Dreams

Dreams

Two peasant constables -- one a stubby, black-bearded individual
with such exceptionally short legs that if you looked at him from
behind it seemed as though his legs began much lower down than in
other people; the other, long, thin, and straight as a stick,
with a scanty beard of dark reddish colour -- were escorting to
the district town a tramp who refused to remember his name. The
first waddled along, looking from side to side, chewing now a
straw, now his own sleeve, slapping himself on the haunches and
humming, and altogether had a careless and frivolous air; the
other, in spite of his lean face and narrow shoulders, looked
solid, grave, and substantial; in the lines and expression of his
whole figure he was like the priests among the Old Believers, or
the warriors who are painted on old-fashioned ikons. "For his
wisdom God had added to his forehead" -- that is, he was bald --
which increased the resemblance referred to. The first was called
Andrey Ptaha, the second Nikandr Sapozhnikov.

The man they were escorting did not in the least correspond with
the conception everyone has of a tramp. He was a frail little
man, weak and sickly-looking, with small, colourless, and
extremely indefinite features. His eyebrows were scanty, his
expression mild and submissive; he had scarcely a trace of a
moustache, though he was over thirty. He walked along timidly,
bent forward, with his hands thrust into his sleeves. The collar
of his shabby cloth overcoat, which did not look like a
peasant's, was turned up to the very brim of his cap, so that
only his little red nose ventured to peep out into the light of
day. He spoke in an ingratiating tenor, continually coughing. It
was very, very difficult to believe that he was a tramp
concealing his surname. He was more like an unsuccessful priest's
son, stricken by God and reduced to beggary; a clerk discharged
for drunkenness; a merchant's son or nephew who had tried his
feeble powers in a theatrical career, and was now going home to
play the last act in the parable of the prodigal son; perhaps,
judging by the dull patience with which he struggled with the
hopeless autumn mud, he might have been a fanatical monk,
wandering from one Russian monastery to another, continually
seeking "a peaceful life, free from sin," and not finding it. . .
.

The travellers had been a long while on their way, but they
seemed to be always on the same small patch of ground. In front
of them there stretched thirty feet of muddy black-brown mud,
behind them the same, and wherever one looked further, an
impenetrable wall of white fog. They went on and on, but the
ground remained the same, the wall was no nearer, and the patch
on which they walked seemed still the same patch. They got a
glimpse of a white, clumsy-looking stone, a small ravine, or a
bundle of hay dropped by a passer-by, the brief glimmer of a
great muddy puddle, or, suddenly, a shadow with vague outlines
would come into view ahead of them; the nearer they got to it the
smaller and darker it became; nearer still, and there stood up
before the wayfarers a slanting milestone with the number rubbed
off, or a wretched birch-tree drenched and bare like a wayside
beggar. The birch-tree would whisper something with what remained
of its yellow leaves, one leaf would break off and float lazily
to the ground. . . . And then again fog, mud, the brown grass at
the edges of the road. On the grass hung dingy, unfriendly tears.
They were not the tears of soft joy such as the earth weeps at
welcoming the summer sun and parting from it, and such as she
gives to drink at dawn to the corncrakes, quails, and graceful,
long-beaked crested snipes. The travellers' feet stuck in the
heavy, clinging mud. Every step cost an effort.

Andrey Ptaha was somewhat excited. He kept looking round at the
tramp and trying to understand how a live, sober man could fail
to remember his name.

"You are an orthodox Christian, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," the tramp answered mildly.

"H'm. . . then you've been christened?"

"Why, to be sure! I'm not a Turk. I go to church and to the
sacrament, and do not eat meat when it is forbidden. And I
observe my religious duties punctually. . . ."

"Well, what are you called, then?"

"Call me what you like, good man."

Ptaha shrugged his shoulders and slapped himself on the haunches
in extreme perplexity. The other constable, Nikandr Sapozhnikov,
maintained a staid silence. He was not so naive as Ptaha, and
apparently knew very well the reasons which might induce an
orthodox Christian to conceal his name from other people. His
expressive face was cold and stern. He walked apart and did not
condescend to idle chatter with his companions, but, as it were,
tried to show everyone, even the fog, his sedateness and
discretion.

"God knows what to make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing
the tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but
some sort of a thing between. . . . The other day I was washing a
sieve in the pond and caught a reptile -- see, as long as a
finger, with gills and a tail. The first minute I thought it was
a fish, then I looked -- and, blow it! if it hadn't paws. It was
not a fish, it was a viper, and the deuce only knows what it was.
. . . So that's like you. . . . What's your calling?"

"I am a peasant and of peasant family," sighed the tramp. "My
mamma was a house serf. I don't look like a peasant, that's true,
for such has been my lot, good man. My mamma was a nurse with the
gentry, and had every comfort, and as I was of her flesh and
blood, I lived with her in the master's house. She petted and
spoiled me, and did her best to take me out of my humble class
and make a gentleman of me. I slept in a bed, every day I ate a
real dinner, I wore breeches and shoes like a gentleman's child.
What my mamma ate I was fed on, too; they gave her stuffs as a
present, and she dressed me up in them. . . . We lived well! I
ate so many sweets and cakes in my childish years that if they
could be sold now it would be enough to buy a goo d horse. Mamma
taught me to read and write, she instilled the fear of God in me
from my earliest years, and she so trained me that now I can't
bring myself to utter an unrefined peasant word. And I don't
drink vodka, my lad, and am neat in my dress, and know how to
behave with decorum in good society. If she is still living, God
give her health; and if she is dead, then, O Lord, give her soul
peace in Thy Kingdom, wherein the just are at rest."

The tramp bared his head with the scanty hair standing up like a
brush on it, turned his eyes upward and crossed himself twice.

"Grant her, O Lord, a verdant and peaceful resting-place," he
said in a drawling voice, more like an old woman's than a man's.
"Teach Thy servant Xenia Thy justifications, O Lord! If it had
not been for my beloved mamma I should have been a peasant with
no sort of understanding! Now, young man, ask me about anything
and I understand it all: the holy Scriptures and profane
writings, and every prayer and catechism. I live according to the
Scriptures. . . . I don't injure anyone, I keep my flesh in
purity and continence, I observe the fasts, I eat at fitting
times. Another man will take no pleasure in anything but vodka
and lewd talk, but when I have time I sit in a corner and read a
book. I read and I weep and weep."

"What do you weep for?"

"They write so patheticallyl For some books one gives but a
five-kopeck piece, and yet one weeps and sighs exceedingly over
it."

"Is your father dead?" asked Ptaha.

"I don't know, good man. I don't know my parent; it is no use
concealing it. I judge that I was mamma's illegitimate son. My
mamma lived all her life with the gentry, and did not want to
marry a simple peasant. . . ."

"And so she fell into the master's hands," laughed Ptaha.

"She did transgress, that's true. She was pious, God-fearing, but
she did not keep her maiden purity. It is a sin, of course, a
great sin, there's no doubt about it, but to make up for it there
is, maybe, noble blood in me. Maybe I am only a peasant by class,
but in nature a noble gentleman."

The "noble gentleman" uttered all this in a soft, sugary tenor,
wrinkling up his narrow forehead and emitting creaking sounds
from his red, frozen little nose. Ptaha listened and looked
askance at him in wonder, continually shrugging his shoulders.

After going nearly five miles the constables and the tramp sat
down on a mound to rest.

"Even a dog knows his name," Ptaha muttered. "My name is
Andryushka, his is Nikandr; every man has his holy name, and it
can't be forgotten. Nohow."

"Who has any need to know my name?" sighed the tramp, leaning his
cheek on his fist. "And what advantage would it be to me if they
did know it? If I were allowed to go where I would -- but it
would only make things worse. I know the law, Christian brothers.
Now I am a tramp who doesn't remember his name, and it's the very
most if they send me to Eastern Siberia and give me thirty or
forty lashes; but if I were to tell them my real name and
description they would send me back to hard labour, I know!"

"Why, have you been a convict?"

"I have, dear friend. For four years I went about with my head
shaved and fetters on my legs."

"What for?"

"For murder, my good man! When I was still a boy of eighteen or
so, my mamma accidentally poured arsenic instead of soda and acid
into my master's glass. There were boxes of all sorts in the
storeroom, numbers of them; it was easy to make a mistake over
them."

The tramp sighed, shook his head, and said:

"She was a pious woman, but, who knows? another man's soul is a
slumbering forest! It may have been an accident, or maybe she
could not endure the affront of seeing the master prefer another
servant. . . . Perhaps she put it in on purpose, God knows! I was
young then, and did not understand it all . . . now I remember
that our master had taken another mistress and mamma was greatly
disturbed. Our trial lasted nearly two years. . . . Mamma was
condemned to penal servitude for twenty years, and I, on account
of my youth, only to seven."

"And why were you sentenced?"

"As an accomplice. I handed the glass to the master. That was
always the custom. Mamma prepared the soda and I handed it to
him. Only I tell you all this as a Christian, brothers, as I
would say it before God. Don't you tell anybody. . . ."

"Oh, nobody's going to ask us," said Ptaha. "So you've run away
from prison, have you?"

"I have, dear friend. Fourteen of us ran away. Some folks, God
bless them! ran away and took me with them. Now you tell me, on
your conscience, good man, what reason have I to disclose my
name? They will send me back to penal servitude, you know! And I
am not fit for penal servitude! I am a refined man in delicate
health. I like to sleep and eat in cleanliness. When I pray to
God I like to light a little lamp or a candle, and not to have a
noise around me. When I bow down to the ground I like the floor
not to be dirty or spat upon. And I bow down forty times every
morning and evening, praying for mamma."

The tramp took off his cap and crossed himself.

"And let them send me to Eastern Siberia," he said; "I am not
afraid of that."

"Surely that's no better?"

"It is quite a different thing. In penal servitude you are like a
crab in a basket: crowding, crushing, jostling, there's no room
to breathe; it's downright hell -- such hell, may the Queen of
Heaven keep us from it! You are a robber and treated like a
robber -- worse than any dog. You can't sleep, you can't eat or
even say your prayers. But it's not like that in a settlement. In
a settlement I shall be a member of a commune like other people.
The authorities are bound by law to give me my share . . . ye-es!
They say the land costs nothing, no more than snow; you can take
what you like! They will give me corn land and building land and
garden. . . . I shall plough my fields like other people, sow
seed. I shall have cattle and stock of all sorts, bees, sheep,
and dogs. . . . A Siberian cat, that rats and mice may not devour
my goods. . . . I will put up a house, I shall buy ikons. . . .
Please God, I'll get married, I shall have children. . . ."

The tramp muttered and looked, not at his listeners, but away
into the distance. Naive as his dreams were, they were uttered in
such a genuine and heartfelt tone that it was difficult not to
believe in them. The tramp's little mouth was screwed up in a
smile. His eyes and little nose and his whole face were fixed and
blank with blissful anticipation of happiness in the distant
future. The constables listened and looked at him gravely, not
without sympathy. They, too, believed in his dreams.

"I am not afraid of Siberia," the tramp went on muttering.
"Siberia is just as much Russia and has the same God and Tsar as
here. They are just as orthodox Christians as you and I. Only
there is more freedom there and people are better off. Everything
is better there. Take the rivers there, for instance; they are
far better than those here. There's no end of fish; and all sorts
of wild fowl. And my greatest pleasure, brothers, is fishing.
Give me no bread to eat, but let me sit with a fishhook. Yes,
indeed! I fish with a hook and with a wire line, and set creels,
and when the ice comes I catch with a net. I am not strong to
draw up the net, so I shall hire a man for five kopecks. And,
Lord, what a pleasure it is! You catch an eel-pout or a roach of
some sort and are as pleased as though you had met your own
brother. And would you believe it, there's a special art for
every fish: you catch one with a live bait, you catch another
with a grub, the third with a frog or a grasshopper. One has to
understand all that, of course! For example, take the eel-pout.
It is not a delicate fish -- it will take a perch; and a pike
loves a gudgeon, the _shilishper_ likes a butterfly. If you fish
for a roach in a rapid stream there is no greater pleasure. You
throw the line of seventy feet without lead, with a butterfly or
a beetle, so that the bait floats on the surface; you stand in
the water without your trousers and let it go with the current,
and tug! the roach pulls at it! Only you have got to be artful
that he doesn't carry off the b ait, the damned rascal. As soon
as he tugs at your line you must whip it up; it's no good
waiting. It's wonderful what a lot of fish I've caught in my
time. When we were running away the other convicts would sleep in
the forest; I could not sleep, but I was off to the river. The
rivers there are wide and rapid, the banks are steep -- awfully!
It's all slumbering forests on the bank. The trees are so tall
that if you look to the top it makes you dizzy. Every pine would
be worth ten roubles by the prices here."

In the overwhelming rush of his fancies, of artistic images of
the past and sweet presentiments of happiness in the future, the
poor wretch sank into silence, merely moving his lips as though
whispering to himself. The vacant, blissful smile never left his
lips. The constables were silent. They were pondering with bent
heads. In the autumn stillness, when the cold, sullen mist that
rises from the earth lies like a weight on the heart, when it
stands like a prison wall before the eyes, and reminds man of the
limitation of his freedom, it is sweet to think of the broad,
rapid rivers, with steep banks wild and luxuriant, of the
impenetrable forests, of the boundless steppes. Slowly and
quietly the fancy pictures how early in the morning, before the
flush of dawn has left the sky, a man makes his way along the
steep deserted bank like a tiny speck: the ancient, mast-like
pines rise up in terraces on both sides of the torrent, gaze
sternly at the free man and murmur menacingly; rocks, huge
stones, and thorny bushes bar his way, but he is strong in body
and bold in spirit, and has no fear of the pine-trees, nor
stones, nor of his solitude, nor of the reverberating echo which
repeats the sound of every footstep that he takes.

The peasants called up a picture of a free life such as they had
never lived; whether they vaguely recalled the images of stories
heard long ago or whether notions of a free life had been handed
down to them with their flesh and blood from far-off free
ancestors, God knows!

The first to break the silence was Nikandr Sapozhnikov, who had
not till then let fall a single word. Whether he envied the
tramp's transparent happiness, or whether he felt in his heart
that dreams of happiness were out of keeping with the grey fog
and the dirty brown mud -- anyway, he looked sternly at the tramp
and said:

"It's all very well, to be sure, only you won't reach those
plenteous regions, brother. How could you? Before you'd gone two
hundred miles you'd give up your soul to God. Just look what a
weakling you are! Here you've hardly gone five miles and you
can't get your breath."

The tramp turned slowly toward Nikandr, and the blissful smile
vanished from his face. He looked with a scared and guilty air at
the peasant's staid face, apparently remembered something, and
bent his head. A silence followed again. . . . All three were
pondering. The peasants were racking their brains in the effort
to grasp in their imagination what can be grasped by none but God
-- that is, the vast expanse dividing them from the land of
freedom. Into the tramp's mind thronged clear and distinct
pictures more terrible than that expanse. Before him rose vividly
the picture of the long legal delays and procrastinations, the
temporary and permanent prisons, the convict boats, the wearisome
stoppages on the way, the frozen winters, illnesses, deaths of
companions. . . .

The tramp blinked guiltily, wiped the tiny drops of sweat from
his forehead with his sleeve, drew a deep breath as though he had
just leapt out of a very hot bath, then wiped his forehead with
the other sleeve and looked round fearfully.

"That's true; you won't get there!" Ptaha agreed. "You are not
much of a walker! Look at you -- nothing but skin and bone!
You'll die, brother!"

"Of course he'll die! What could he do?" said Nikandr. "He's fit
for the hospital now. . . . For sure!"

The man who had forgotten his name looked at the stern,
unconcerned faces of his sinister companions, and without taking
off his cap, hurriedly crossed himself, staring with wide-open
eyes. . . . He trembled, his head shook, and he began twitching
all over, like a caterpillar when it is stepped upon. . . .

"Well, it's time to go," said Nikandr, getting up; "we've had a
rest."

A minute later they were stepping along the muddy road. The tramp
was more bent than ever, and he thrust his hands further up his
sleeves. Ptaha was silent.

-THE END-
Anton Chekhov's short story: Dreams

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