Sorrow
THE turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for
years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless
peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital.
He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post
driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like
Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of
snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could
not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth.
The fields, the telegraph posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog
of snow. And when a particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory,
even the yoke above the horse’s head could not be seen. The wretched, feeble
little nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength to drag its legs out
of the snow and to tug with its head. The turner was in a hurry. He kept
restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and lashing the horse’s back.
“Don’t cry, Matryona,
. . . ” he muttered. “Have a little patience. Please God we shall
reach the hospital, and in a trice it will be the right thing for you.
. . . Pavel Ivanitch will give you some little drops, or tell them to
bleed you; or maybe his honor will be pleased to rub you with some sort of
spirit — it’ll . . . draw it out of your side. Pavel Ivanitch will do
his best. He will shout and stamp about, but he will do his best.
. . . He is a nice gentleman, affable, God give him health! As soon
as we get there he will dart out of his room and will begin calling me names.
‘How? Why so?’ he will cry. ‘Why did you not come at the right time? I am not a
dog to be hanging about waiting on you devils all day. Why did you not come in
the morning? Go away! Get out of my sight. Come again to-morrow.’ And I shall
say: ‘Mr. Doctor! Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor!’ Get on, do! plague take you, you
devil! Get on!”
The turner lashed his nag,
and without looking at the old woman went on muttering to himself:
“‘Your honor! It’s true as
before God. . . . Here’s the Cross for you, I set off almost before
it was light. How could I be here in time if the Lord. . . . The
Mother of God . . . is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly
look for yourself. . . . Even a first-rate horse could not do it,
while mine — you can see for yourself — is not a horse but a disgrace.’ And
Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout: ‘We know you! You always find some excuse!
Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old! I’ll be bound you have stopped at
half a dozen taverns!’ And I shall say: ‘Your honor! am I a criminal or a
heathen? My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I
going to run from tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take
them, the taverns!’ Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the
hospital, and I shall fall at his feet. . . . ‘Pavel Ivanitch! Your
honor, we thank you most humbly! Forgive us fools and anathemas, don’t be hard
on us peasants! We deserve a good kicking, whi le you graciously put yourself
out and mess your feet in the snow!’ And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as
though he would like to hit me, and will say: ‘You’d much better not be
swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman instead of falling
at my feet. You want a thrashing!’ ‘You are right there — a thrashing, Pavel
Ivanitch, strike me God! But how can we help bowing down at your feet if you
are our benefactor, and a real father to us? Your honor! I give you my word,
. . . here as before God, . . . you may spit in my face if
I deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well again and
restored to her natural condition, I’ll make anything for your honor that you
would like to order! A cigarette-case, if you like, of the best birchwood,
. . . balls for croquet, skittles of the most foreign pattern I can
turn. . . . I will make anything for you! I won’t take a farthing
from you. In Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a cigarette-case,
but I won’t take a farthing.’ The doctor will laugh and say: ‘Oh, all right,
all right. . . . I see! But it’s a pity you are a drunkard.
. . . ’ I know how to manage the gentry, old girl. There isn’t a
gentleman I couldn’t talk to. Only God grant we don’t get off the road. Oh, how
it is blowing! One’s eyes are full of snow.”
And the turner went on
muttering endlessly. He prattled on mechanically to get a little relief from
his depressing feelings. He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts
and questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow had come upon the
turner unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over
it, could not recover himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as
though in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he
was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless idler and
drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man, weighed
down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature.
The turner remembered that
his trouble had begun the evening before. When he had come home yesterday
evening, a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had begun
swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as
she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes
was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed;
this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy
pictures or dying people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes the
trouble had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse from
a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital in the hope that,
by means of powders and ointments, Pavel Ivanitch would bring back his old
woman’s habitual expression.
“I say, Matryona,
. . . ” the turner muttered, “if Pavel Ivanitch asks you whether I
beat you, say, ‘Never!’ and I never will beat you again. I swear it. And did I
ever beat you out of spite? I just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for
you. Some men wouldn’t trouble, but here I am taking you. . . . I am
doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O
Lord! God grant we don’t get off the road. . . . Does your side ache,
Matryona, that you don’t speak? I ask you, does your side ache?”
It struck him as strange
that the snow on his old woman’s face was not melting; it was queer that the
face itself looked somehow drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue
and had grown grave and solemn.
“You are a fool!” muttered
the turner. . . . “I tell you on my conscience, before God,
. . . and you go and . . . Well, you are a fool! I have a
good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!”
The turner let the reins go
and began thinking. He could not bring himself to look round at his old woman:
he was frightened. He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting
an answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking round he
felt his old woman’s cold hand. The lifted hand fell like a log.
“She is dead, then! What a
business!”
And the turner cried. He
was not so much sorry as annoyed. He thought how quickly everything passes in
this world! His trouble had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had
happened. He had not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was
sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those
forty years had passed by as it were in a fog. What with drunkenness,
quarreling, and poverty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to
spite him, his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was sorry for
her, that he could not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully
badly to her.
“Why, she used to go the
round of the village,” he remembered. “I sent her out myself to beg for bread.
What a business! She ought to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as
it is I’ll be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man. . . .
Holy Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There’s no need for a doctor
now, but a burial. Turn back!”
Grigory turned back and
lashed the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour.
Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young
fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner’s hands and flashed before his
eyes, and the field of vision was white and whirling again.
“To live over again,”
thought the turner.
He remembered that forty
years ago Matryona had been young, handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do
family. They had married her to him because they had been attracted by his
handicraft. All the essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble
was that, just as he had got drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the
stove, so he had gone on without waking up till now. His wedding he remembered,
but of what happened after the wedding — for the life of him he could remember
nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the stove, and quarreled.
Forty years had been wasted like that.
The white clouds of snow
were beginning little by little to turn gray. It was getting dusk.
“Where am I going?” the
turner suddenly bethought him with a start. “I ought to be thinking of the
burial, and I am on the way to the hospital. . . . It as is though I
had gone crazy.”
Grigory turned round again,
and again lashed his horse. The little nag strained its utmost and, with a
snort, fell into a little trot. The turner lashed it on the back time after
time. . . . A knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not
look round, he knew it was the dead woman’s head knocking against the sledge.
And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more
cutting. . . .
“To live over again!”
thought the turner. “I should get a new lathe, take orders, . . .
give the money to my old woman.. ..”
And then he dropped the
reins. He looked for them, tried to pick them up, but could not — his hands
would not work . . . .
“It does not matter,” he
thought, “the horse will go of itself, it knows the way. I might have a little
sleep now. . . . Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as
well to get a little rest. . . . ”
The turner closed his eyes
and dozed. A little later he heard the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw
before him something dark like a hut or a haystack. . . .
He would have got out of
the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that
it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.
He woke up in a big room
with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The turner
saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a
respectable man who knew how things should be done.
“A requiem, brothers, for
my old woman,” he said. “The priest should be told. . . . ”
“Oh, all right, all right;
lie down,” a voice cut him short.
“Pavel Ivanitch!” the
turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. “Your honor, benefactor! ”
He wanted to leap up and
fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not
obey him.
“Your honor, where are my
legs, where are my arms!”
“Say good-by to your arms
and legs. . . . They’ve been frozen off. Come, come! . . .
What are you crying for? You’ve lived your life, and thank God for it! I
suppose you have had sixty years of it — that’s enough for you! . . .
”
“I am grieving.
. . . Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six
years! . . . ”
“What for?”
“The horse isn’t mine, I
must give it back. . . . I must bury my old woman. . . .
How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A
cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I’ll turn you croquet balls. . . .
”
The doctor went out of the
ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the turner.
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