In Exile

Old Semyon, nicknamed Sensible, and a young Tatar whose name nobody knew, were sitting on the bank by a bonfire; the other three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of about sixty, lean and toothless but broad in the shoulders and still healthy-looking, was drunk; he would long ago have gone off to sleep, but he had a half-bottle in his pocket and was afraid the fine fellows in the hut would beg vodka off him. The Tatar was ill, was pining, and, huddling in his rags, was telling how good it was in Simbirsk province, and what a beautiful, clever wife he had left at home. He was no more than five-and-twenty, and now, by the light of the fire, pale, with a sad, sickly face, he looked like a boy.

“It’s no paradise here, of course,” Sensible was saying. “You can see for yourself: water, bare banks, clay all round and nothing else... Easter came and went long ago, and there’s still ice going down the river, and this morning there was snow.”

“Bad! bad!” said the Tatar, and looked around him in fright.

Some ten paces off flowed the dark, cold river; it grumbled, lapped against the pitted clay bank, and hurried away swiftly somewhere toward the far-off sea. Close by the bank a large barge showed black – the one the ferrymen call the “karbas.” Far off on the other bank, dying down and flaring up, fires crept in little snaking lines: last year’s grass was being burned. And beyond the snaking lines, darkness again. One could hear small floes of ice knocking against the barge. Damp, cold...

The Tatar glanced up at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and the same blackness all round, but something was missing. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were not like this, nor the sky.

“Bad! bad!” he repeated.

“You’ll get used to it!” said Sensible, and laughed. “You’re still young and foolish now, the milk’s not dry on your lips, and in your foolishness it seems to you there’s no unhappier man than you; but the time will come when you’ll say yourself: God grant everyone such a life. Look at me. In a week’s time the water will go down and we’ll set up the ferry here, and all of you will go wandering off through Siberia, but I’ll stay and go on walking from bank to bank. Two-and-twenty years now I’ve walked it. Day and night. The pike and the nelma under the water, and me above the water. And thank God for it. I want for nothing. God grant everyone such a life.”

The Tatar threw more brushwood on the fire, lay down closer to it, and said:

“My father’s a sick man. When he dies, my mother and my wife will come here. They promised.”

“And what do you want with a mother and a wife?” asked Sensible. “Sheer foolishness, brother. That’s the devil tempting you, curse his soul. Don’t you listen to him, the damned one. Don’t give him any say. He goes on at you about a woman, and you spite him: I don’t want one! He goes on about freedom, and you dig in and say: I don’t want it! Want for nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no house, no home! Want for nothing, curse their souls!”

Sensible took a pull from the bottle and went on:

“I, brother, am no simple peasant, not of the servile sort, but a sexton’s son, and when I lived free in Kursk I went about in a frock coat, and now I’ve brought myself down to such a point that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. And God grant everyone such a life. I want for nothing and I’m afraid of no one, and I reckon myself the richest and freest man there is. When they sent me here from Russia, from the very first day I dug my heels in: I want nothing! The devil goes on at me about a wife, and kin, and freedom, and I tell him: I want nothing! I dug in on that and, as you see, I live well, I’m not complaining. But whoever gives the devil an inch and once listens to him is done for, there’s no saving him: he’ll sink into the bog up to his very crown and never climb out. It’s not just your sort, foolish peasants – even gentlefolk and educated men come to grief. Some fifteen years back they sent a gentleman here from Russia. He’d fallen out with his brothers over something and forged something in a will. They said he was of the princes, or the barons, or maybe just of the officials – who knows! Well, the gentleman came here, and the first thing he did was buy himself a house and land in Mukhortinskoye. ‘I want,’ he says, ‘to live by my own labor, by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he says, ‘I’m no longer a gentleman now but a settler.’ Well, I said, God help you, that’s a good thing. He was a young man then, a bustler, a worrier; he mowed himself, and he fished, and he rode sixty versts on horseback. Only there was this trouble: from the very first year he took to riding over to Girino, to the post office. He’d stand on my ferry, sighing: ‘Ah, Semyon, they’re taking their time sending me money from home!’ You don’t need money, I’d say, Vasily Sergeyich. What good is it? Drop the old life, forget it, as if it had never been, as if it were only a dream, and start living all over again. Don’t listen, I’d say, to the devil – he won’t lead you to any good, he’ll put a noose round your neck. Now you want money, I’d say, and a little time will pass and, mark me, you’ll want something else, and then more, and more again. If, I’d say, you want happiness for yourself, then above all want nothing. Yes... If fate, I’d say to him, has wronged the two of us so bitterly, there’s no use begging her mercy and bowing down at her feet – better to scorn her and laugh at her. Or else she’ll laugh at us first. So I’d tell him... About two years on I was ferrying him across to this side, and he’s rubbing his hands and laughing. ‘I’m off,’ he says, ‘to Girino to meet my wife. She’s taken pity on me,’ he says, ‘she’s coming. She’s a good one, kind.’ And he was so glad he was quite out of breath. Well, a day later he drives over with his wife. A young lady, handsome, in a little hat; in her arms a baby girl. And ever so much baggage besides. And my Vasily Sergeyich hovers round her, can’t look at her enough, can’t praise her enough. ‘Yes, brother Semyon, people live even in Siberia!’ Well, I think, all right, you won’t be so glad for long. And from that time on, near enough every week, he took to riding over to Girino: had the money come from Russia yet. And money, it turned out, was wanted no end of. ‘She,’ he says, ‘is ruining her youth and her beauty here in Siberia for my sake, and,’ he says, ‘sharing my bitter lot with me, and for that,’ he says, ‘I must give her every pleasure.’ So that his lady wouldn’t be bored, he took up with the officials and every sort of riff-raff. And that whole crowd, of course, had to be fed and given drink, and there had to be a piano too, and a shaggy little lapdog on the sofa – may it drop dead... Luxury, in a word, spoiling. The lady didn’t live long with him. How could she? Clay, water, cold, not a vegetable nor a fruit to be had, ignorant drunkards all round, no refinement anywhere, and she a pampered lady, from the capital... Naturally, she got bored. And her husband, say what you like, was no longer a gentleman but a settler – not the same honor. Some three years on, I remember, one night, right on Dormition eve, someone shouted from the other side. I went over on the ferry, and there was the lady, all wrapped up, and with her a young gentleman, one of the officials. A troika... I ferried them across, they got in – and that was the last anyone saw of them! Only toward morning does Vasily Sergeyich come galloping up on a pair. ‘Semyon, has my wife not come this way, with a gentleman in spectacles?’ She came, I said – go chase the wind in the field! He galloped off after them, chased them the best part of five days. When I ferried him back across afterward, he fell down on the ferry and started beating his head on the boards and howling. There, I said, that’s just how it is. I laugh and remind him: ‘And people live even in Siberia!’ And he beats himself harder still... Then he took it into his head to want his freedom. His wife had gone off to Russia, and so he was drawn there too, to see her and get her away from her lover. And he took to galloping off, brother, near enough every day, now to the post, now to town to see the authorities. Sent off petition after petition, that they should pardon him and let him go home, and he told me he’d spent close on two hundred roubles on telegrams alone. He sold his land, mortgaged his house to the Jews. Went grey himself, bent over, turned yellow in the face, like a consumptive. Talking to you, and all the while: kheh-kheh-kheh... and tears in his eyes. He wore himself out like that with his petitions for some eight years, and now he’s come alive again and turned cheerful: thought up a new spoiling for himself. His daughter, you see, has grown up. He looks at her and can’t get his fill. And she, to tell the truth, isn’t a bad sort: pretty, dark-browed, and lively-natured. Every Sunday he drives with her to Girino, to church. They stand together on the ferry, side by side, she laughing, and he can’t take his eyes off her. ‘Yes, Semyon,’ he says, ‘people live even in Siberia. There’s happiness even in Siberia. Just look,’ he says, ‘what a daughter I have! I dare say you won’t find her like for a thousand versts around.’ The daughter’s a fine one, I say, that’s true, indeed... But to myself I’m thinking: just you wait... She’s a young girl, her blood’s astir, she wants to live, and what sort of life is there here? And she began pining, brother... She wasted and wasted, wore herself right out, fell ill, and now she’s flat on her back. Consumption. So there’s your Siberian happiness for you, curse its soul, there’s your people living even in Siberia... He’s taken to driving round every doctor there is, fetching them to her. The moment he hears there’s a doctor or a wise woman two hundred or three hundred versts off, he’s off after them. A terrible lot of money’s gone on doctors, and to my mind it’d be better spent drinking it away... She’ll die all the same. Die for certain she will, and then he’s altogether done for. He’ll hang himself from grief, or run off to Russia – it’s a known thing. He’ll run, and they’ll catch him, and then the courts, hard labor, he’ll get a taste of the lash...”

“Good, good,” the Tatar muttered, shivering with the chill.

“What’s good about it?” asked Sensible.

“The wife, the daughter... Let there be hard labor, let there be grieving, but at least he’s seen his wife and his daughter... You say want nothing. But nothing – is bad! His wife lived with him three years – that was God’s gift to him. Nothing is bad, but three years is good. How is it you don’t understand?”

Trembling, groping with strain for the Russian words, which he knew few of, and stammering, the Tatar began to say that God forbid a man should fall ill in a strange land, and die, and be buried in the cold, rusty earth, and that if his wife would only come to him for a single day, even for a single hour, then for such happiness he would consent to accept whatever torments and thank God for them. Better one day of happiness than nothing.

Then he told again what a beautiful, clever wife he had left at home, and then, seizing his head in both hands, he burst into tears and began assuring Semyon that he was guilty of nothing and was suffering an injustice. His two brothers and his uncle had led off a peasant’s horses and beaten the old man half to death, and the commune had judged unjustly and drawn up a sentence by which all three brothers went to Siberia, while the uncle, a rich man, stayed at home.

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

The Tatar fell silent and fixed his tear-filled eyes on the fire; his face wore an expression of bewilderment and fright, as though he still could not understand why he was here, in the darkness and the damp, among strangers, and not in Simbirsk province. Sensible lay down by the fire, gave a chuckle at something, and struck up a song under his breath.

“What joy is there for her with her father?” he said after a while. “He loves her, dotes on her, that’s true; but, brother, don’t you put your finger in his mouth either: a strict old man, a hard one. And it’s not strictness that young girls need... What they need is tenderness and ha-ha-ha and hee-ho-ho, scent and pomade. Yes... Ah, such doings, such doings!” Semyon sighed and got heavily to his feet. “The vodka’s all gone, so it’s time to sleep. Eh? I’ll go on, brother...”

Left alone, the Tatar threw on more brushwood, lay down, and, gazing at the fire, fell to thinking of his native village and of his wife; if his wife would only come, even for a month, even for a day, and then, if she wished, let her go back again! Better a month, or even a day, than nothing. But if his wife kept her promise and came, what would there be to feed her on? Where would she live here?

“If there is nothing, nothing to eat, how live?” the Tatar asked aloud.

For working the oar day and night now, he was paid only ten kopecks a day; it was true that travelers gave him tips for tea and vodka, but the fellows divided the whole take among themselves and gave nothing to the Tatar, only laughed at him. And from want came hunger, cold, and fear... Now, with his whole body aching and shivering, he might go into the hut and lie down to sleep, but there was nothing to cover himself with there, and it was colder than on the bank; here too there was nothing to cover himself with, but at least one could keep up a fire...

In a week, when the water went right down and they set up the ferry here, all the ferrymen except Semyon would no longer be needed, and the Tatar would have to go from village to village begging for alms and work. His wife was only seventeen; she was pretty, spoiled, shy – surely she would not have to go about the villages with her face uncovered, begging alms? No, it was frightening even to think of it...

It was already growing light; the barge, the willow bushes on the water, and the ripples stood out clearly, and looking back there was the clay bluff, the hut below it thatched with brown straw, and higher up the village huts clustering together. Cocks were already crowing in the village.

The reddish clay bluff, the barge, the river, the unkind strangers, hunger, cold, sickness – perhaps none of this really existed. It was probably all only a dream, the Tatar thought. He felt that he was asleep, and heard his own snoring... Of course he was at home, in Simbirsk province, and he had only to call his wife by name for her to answer; and in the next room, his mother... But what terrible dreams there could be! What were they for? The Tatar smiled and opened his eyes. What river was this? The Volga?

Snow was falling.

“Hulloa! Bring her over!” someone was shouting on the far side. “Karba-a-as!”

The Tatar roused himself and went to wake his comrades so as to cross to the other side. Pulling their torn sheepskin coats on as they walked, cursing in hoarse, sleep-thick voices, and shivering with cold, the ferrymen appeared on the bank. After their sleep the river, breathing its piercing cold at them, evidently seemed loathsome and dreadful to them. Without hurrying they jumped down into the karbas... The Tatar and the three ferrymen took up the long oars with their broad blades, which in the dark looked like crayfish claws, and Semyon flung himself belly down on the long tiller. And on the far side they went on shouting, and twice fired off a revolver, thinking, no doubt, that the ferrymen were asleep or had gone off to the village, to the tavern.

“All right, you’ll have time!” said Sensible, in the tone of a man convinced that in this world there was no need to hurry – it would come to nothing anyway, whatever you did.

The heavy, clumsy barge drew away from the bank and floated out among the willow bushes, and only by the way the bushes slowly receded could one tell that it was not standing still but moving. The ferrymen swung their oars steadily, all together; Sensible lay belly down on the tiller, and, tracing an arc through the air, flew from one side to the other. In the darkness it looked as if people were sitting astride some antediluvian creature with long legs, sailing away on it into a cold, dismal country, the very one that sometimes appears in a nightmare.

They passed the willows and came out into open water. On the far bank they could already hear the knocking and the steady splash of the oars, and were shouting: “Quicker! quicker!” Another ten minutes went by, and the barge struck heavily against the landing.

“And still it’s coming down, still it’s coming down!” Semyon muttered, wiping the snow from his face. “And where does it all come from, God only knows!”

On the far side a lean old man of no great height was waiting, in a sheepskin coat lined with fox fur and a white lambskin cap. He stood apart from the horses and did not move; his expression was gloomy and intent, as though he were trying to remember something and was angry at his own disobedient memory. When Semyon came up to him and, smiling, took off his cap, the old man said:

“I’m in a hurry to get to Anastasyevka. My daughter’s worse again, and they say a new doctor’s been appointed at Anastasyevka.”

They hauled the tarantass onto the barge and floated back. The man whom Semyon had called Vasily Sergeyich stood motionless the whole crossing, his thick lips pressed tight, staring at one point; when the driver asked leave to smoke in his presence, he made no answer, as though he had not heard. And Semyon, lying belly down on the tiller, looked at him mockingly and said:

“People live even in Siberia. They li-ive!”

Sensible’s face wore a look of triumph, as though he had proved something and was glad it had turned out just as he had foreseen. The wretched, helpless look of the man in the fox-lined sheepskin coat evidently gave him great pleasure.

“It’s muddy going now, Vasily Sergeyich,” he said, as the horses were being harnessed on the bank. “You might wait another fortnight or so, till it’s drier. Or better not go at all... If there were any use in going, but as you know yourself, people go driving about for ever and ever, day and night, and never any use comes of it. Truly!”

Vasily Sergeyich silently gave him money for vodka, got into the tarantass, and drove on.

“There, off he’s galloped after a doctor!” said Semyon, shivering with cold. “Yes, go and find a real doctor, chase the wind in the field, catch the devil by the tail, curse your soul! What queer fellows there are, Lord forgive me a sinner!”

The Tatar went up to Sensible and, looking at him with hatred and loathing, trembling and mixing Tatar words into his broken speech, began to say:

“He good... good, and you – bad! You bad! Gentleman good soul, splendid, and you a beast, you bad! Gentleman alive, and you dead... God made man so he be alive, so there be joy, and there be grief, and there be sorrow too, and you want nothing, so you not alive, you a stone, clay! Stone wants nothing, and you want nothing... You a stone – and God does not love you, but he loves the gentleman!”

Everyone burst out laughing; the Tatar screwed up his face in disgust, waved his hand, and, huddling in his rags, went off to the fire. The ferrymen and Semyon trudged off to the hut.

“Cold!” croaked one ferryman, stretching out on the straw that covered the damp clay floor.

“Yes, not warm!” agreed another. “A convict’s life!”

They all lay down. The door blew open in the wind, and snow drifted into the hut. No one wanted to get up and shut it: it was cold, and no one could be bothered.

“But I’m all right!” Semyon said, falling asleep. “God grant everyone such a life.”

“You, we know, are a seven-times convict. Even the devils won’t take you.”

From outside came sounds like the howling of a dog.

“What’s that? Who’s out there?”

“That’s the Tatar crying.”

“Well, look at that... What a queer fellow!”

“He’ll get u-used to it!” said Semyon, and fell asleep at once.

Soon the others fell asleep too. And the door was left unshut.