Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade. Maksim Gorky
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