-es...."

"Just so,"--said the woman briefly and calmly, and laughed with that very significant and purely feminine smile, which is capable of evoking in a man thoughts of jealousy which pierce his heart.

Orlóff, who was nervous and quick of apprehension, felt this, but, being loath to betray himself, out of self-love, he flung at his wife the curt remark:

"Quack and grunt--make up all your speeches...." and he pricked up his ears, in anticipation of what she would say.

But she smiled again, with that exasperating smile, and preserved silence.

"Well, how is it to be?" inquired Grigóry, in a lofty tone.

"How is what to be?" said Matréna, indifferently wiping the cups.

"Viper! None of your shiftiness--I'll damage you!" Orlóff boiled up.--"Perhaps I'm going to my death."

"I'm not sending you ... don't go...." interrupted Matréna.

"You'd be glad to send me off, I know!" exclaimed Orlóff ironically.

She made no reply. Her silence enraged him, but he restrained himself from his customary expression of the feelings which such scenes called forth in him. He restrained himself under the influence of a very venomous thought, as it appeared to him, which flashed through his brain. He even gave vent to a malicious smile. "I know you'd like to have me tumble down even to the very depths of hell. Well, we shall see which of us comes off best ... yes! I, also, can take such a course--akh, I've no patience with you!"

He sprang up from the table, snatched up his cap from the window-sill, and went off, leaving his wife dissatisfied with her policy, disconcerted by his threats, and with a growing feeling within her of alarm for the future. As she gazed out of the window, she whispered to herself:

"Oh Lord! Queen of Heaven! All-Holy Birth-Giver of God!"

Besieged by a throng of disquieting problems, she remained sitting, for a long time, at the table, endeavoring to foresee what Grigóry would do. Before her stood the cleanly-washed table appurtenances; and on the principal wall of the neighboring house opposite her windows, the setting sun cast a reddish spot; reflected from the white wall, it penetrated into the room, and the edge of the glass sugar-bowl which stood in front of Matréna glittered. She stared at this faint reflection, with contracted brow, until her eyes ached. Then, rising from her chair, she cleared away the dishes and lay down on the bed.

She felt disgusted.

Grigóry arrived when it was already entirely dark. From his very footsteps on the stairs she decided that he was in good spirits. He swore at the darkness in the room, called to his wife, approached the bed, and sat down on it. His wife raised herself, and sat beside him.

"Do you know I have something to tell you?"--asked Orlóff, laughing.

"Well, what is it?"

"You are going to take a position also!"

"Where?" she asked, with trembling voice.

"In the same barracks with me!" announced Orlóff triumphantly.

She threw her arms round his neck, and clasping him tightly, kissed him straight on the lips. He had not expected this, and thrust her away. She was pretending ... she didn't want to be with him at all, rogue that she was! The viper was pretending, she regarded her husband as a fool....

"What are you delighted about?"--he asked roughly and suspiciously, conscious of a desire to hurl her to the floor.

"Because I am!" she replied, boldly.

"Pretence! I know you!"

"You're my Eruslán the Brave!"[11]

[11] The hero of a seventeenth century Russian fairy-tale, after the Persian tale of "Rustem."--Translator.

"Stop that, I tell you ... or look out for yourself!"

"You're my darling little Grísha!"

"Well, what's the matter with you, anyhow?"

When her caresses had tamed him a little, he asked her anxiously:

"But you're not afraid?"

"Why, we shall be together," she replied simply.

It pleased him to hear this. He said to her:

"You brave little creature!"

And, at the same time, he pinched her side so hard that she shrieked.

*

The first day of the Orlóffs' service in the hospital coincided with a very great influx of patients, and the two novices, accustomed, as they were, to their slowly-moving existence, felt worried and hampered in the midst of this seething activity which had seized them in its grasp. Awkward, unable to comprehend orders, overwhelmed by impressions, they immediately lost their heads, and although they incessantly ran hither and thither, in the effort to work, they hindered others rather than accomplished anything themselves. Several times, Grigóry felt, with all his being, that he merited a stem shout or a scolding for his incompetence, but, to his great amazement, no one shouted at him.

When one of the doctors, a tall, black-mustached man, with a hooked nose, and a huge wart over his right eyebrow, ordered Grigóry to assist one of the patients to sit down in the bath-tub, Grigóry gripped the sick man under the arms with so much zeal that the man groaned and frowned.

"Don't break him to pieces, my dear fellow, he'll fit into the bath-tub whole,...." said the doctor seriously.

Orlóff was abashed; but the sick man, a long, gaunt fellow, laughed with all his might, and said hoarsely: "He's new to it.... He doesn't know how."

Another doctor, an old man, with a pointed gray beard, and large, brilliant eyes, gave the Orlóffs instructions, when they reached the barracks, how to treat the patients, what to do in this case and that, how to handle the sick people in transferring them. In conclusion, he asked them whether they had been to the bath the day before, and gave them white aprons. This doctor's voice was soft, he spoke rapidly; he took a great liking to the married pair, but half an hour later they had forgotten all his instructions, overwhelmed with the stormy life of the barracks. All about them flitted people in white, orders were issued, caught on the fly by the orderlies, the sick people rattled in their throats, moaned and groaned, water flowed and splashed; and all these sounds floated on the air, which was so thickly saturated with penetrating odors that tickled the nostrils disagreeably, that it seemed as though every word of the doctors, every sigh of the patients, stunk also, and irritated the nose....

At first, it seemed to Orlóff that utterly restless chaos reigned there, wherein he could not possibly find his place, and that he would choke, grow deaf, fall ill.... But a few hours passed, and Grigóry, invaded by the breath of energy everywhere disseminated, pricked up his ears, and became permeated with a mighty desire to adjust himself to his business as speedily as possible, conscious that he would feel calmer and easier if he could turn in company with the rest.

"Corrosive sublimate!" shouted one doctor.

"More hot water in this bath-tub!" commanded a scraggy little medical student, with red, inflamed eyelids.

"Here you ... what's your name? Orlóff ... yes! rub his feet.... There, that's the way ... you understand.... So-o, so-o.... More lightly--you'll take the skin off.... Oï, how tired I am...."

Another long-haired and pock-marked student gave Grigóry orders and showed him how to work.

"They've brought another patient!" the news passed from one to another.

"Orlóff, go and carry him in."

Grigóry displayed great zeal--all covered with perspiration, dizzy, with dimmed eves and a heavy darkness in his head. At times, the feeling of personal existence in him completely vanished under the pressure of the mass of impressions which he underwent every moment. The green spots under the clouded eyes on earth-colored faces, bones which seemed to have been sharpened by the disease, the sticky, malodorous skin, the strange convulsions of the hardly living bodies--all this made his heart contract with grief, and caused a nausea which he could, with difficulty, control.

Several times, in the corridor of the barracks, he caught a fleeting glimpse of his wife; she had grown thin, and her face was gray and abstracted. He even managed to ask her, with a voice which had grown hoarse:

"Well, how goes it?"

She smiled faintly in reply, and silently disappeared.

A totally unaccustomed thought stung Grigóry: perhaps he had done wrong in forcing his wife to come hither, to such filthy work. She would fall ill of the infection.... And the next time he met her, he shouted at her severely:

"See to it that you wash your hands often ... take care!"

"And what if I don't?"--she asked, teasingly, displaying her small, white teeth.

This enraged him. A pretty place she had chosen for mirth, the fool! And how mean they were, those women! But he did not succeed in saying anything to her; catching his angry glance, Matréna went rapidly away to the women's section.

And a minute later he was carrying his acquaintance the policeman to the dead-house. The policeman rocked gently to and fro on the stretcher, with his eyes fixed in a stare, from beneath contorted brows, on the clear, hot sky. Grigóry gazed at him with dull terror in his heart: The day before yesterday he had seen that policeman at his post, and had even sworn at him as he went past--they had some little accounts to settle between them. And now, here was this man, so healthy and malicious, lying dead, all disfigured, drawn up with convulsions.

Orlóff felt that this was not right,--why should a man be born into the world at all, if he must die, in one day, of such a dirty disease? He gazed down upon the policeman from above, and pitied him. What would become of his children ... three in all? The dead man had buried his wife a year ago, and had not yet succeeded in marrying for the second time.

He even ached, somewhere inside, with this pity. But, all at once, the clenched left hand of the corpse slowly moved and straightened itself out. At the same moment, the left side of the distorted mouth, which had been half open up to now, closed.

"Halt!"--shouted Orlóff hoarsely, setting the stretcher down on the ground.--"Be quick!"--he said in a whisper to the orderly who was carrying the corpse with him. The latter turned round, cast a glance at the dead man, and said angrily to Orlóff:

"What are you lying for? Don't you understand that he's only putting himself in order for the coffin? You see how it has twisted him up? He can't be put into the coffin like that. Hey there, carry him along!"

"Yes, but he is moving...." protested Orlóff.

"Carry him along, do you hear, you queer man! Don't you understand words? I tell you: he's putting himself in order,--well, that means that he's moving. This ignorance of yours may lead you into sin, if you don't look out.... Look lively there! Can a man make such speeches about a dead body? That signifies a riot, brother ... that's what it is! Understand? In other words, hold your tongue, and don't utter a syllable to anyone about his moving,--they're all like that. Otherwise, the sow will tell it to the boar-pig, and the boar will tell it to the whole town, well, and the result will be a riot--'they're burying people alive!' The populace will come here, and tear us in bits. There'll be about enough of you left for a breakfast-roll.[12] Understand? Shunt him here, on the left."

[12] A _kalátch_--a delicious and favorite form of bread, particularly good in Moscow.--Translator.

Prónin's calm voice and leisurely gait had a sobering effect upon Grigóry.

"Only don't let your spirits sink, my good fellow-you'll get used to it. We're well off here. Victuals, treatment and all the rest--everything is just as it should be. We shall all be corpses, my boy; it's the commonest thing in life. And, in the meanwhile, brisk up, you know, and only don't get scared--that's the chief thing! Do you drink vódka?"

"Yes," replied Orlóff.

"Well then. Yonder in the ditch I have a little bottle, in case of need. Come and let's swallow a little of it." They went to the pit, round the corner of the barracks, took a drink, and Prónin, pouring some drops of mint on sugar, gave it to Orlóff, with the words:

"Eat that, otherwise you'll smell of vódka. They're strict here about vódka. For it's injurious to drink it, they say."

"And have you got used to things here?" Grigóry asked him.

"I should think so! I've been here from the start. A lot of folks have died here since I've been here--hundreds, to speak plainly. It's an uneasy life, but a good life here, to tell the truth. It's a pious work. Like the ambulance-corps in time of war ... you've heard about the ambulance-corps and the sisters of mercy? I watched them during the Turkish campaign. I was at Adragan and Kars. Well, my boy, they're purer than we are, we soldiers and people in general. We fight, we have guns, bullets, bayonets; but they--they walk about without any weapons, as though they were in a green garden. They pick up our men, or a Turk, and carry them to the field-hospital. And around them ... zh-zhee! ti-in! fi-it! Sometimes the poor ambulance man gets it in the neck--tchik!... and that's the end of him!..."

After this conversation, and a good swallow of vódka, Orlóff plucked up a little courage.

"You've put your hand to the rope, don't say it's too thick,"--he exhorted himself, as he rubbed a sick man's legs. Someone behind him entreated piteously, in a moaning voice:

"A dri-ink! Oï, my dear fellow!"

And someone gabbled:

"Oho-ho-ho! Hotter! Mis-mister doctor, it relieves me! Christ reward you,--I can feel! Permit him to pour in some more boiling water!"

"Give him some wine!" shouted Doctor Váshtchenko.

Orlóff worked away, lending an attentive ear to what went on around him, and found that, as a matter of fact, everything was not so nasty and strange as it had seemed to him a little while before, and that chaos did not reign, but a great and intelligent power was acting regularly. But he shuddered, nevertheless, when he recalled the policeman, and cast a furtive glance through the window of the barracks into the yard. He believed that the policeman was dead, but still there was an element of wavering in this belief. Wouldn't the man suddenly spring up and shout? And he remembered that he seemed to have heard someone tell: that one day, somewhere or other, people who had died of the cholera leaped out of their coffins and ran away.

As Orlóff ran to and fro in the barracks, now rubbing one patient, now placing another in the bath-tub, he felt exactly as though gruel were boiling in his brain. He recalled his wife: how was she getting on yonder? Sometimes with this recollection mingled a transitory desire to steal a minute to have a look at Matréna. But after this, Orlóff felt, somehow, disconcerted at his desire, and exclaimed to himself:

"Come, bustle about, you fatmeated woman! You'll dry up, never fear.... You'll get rid of your intentions...."

He had always suspected that his wife cherished, in her heart of hearts, intentions very insulting to him as a husband, and now and then, when he rose in his suspicions to a sort of objectiveness, he even admitted that there was some foundation for these intentions. Her life, also, was tinged with yellow, and all sorts of trash creeps into one's head with such a life. This objectiveness was generally converted into certainty during the period of his suspicions. Then he would ask himself: why had he found it necessary to crawl out of his cellar into this boiling cauldron?--and he wondered at himself. But all these thoughts worked round and round, somewhere deep within him, and were fenced off, as it were, from the direct line of his work by the strained attention which he devoted to the actions of the medical staff. Never, in any sort of labor, had he beheld men wear themselves out, as the men did here, and he reflected, more than once, as he surveyed the exhausted faces of the doctors and students, that all these men really did not get paid for doing nothing!

When relieved from duty, hardly able to stand on his feet, Orlóff went out into the court-yard of the barracks, and lay down against its wall, under the window of the apothecary's shop. There was a ringing in his head, there was a pain under his shoulder-blades, and his legs ached with the gnawing pangs of fatigue. He no longer thought of anything, or wanted anything, he simply stretched himself out on the sod, stared at the sky, in which hung magnificent clouds, richly adorned with the rays of sunset, and fell into a sleep like death.

He dreamed that he and his wife were the guests of Doctor Váshtchenko in a huge room, with rows of Vienna chairs ranged around the walls. On the chairs all the patients from the barracks were sitting. The doctor and Matréna were executing the "Russian Dance" in the middle of the hall, while he himself was playing the accordeon and laughing heartily, because the doctor's long legs would not bend at all, and the doctor, a very grave and pompous man, was stalking about the hall after Matréna exactly as a heron stalks over a marsh.

All at once the policeman made his appearance in the doorway.

"Aha!" he exclaimed saturninely and menacingly.--"Did you think, Gríshka, that I was completely dead? You're playing the accordeon, but you dragged me out to the dead-house! Come along with me, now! Get up!" Seized with a fit of trembling, all bathed in perspiration, Orlóff raised himself quickly and sat on the ground. Opposite, was squatting Doctor Váshtchenko, who said to him reproachfully:

"What sort of an ambulance nurse are you, my friend, if you go to sleep on the ground, and lie down on it upon your belly, to boot, hey? Now, you'll take cold in your bowels,--you'll take to your cot, and the first you know, you'll die.... It's not right, my friend,--you have a place in the barracks to sleep. Why didn't they tell you so? Besides, you are in a perspiration, and have a chill. Come along with me, now, I'll give you something."

"I was so tired,..." muttered Orlóff.

"So much the worse. You must take care of your-self--it is a dangerous time, and you are a valuable man."

Orlóff followed the doctor in silence along the corridor of the barracks, in silence drank some sort of medicine out of a wine-glass, drank something more out of another, frowned and spat.

"Come, go and have a sleep now.... Farewell for a while!" and the doctor began to move his long, slender feet over the floor of the corridor.

Orlóff looked after him, and suddenly ran after him, with a broad smile.

"I thank you humbly, doctor."

"What for?" and the doctor halted.

"For the work. Now I shall try with all my might to please you! Because your anxiety is agreeable to me ... and ... you said I was a valuable man ... and, altogether, I'm most si-sincerely grateful to you!" The doctor gazed intently and in surprise at the agitated face of his hospital orderly, and smiled also.

"You're a queer fellow! However, never mind,--you'll turn out splendidly ... genuine. Go ahead, and do your best; it will not be for me, but for the patients. We must wrest a man from the disease, tear him out of its paws,--do you understand me? Well, then, go ahead and try your best to conquer the disease. And, in the mean-while--go and sleep!"

Orlóff was soon lying on his cot, and fell asleep with a pleasing sensation of warmth in his bowels. He felt joyful, and was proud of his very simple conversation with the doctor.

But he sank into slumber regretting that his wife had not heard that conversation. He must tell her to-morrow.... That devil's pepper-pot would not believe it, in all probability.

*

"Come and drink your tea, Grísha," his wife woke him in the morning.

He raised his head, and looked at her. She smiled at him. She was so calm and fresh, with her hair smoothly brushed, and clad in her white slip.

It pleased him to see her thus, and, at the same time, he reflected that the other men in the barracks certainly must see her in the same light.

"What do you mean--what tea? I have my own tea;--where am I to go?" he asked gloomily.

"Come and drink it with me,"--she proposed, gazing at him with caressing eyes.

Grigóry turned his eyes aside and said, curtly, that he would go.

She went away, but he lay down on his cot again, and began to think.

"What a woman! She invites me to drink tea, she's affectionate.... But she has grown thin in one day." He felt sorry for her, and wanted to do something which would please her. Should he buy something sweet to eat with the tea? But while he was washing himself he rejected that idea,--why pamper the woman? Let her live as she is!

They drank tea in a bright little den with two windows, which looked out on the plain, all flooded with the golden radiance of the morning sun. On the grass, under the windows, the dew was still glistening, far away on the horizon in the nebulous rose-colored morning mist stood the trees along the highway. The sky was clear, and the fragrance of damp grass and earth floated in through the windows from the meadows.

The table stood against the wall between the windows, and at it sat three persons: Grigóry and Matréna with the latter's companion,--a tall, thin, elderly woman, with a pock-marked face, and kindly gray eyes. They called her Felitzáta Egórovna; she was unmarried, the daughter of a Collegiate Assessor, and could not drink tea made with water from the hospital boiler, but always boiled her own samovár. As she explained all this to Orlóff, in a cracked voice, she hospitably suggested that he should sit by the window, and drink his fill of "the really heavenly air," and then she disappeared somewhere.

"Well, did you get tired yesterday?" Orlóff asked his wife.

"Just frightfully tired!" replied Matréna with animation.--"I could hardly stand on my feet, my head reeled, I couldn't understand what was said to me, and the first I knew, I was lying at full length on the floor, unconscious. I barely--barely held out until relief-time came.... I kept praying; 'help, oh Lord,' I thought."

"And are you scared?"

"Of the sick people?"

"The sick people are nothing."

"I'm afraid of the dead people. Do you know...." she bent over to her husband, and whispered to him in affright:--"they move after they are dead.... God is my witness, they do!"

"I've se-een that!"--laughed Grigóry sceptically.--"Yesterday, Nazároff the policeman came near giving me a box on the ear after his death. I was carrying him to the dead-house, and he gave su-uch a flourish with his left hand ... I hardly managed to get out of the way ... so there now!"--He was not telling the strict truth, but it seemed to come out that way of itself, against his will.

He was greatly pleased at this tea-drinking in the bright, clean room, with windows opening on a boundless expanse of green plain and blue sky. And something else pleased him, also,--not exactly his wife, nor yet himself. The result of it all was that he wished to show his best side, to be the hero of the day which was just beginning.

"When I start in to work--even the sky will become hot, so it will! For there is a cause for my doing so. In the first place, there are the people here,--there aren't any more like them on earth, I can tell you that!"

He narrated his conversation with the doctor, and as he again exerted his fancy, unconsciously to himself--this fact still further strengthened his mood.

"In the second place, there's the work itself. It's a great affair, my friend, in the nature of war, for example. The cholera and people--which is to get the better of the other? Brains are needed, and everything must be just so. What's cholera? One must understand that, and then--go ahead and give it what it can't endure! Doctor Váshtchenko says to me: 'you're a valuable man in this matter, Orlóff,' says he. 'Don't get scared,' says he; 'and drive it up from the patient's legs into his belly, and there,' says he, 'I'll nip it with something sour. That's the end of it, and the man lives, and ought to be eternally grateful to you and me, because who was it that took him away from death? We!'"--And Orlóff proudly inflated his chest as he gazed at his wife with kindling eyes.

She smiled pensively into his face; he was handsome, and bore a great resemblance to his old self, the Grísha whom she had seen some time, long ago, before their marriage.

"All of them in our division are just such hard-working, kind folks. The woman doctor, a fa-at woman with spectacles, and then the female medical students. They're nice people, they talk to a body so simply, and you can understand everything they say."

"So that signifies that you're all right, satisfied?"--asked Grigóry, whose excitement had somewhat cooled off.

"Do you mean me? Oh Lord! Judge for yourself: I get twelve rubles, and you get twenty ... that makes thirty-eight a month![13] We're lodged and fed! That means, that if people keep on getting sick until the winter, how much shall we amass?... And then, God willing, we'll raise ourselves out of that cellar...."

[13] A little less than half that amount in dollars.--Translator.

"We-ell now, that's a serious subject...." said Orlóff thoughtfully and, after a pause, he exclaimed with the pathos of hope, as he slapped his wife on the shoulder:--"Ekh, Matrénka,[14] isn't the sun shining on us? Don't get scared now!"

[14] Another diminutive of Matréna.--Translator.

She flushed all over.

"If you'd only stop drinking...."

"As to that--hold your tongue! Suit your awl to your leather, your phiz to your life.... With a different life, my conduct will be different."

"Oh Lord, if that might only happen!"--sighed his wife profoundly.

"Well now, hush up!"

"Grishenka!"[15]

[15] A third variation (Grísha, Gríshka), of Grigóry, in the diminutive. '--Translator.

They parted with certain novel feelings toward each other, inspired by hope, ready to work until their strength gave out, alert and cheerful.

Two or three days passed, and Orlóff had already won several flattering mentions as a sagacious, smart young fellow, and along with this he observed that Prónin and the other orderlies in the barracks bore themselves toward him with envy, and a desire to make things unpleasant for him. He was on his guard, and he also imbibed wrath against fat-faced Prónin, with whom he had been inclined to strike up a friendship and to chat, "according to his soul." At the same time, he was embittered by the plain desire of his fellow-workers to do him some injury.--"Ekh, the rascals!" he exclaimed to himself, and quietly gritted his teeth, endeavoring not to let slip some convenient opportunity to pay his friends off "with as good as they gave." And, involuntarily, his thought halted at his wife:--with her he could talk about everything, she would not be envious of his successes, and would not burn his boots with carbolic acid, as Prónin had done.

All the working-days were as stormy and seething with activity as the first had been, but Grigóry no longer became so fatigued, for he expended his strength with more discernment with every day that passed. He learned to distinguish the smell of the medicaments, and, picking out from among them the odor of sulphate of ether, he inhaled it with delight on the sly, when opportunity offered, finding that the inhalation of ether had almost as agreeable an action as a good glass of vódka. Catching the meaning of the medical staff at half a word, always amiable and talkative, understanding how to entertain the patients, he became more and more of a favorite with the doctors and the medical students, and thus, under the combined influence of all the impressions of his new mode of existence, a strange, exalted mood was formed within him. He felt himself to be a man of special qualities. In him beat the desire to do something which should attract to him the attention of everyone, should astonish everyone, and force them to the conviction that he had a right to the ambition which had elevated him to such a pitch in his own eyes. This was the singular ambition of the man who had suddenly realized that he was a man, and who, as it were, still not quite firmly assured of the fact, wished to confirm it, in some way, to himself and to others; this was ambition, gradually transformed into a thirst for some disinterested exploit.

As the result of this incentive, Orlóff performed various risky feats, such as straining himself by carrying a heavily-built patient from his cot to the bath-tub single-handed, without waiting for assistance from his fellow-orderlies, nursing the very dirtiest of the patients, behaving in a daring sort of way in regard to the possibility of contagion, and handling the dead with a simplicity which sometimes passed over into cynicism. But all this did not satisfy him; he longed for something on a greater scale, and this longing burned incessantly within him, tortured him, and, at last, drove him to anguish.

Then he poured out his soul to his wife, because he had no one else.

One evening, when he and his wife were relieved from duty, they went out into the fields, after they had drunk tea. The barracks stood far away from the town, in the middle of a long, green plain, bounded on one side by a dark strip of forest, on the other by the line of buildings in the town; on the north the plain extended into the far distance, and there its verdure became merged with the dull-blue horizon; on the south it was intersected by a precipitous descent to the river, and along the verge of this precipice ran the highway, along which, at equal distances one from another, stood aged, wide-spreading trees. The sun was setting, and the crosses on the churches of the town, rising above the dark-green of the gardens, flamed in the sky, reflecting sheaves of golden rays, and on the window-panes of the houses which lay on the edge of the town the red glow of the sunset was reflected also. A band of music was playing somewhere or other; from the ravine, thickly overgrown with a fir-grove, a resinous fragrance was wafted aloft; the forest, also, shed abroad on the air its complicated, succulent perfume; light, fragrant waves of warm wind floated caressingly toward the town, and in the wide, deserted plain everything was very delightful, quiet and sweetly-melancholy.

The Orlóffs walked across the grass in silence, with pleasure inhaling the pure air in place of the hospital odors.

"Where's that band playing, in the town, or in the camp?" inquired Matréna softly, of her pensive husband.

She did not like to see him thoughtful--he seemed a stranger to her, and far away from her at such moments. Of late, they had chanced to be together so very little, and she prized these moments all the more.

"The band?"--Grigóry replied with another question, as though freeing himself from a dream.--"Well, the devil take that band! You just ought to hear the music in my soul ... that's something like!"

"What is it?" she asked tremulously, looking into his eyes.

"I don't know.... That is, I can't tell you ... and even if I could would you be able to understand? My soul burns.... It pines for space ... so that I might develop myself to my full strength.... Ekhma! I feel within myself invincible strength! That is to say, if this cholera, for instance, could be transformed into a man ... into an epic hero ... even Ilyá of Muróm himself;[16]--I'd grapple with it; 'Come on, I'll fight thee to the death! Thou art a power, and I, Gríshka Orlóff, am a power also,--now, let's see who'll get the best of the other?' And I'd strangle it, even if it killed me too.... There'd be a cross over me in the field, with the inscription: 'Grigóry Andréeff Orlóff.... He freed Russia from the cholera.' Nothing more would be necessary."

[16] For Ilyá of Muróm and the other famous epic heroes (_bogatyry_) see: "The Epic Songs of Russia," by Isabel F. Hapgood. Charles Scribner's Sons.

As he spoke, his face burned, and his eyes flashed.

"You're my strong man!" whispered Matréna, nestling close to his side.

"Do you understand ... I'd hurl myself on a hundred knives, if only it would be of any use! If life could be lightened in that way. Because I see people: Doctor Váshtchenko, student Khokhryakóff,--it's wonderful how they work! They ought to have died long ago of fatigue.... Do you think they do it for money? A man can't work like that for money! The doctors, thank the Lord! have something of their own, and get a little in addition.... Why, an old man fell ill lately, and so Doctor Váshtchenko hammered away at him for four days, and never went home once the whole time.... Money doesn't count in such a case; pity is the cause. He's sorry for people--well, and so he doesn't spare himself ... for whose sake, you ask? For everybody's sake ... for the sake of Míshka Úsoff,... Míshka's proper place is in jail, for everybody knows that Míshka is a thief, and, perhaps, even worse.... They're curing Míshka.... And they were glad when he got up from his cot, they laughed.... So I want to feel that same joy, also ... and to have a great deal of it.... I'd like to choke with it! Because it gives me the heart-ache to see how they laugh over their work. I ache all over, and catch fire. I will do something!... But how? Oh ... the devil!"

Orlóff waved his hand hopelessly, and again fell into thought.

Matréna said nothing, but her heart beat anxiously--this excitement of her husband alarmed her, and in his words she plainly felt the great passion of his longing, which she did not understand, because she did not try to understand it. It was her husband, not a hero, who was dear and necessary to her.

They reached the verge of the precipice, and sat down, side by side.... The tufted crests of the young birch-trees looked down upon them, and in the bottom of the ravine there already lay a bluish mist, which sent forth an odor of dampness, rotting leaves and pine-needles. From time to time a puff of wind swept along the ravine, the branches of the birch-trees, the little fir-trees, rocked, rocked to and fro,--the whole ravine became filled with anxious, timorous whispering, and it seemed as though someone who was tenderly beloved and guarded by the trees had fallen asleep in the ravine, beneath their canopy, and they were whispering together about him very, very softly, in order not to awaken him. And in the town, lights shone forth, and stood out like reddish flowers against the dark background of its gardens. And in the sky the stars began to kindle their fires. The Orlóffs sat on in silence,--he thoughtfully drummed on his knee with his fingers, she gazed at him and sighed softly.

And suddenly clasping her arms about his neck, she laid her head on his breast, and said in a whisper:

"My darling Gríshka! My dear one! How good you have become to me once more, my brave man! You see, it seems as though it were the good time ... after our wedding,... you and I were living along ... you never utter an unkind word to me, you are always talking with me, you open your soul to me ... you don't bawl at me."

"And have you been fretting over that? I'll give you a thrashing, if you want it,"--jested Grigóry affectionately, feeling in his soul an influx of tenderness and pity for his wife.

He began softly to stroke her head with his hand, and this caress pleased him,--it was so paternal--the caress of a father for a grown-up child. Matréna did in fact resemble a child: she now climbed up on his knees, and seated herself in his lap, in a soft, warm little ball.

"My dear one!"--she whispered.

He heaved a profound sigh, and words which were new both to his wife and to himself flowed of themselves from his tongue.

"Eh, you poor little kitten! You're affectionate ... you see, anyway, and there is no friend nearer than a husband. But you have kept waiting your chance on one side.... You know, if I did hurt you sometimes, it was because I was sad, Mótrya. We lived in a pit.... We did not see the light, we hardly knew people at all. I've got out of the pit, and have recovered my sight. I was like a blind man as regards life. And now I understand that a wife, anyhow, is a man's closest friend in life. Because people are snakes and reptiles, to tell the truth.... They're always trying to deal wounds to other people.... For instance--Prónin, Vasiukóff.... Well, they may go to the.... Hold your peace, Mótrya! We shall get straightened out, all right, never fear.... We shall make our way, and live with understanding.... Well? What do you think of it, my little goose?"

She shed sweet tears of happiness, and replied to his question with kisses.

"You are my only one!" he whispered, and kissed her in return.

They wiped away each other's tears with kisses, and both were conscious of their briny taste. And for a long time Orlóff continued to talk in words which were new for him.

It was completely dark now. The sky, magnificently adorned with countless swarms of stars, looked down upon the earth with triumphant sadness, and in the plain reigned silence like that of the sky.

*

They had got into the habit of drinking tea together. On the morning after their talk in the fields, Orlóff presented himself in his wife's room confused and surly over something. Felitzáta was not feeling well, Matréna was alone in the room, and greeted her husband with a beaming face, which immediately clouded over, and she asked him anxiously:

"What makes you like that? Are you ill?"

"No, never mind,"--he replied curtly, as he seated himself on a chair, and drew toward him the tea which she had already poured out.

"But what is it?" persisted Matréna.