Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade. Maksim Gorky
and drawn.
"Why are you pampering yourselves?" she said hastily, making a rather peculiar noise with her thick, red lips.—"We've got the cholera in the court-yard. … The Lord has visited us!"—and she suddenly burst out crying.
"Akh, you're … lying, aren't you?" cried Grigóry.
"And I never carried out the slop-bucket last night," said Matréna guiltily.
"My dear folks, I'm going to get my wages. I'm going away. … I'll go, and go … to the country," said the cook.
"Who's got it?" inquired Grigóry, getting out of bed.
"The accordeon-player! He's got it. … He drank water out of the fountain last evening, do you hear, and he was seized in the night. … And it took him right in the belly, my good people, as though he'd swallowed rat-poison. … "
"The accordeon-player. … " muttered Grigóry. He could not believe that any disease could overcome the accordeon-player. Such a jolly, dashing young fellow, and he had walked through the court like a peacock, as usual, only last night.—"I'll go and take a look,"—Orlóff decided, with an incredulous laugh.
Both women shrieked in affright:
"Grísha, why, it's catching!"
"What are you thinking of, my good man, where axe you going?"
Grigóry uttered a violent oath, thrust his legs into his trousers, and dishevelled as he was, with shirt-collar unbuttoned, went toward the door. His wife clutched him by the shoulder, from behind, he felt her hands tremble, and suddenly flew into a rage, for some reason or other.
"I'll hit you in the snout! Get away!"—he roared, and went out, after striking his wife in the breast.
The court-yard was dark and deserted, and Grigóry, as he proceeded toward the accordeon-player's door, was simultaneously conscious of a chill of terror, and of a keen satisfaction at the fact that he, alone, out of all the denizens of the house, was going to the sick accordeon-player. This satisfaction was still further augmented when he perceived that the tailors were watching him from the second-story windows. He even began to whistle, wagging his head about with a dashing air. But a little disenchantment awaited him at the door of the accordeon-player's little den, in the shape of Sénka Tchízhik.
Having opened the door half way, he had thrust his sharp nose into the crack thus formed, and as was his wont, was taking his observations, captivated to such a degree that he did not turn round until Orlóff pulled his ear.
"Just see how it has racked him, Uncle Grigóry," he said in a whisper, raising toward Orlóff his dirty little face, rendered still more peaked than usual by the impressions he had undergone.—"And it's just as though he had shrunk up and got disjointed with dryness—like a bad cask … by heaven!"
Orlóff, enveloped by the foul air, stood and listened in silence to Tchízhik, endeavoring to peer, with, one eye, through the crack of the door as it hung ajar.
"How would it do to give him some water to drink, Uncle Grigóry?" suggested Tchízhik.
Orlóff glanced at the boy's face, which was excited almost to the point of a nervous tremor, and felt something resembling a burst of excitement within himself.
"Go along, fetch the water!" he ordered Tchízhik, and boldly flinging the door wide open, he halted on the threshold, shrinking back a little.
Athwart the mist in his eyes, Grigóry beheld Kislyakóff:—the accordeon-player, dressed in his best, lay with his breast on the table, which he was clutching tightly with his hands, and his feet, in their lacquered boots, moved feebly over the wet floor.
"Who is it?" he asked hoarsely and apathetically, as though his voice had faded, and lost all its color.
Grigóry recovered himself, and stepping cautiously over the floor, he advanced to him, trying to speak bravely and even jestingly.
"I, brother, Mítry Pávloff. … But what are you up to … did you overwork last night, pray?"—he surveyed Kislyakóff attentively and curiously, and did not recognize him.
The accordeon-player's face had grown peaked all over, his cheek-bones projected in two acute angles, his eyes, deeply sunken in his head, and surrounded by greenish spots, were frightfully immovable and turbid. The skin on his cheeks was of the hue which is seen on corpses in hot summer weather. It was a completely dead, horrible face, and only the slow movement of the jaws showed that it was still alive. Kislyakóff's motionless eyes stared long at Grigóry's face, and their dead gaze put the latter in a fright. Feeling his ribs with his hands, for some reason or other, Orlóff stood three paces distant from the sick man, and felt exactly as though someone were clutching him by the throat with a damp, cold hand—were clutching him and slowly strangling him. And he wanted to get away, as speedily as possible, from this room, hitherto so bright and comfortable, but now impregnated with a suffocating odor of putrefaction, and with a strange chill.
"Well. … " he was about to begin, preparatory to beating a retreat.. But the accordeon-player's gray face began to move in a strange way, his lips, covered with a black efflorescence, parted, and he said with his toneless voice:
"I … am … dying. … "
The profound indifference, the inexplicable apathy of his three words echoed in Orlóff's head and breast, like three dull blows. With a senseless grimace on his countenance, he turned toward the door, but Tchízhik came flying to meet him, all flushed and perspiring, with a pail in his hand.
"Here it is … from Spiridónoff's well … they wouldn't let me have it, the devils. … "
He set the pail on the floor, rushed into a corner, reappeared, and handing a glass to Orlóff, continued to prattle:
"They say you've got the cholera. … I say, well, what of that? You'll have it too, … now it'll run the rounds, as it did in the suburbs … ? Whack! he gave me such a bang on the head that I yelled!"
Orlóff took the glass, dipped up water from the pail, and swallowed it at one gulp. In his ears the dead words were ringing:
"I … am … dying. … "
But Tchízhik hovered round him with swift darts, feeling himself thoroughly in his proper sphere.
"Give me a drink. … " said the accordeon-player, moving himself and the table about on the floor.
Tchízhik hopped up to him, and held a glass of water to his black lips. Grigóry, as he leaned against the wall by the door, listened, as in a dream, to the sick man noisily drawing in the water; then he heard Tchízhik propose that they should undress Kislyakóff, and put him to bed, then the voice of the painters' cook rang out. Her broad face, with an expression of terror and compassion, was gazing in from the court-yard through a window, and she said in a snivelling tone:
"You ought to give him lamp-black and rum: a tea-glass full—two spoonfuls of lamp-black, and fill it with rum to the brim."
But some invisible person suggested olive-oil with the brine from cucumbers, and aqua regia.
Orlóff suddenly became conscious that the heavy, oppressive gloom within him was illuminated by some memory. He rubbed his brow hard, as though endeavoring to increase the brilliancy of the light, and all at once, he went swiftly thence, ran across the court-yard and disappeared down the street.
"Heavens! And the shoemaker has got it too! He's run off to the hospital,"—the cook commented upon his flight in a plaintively-shrill voice.
Matréna, who was standing beside her, gazed with widely opened eyes, and turning pale, she shook all over.
"You're mistaken," she said hoarsely, barely moving her white lips—"Grigóry won't fall ill of that accursed sickness. … He won't yield to it. … "
But the cook, howling wofully, had already disappeared somewhere, and five minutes later a cluster of neighbors and passers-by was muttering dully around the Petúnnikoff house. Over all faces the same, identical sentiments