ads:
Sorrow
Anton Chekhov
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, while 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
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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.
ads:
"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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