Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/41

Rh him did his eyes begin to see. Then, too, he began to feel the coldness of the morgue. The walls of the dreary room were bespotted with moisture, the single window was covered with a thick layer of spiders' webs. No matter how brightly the sun shone outside, its rays never penetrated through this window, and the sky always appeared gray and gloomy, as in autumn. A fly was buzzing somewhere. Drops of water were falling from the ceiling. After each drop, the air would reverberate with a pitiful, ringing noise.

Sazonka stepped back and said aloud:

"Good-by, Semyon Erofeyich."

Then he knelt down, touched the wet floor with his forehead, and rose up again.

"Forgive me, Semyon Erofeyich," said he, just as loudly and distinctly, and then knelt down again, and pressed his head against the floor.

The fly stopped buzzing, and everything was still, with that peculiar stillness which sets in when a dead man is in the room. At regular intervals drops of water fell into a metal basin, striking the bottom gently and softly.

The hospital stood on the outskirts of the city, and immediately beyond it began a large field. Sazonka went there. The level field, uninterrupted by a single tree or building, stretched in all directions, and the light breeze seemed to be its warm, even breath. Sazonka followed a dry road at first, but after a while he turned to the left and began to walk across the field itself, towards the river. In some places the ground was still wet and his boots left deep marks in it.

Reaching the river, Sazonka lay down on its bank in a spot where the air was warm and perfectly still, as in a green-house. He closed his eyes. The rays of the sun passed through his lowered eye-lids in red waves. A lark was pouring forth its song in the blue sky, and it was so pleasant to lie there without a single thought in his head. The spring waters had already subsided, leaving the marks of their recent activity in the form of large pieces of ice, stranded on the opposite shore. The white triangular pieces of ice were steadily disappearing under the merciless, hot rays of the sun. Sazonka lay there half asleep, and, accidentally, threw out one arm. His hand came in contact with a hard object, covered with cloth.

The present!

Jumping up to a sitting position, Sazonka exclaimed:

"God! What is this?"

He had forgotten his bundle entirely and now looked at it with frightened eyes. It seemed to him that the bundle had come there by its own will, and he was afraid to touch it. Sazonka gazed at it, without lifting his eyes, and a stormy, rumbling pity, a furious wrath was rising in him. He looked at the bundle, and he seemed to see how on the first day, and the