“It’s miserable! Miserable!” said the Tartar, as he glanced round him in terror.
Some ten paces away flowed the dark, cold river. It seemed to grumble as it noised its way past the corroded clay bank and rapidly bore itself onward somewhere towards the distant sea. At the very edge of the bank there rose the dark, massive form of a barge, the kind called karbass by the ferrymen. Looking in the distance towards the opposite bank, one could see numerous fires, flaring and retreating, and resembling so many leaping serpents. It was the burning of last year’s grass. And beyond the fires, again darkness. The sound of floating ice beating against the barge could be heard. It was damp, cold....
The Tartar glanced up towards the sky. There were just as many stars here as at home, and the same surrounding darkness; yet there was something lacking. Somehow, at home, in the Simbirsk province, there were no such stars and no such sky.
“It’s miserable! Miserable!” he repeated.
“You’ll get used to it!” said Wiseacre, and laughed. “You are still in your teens, and silly. Your mother’s milk hasn’t as yet dried upon your lips. Of course it seems to your foolish mind that there is no one more miserable than you; but the time will come when you yourself will say, ‘May God grant every one such a life!’ Now, look at me. In another week the water will be normal again; I shall take charge of the ferry-boat; you will go jaunting through Siberia, while I shall remain here and resume making my way from bank to bank. I’ve been doing it twenty-two years, night and day. The pike and the salmon under the water; I above it. And thank God for that! I want nothing. May God grant every one such a life!”
The Tartar threw more brushwood into the fire, and, moving closer to it, said:
“I have an ailing father. When he dies, my mother and my wife will join me here. They have promised.”
“What do you want with a mother and a wife?” asked Wiseacre. “You’ll repent it, brother. It’s the devil that’s putting you up to it, curse his soul! Don’t listen to him, the accursed one! Don’t give in to him. When he gets your mind on women, just spite him; tell him, ‘I don’t want them!’ When he talks freedom to you, get stubborn; tell him, ‘I don’t want it! I want nothing—neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor house, nor anything! I want nothing, confound their souls!’”
Wiseacre took another gulp from his flask, and continued:
“Now, look at me, brother. I am not a simple muzhik, but a sexton’s son, in fact; and when I lived in freedom in Kursk I wore a frock-coat; but now I’ve gotten so that I could sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. And God grant every one such a life! I want nothing, and I fear no one. I’m on good terms with myself, and I cannot imagine any one richer and freer than I. When I was banished from Russia, I insisted from the very first day: ‘I want nothing!’ The devil he talks to me of wife, and of home, and of freedom; and I back at him: ‘I want nothing!’ I insisted on mine, and, as you see, I live well, and do not complain. Give way to the devil but an inch, and you are lost. There’s no deliverance, you sink into the bog over your very head, and there’s no getting out. Not alone your brother, the stupid muzhik; but nobles and educated men are lost. Some fifteen years ago they sent here one of that gentry. He didn’t share some property with his brothers, tampered somehow with a will. They say he comes from the dukes or the barons—or perhaps he is only an official—how should one know? Well, this gentleman arrived here, and the first thing he did was to buy himself a house and some land. ‘I intend,’ he said, ‘to live by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he said, ‘I am no longer a gentleman, but a convict.’ ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘may God help him, he means well!’ He was at that time a fussy, bustling young man; did his own mowing and now and then caught fish, and rode sixty versts a day on horseback. That was his one misfortune. From the very first year he made trips to Girino, to the post-office there. Times were and he would be on my ferry-boat, sighing: ‘Ah, Simon, it’s rather a long time since they have sent me money from home!’ ‘There’s no need,’ I’d go on telling him, ‘of money, Vassili Sergeyich. What good is it? Throw it aside,’ I argued with him. ‘All that’s gone by; forget it as if it never were; as if you had only dreamt it; and begin life anew. Don’t listen,’ I said to him, ‘to the devil. It’ll lead to no good; it’ll only draw a noose around your neck. Now it’s money you want, and later it’ll be another thing—there’s no end to it. If it’s happiness you seek, first of all desire nothing. Yes.... If,’ I said to him, ‘fate has treated you and me badly, there’s no begging charity of her, no falling at her feet; rather should one treat her with scorn and laugh at her—then she too will laugh.’ So I spoke to him.... Two years later I ferried him over to this side—and he all overjoyed and laughing. ‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to Girino to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me,’ he said, ‘and is coming out here. She’s a fine woman, good-hearted.’ He almost choked from happiness. The next day he brought his wife. She was young, handsome, in a pretty hat; and in her arms a girl baby; and all sorts of baggage with her. As to Vassili Sergeyich, he fussed around her, couldn’t stop feasting his eyes on her or stop raving about her. ‘Yes, brother Simon, even in Siberia people live.’ ‘All right,’ I said to myself. ‘Don’t be too sure of that.’ And from that time on, mark it, he began to make weekly visits to Girino: to see if any money had come from Russia. He needed no end of money. ‘She,’ he said, ‘is sacrificing her youth and beauty in Siberia for my sake, and is sharing with me my bitter lot; and therefore,’ he said, ‘I should give her every possible pleasure.’ ... To make it cheerful for her, he started up an acquaintance with the officials and with all sorts of trashy people. Well, all this company had to be furnished food and drink; then a piano had to be had, and a shaggy little dog for the sofa—the deuce take it!... In a word, luxury, extravagance! She did not live long with him. How could she? Here she saw only mud, water, cold, no vegetables or fruits, and all around her uneducated people, full of drink, and without manners—and she a spoiled lady from St. Petersburg.... Naturally, she grew sick of it. And the husband too was no longer what he had been, but a convict.