The Fugitive

I. The Fugitive

It was a long procedure. First Pashka walked with his mother in the rain, now across a mown field, now along forest paths where yellow leaves stuck to his boots, walked until it grew light. Then he stood for two hours in dark entrance halls waiting for the door to be unlocked. In the entrance hall it was not so cold and damp as in the yard, but when the wind blew, rain spray flew in there too. When the entrance hall gradually became packed with people, the squeezed Pashka pressed his face to someone’s sheepskin coat, which smelled strongly of salted fish, and dozed off. But then the latch clicked, the door swung open, and Pashka with his mother entered the reception room. Here again they had to wait a long time. All the sick people sat on benches, not moving and silent. Pashka looked at them and was also silent, though he saw much that was strange and funny. Only once, when a fellow hopping on one leg entered the reception room, Pashka himself wanted to hop like that; he nudged his mother’s elbow, snorted into his sleeve, and said:

“Mama, look: a sparrow!”

“Hush, child, hush!” said his mother.

In the little window appeared the sleepy face of a medical assistant.

“Come up and register!” he boomed.

Everyone, including the funny hopping fellow, moved toward the window. The assistant asked each person’s first name and patronymic, age, residence, how long they had been ill, and so on. From his mother’s answers, Pashka learned that his name was not Pashka but Pavel Galaktionov, that he was seven years old, that he was illiterate, and that he had been ill since Easter.

Soon after the registration they had to stand up briefly; a doctor in a white apron, belted with a towel, passed through the reception room. Passing the hopping fellow, he shrugged and said in a singsong tenor:

“What a fool! Aren’t you a fool? I told you to come on Monday, and you come on Friday. As far as I’m concerned, you needn’t come at all, but your leg will be lost, you fool!”

The fellow made a pitiful face as if about to beg for alms, blinked, and said:

“Do me the kindness, Ivan Mikolayich!”

“None of this ‘Ivan Mikolayich’!” the doctor mimicked. “I said Monday, and you should listen. A fool, that’s all…”

The examination began. The doctor sat in his room and called the patients one by one. Now and then piercing screams, children’s cries, or the doctor’s angry exclamations could be heard from the room:

“What are you yelling for? Am I cutting you? Sit still!”

Pashka’s turn came.

“Pavel Galaktionov!” shouted the doctor.

His mother went numb as if she had not expected this call, and taking Pashka by the hand, led him into the room. The doctor sat at a table, mechanically tapping a thick book with a little hammer.

“What hurts?” he asked without looking at those who entered.

“The boy has a sore on his elbow, father,” answered the mother, and her face took on an expression as if she were truly terribly upset by Pashka’s sore.

“Undress him!”

Pashka, puffing, unwound the scarf around his neck, then wiped his nose with his sleeve and began slowly pulling off his little coat.

“Woman, you didn’t come visiting! What are you dawdling for? You’re not the only one here.”

Pashka hurriedly threw his coat on the floor and with his mother’s help removed his shirt… The doctor lazily glanced at him and patted his bare belly.

“You’ve grown yourself quite a belly, brother Pashka,” he said and sighed. “Well, show me your elbow.”

Pashka glanced at the basin with bloody slops, looked at the doctor’s apron, and began to cry.

“Baa-a!” mimicked the doctor. “He’s old enough to marry, this spoiled one, and he’s crying! Shameless!”

Trying not to cry, Pashka looked at his mother, and in his look was written the plea: “Don’t tell them at home that I cried at the hospital!”

The doctor examined his elbow, pressed it, sighed, smacked his lips, then pressed again.

“Someone should beat you, woman, but there’s no one to do it,” he said. “Why didn’t you bring him earlier? His arm is ruined! Look here, fool, it’s the joint that hurts!”

“You know best, father…” the woman sighed.

“Father… You let the boy’s arm rot, and now it’s father! What kind of worker will he be without an arm? You’ll be nursing him for the rest of your life. I’ll bet if you get a pimple on your own nose, you run to the hospital right away, but you let the boy rot for half a year. You’re all the same.”

The doctor lit a cigarette. While the cigarette smoked, he scolded the woman, shaking his head in time to a song he was humming to himself, and kept thinking about something. Naked Pashka stood before him, listening and looking at the smoke. When the cigarette went out, the doctor roused himself and began speaking in a lower tone:

“Well, listen, woman. Ointments and drops won’t help here. He must be left in the hospital.”

“If it’s necessary, father, why not leave him?”

“We’ll operate on him. And you, Pashka, stay here,” said the doctor, slapping Pashka on the shoulder. “Let your mother go home, and we’ll stay here together, brother. It’s good at my place, brother, just wonderful! We’ll catch siskins together, you and I, Pashka, I’ll show you a fox! We’ll go visiting together! Want to? And your mother will come for you tomorrow! All right?”

Pashka looked questioningly at his mother.

“Stay, child!” she said.

“He’s staying, he’s staying!” the doctor cried cheerfully. “No need to discuss it! I’ll show him a live fox! We’ll go to the fair together to buy sweets! Marya Denisovna, take him upstairs!”

The doctor, apparently a cheerful and good-natured fellow, was glad of the company; Pashka wanted to oblige him, especially since he had never been to a fair and would gladly have seen a live fox—but how could he manage without his mother? After thinking a little, he decided to ask the doctor to let his mother stay at the hospital too, but before he could open his mouth, the medical assistant was already leading him up the stairs. He walked along, mouth agape, looking around. The staircase, floors, and door frames—all huge, straight, and bright—were painted a magnificent yellow and gave off a delicious smell of linseed oil. Everywhere hung lamps, strips of carpet stretched along, and brass faucets stuck out of the walls. But Pashka liked most of all the bed on which he was seated, and the gray rough blanket. He touched the pillows and blanket with his hands, looked around the ward, and decided that the doctor lived very well indeed.

The ward was small and consisted of only three beds. One bed stood empty, another was occupied by Pashka, and on the third sat some old man with sour eyes who coughed all the time and spat into a cup. From Pashka’s bed, through the door, part of another ward was visible with two beds: on one slept a very pale, thin man with a rubber bag on his head; on the other, with arms spread out, sat a peasant with a bandaged head who looked very much like a woman.

The medical assistant, having seated Pashka, went out and returned a little later holding an armful of clothing.

“This is for you,” she said. “Get dressed.”

Pashka undressed and not without pleasure began putting on his new clothes. After putting on the shirt, trousers, and gray gown, he looked at himself with satisfaction and thought that it would be nice to walk through the village in such a costume. His imagination painted a picture of his mother sending him to the kitchen garden by the river to pick cabbage leaves for the piglet; he walks along, and the boys and girls surround him and look with envy at his gown.

Into the ward came a nurse, carrying in her hands two tin bowls, spoons, and two pieces of bread. She set one bowl before the old man, the other before Pashka.

“Eat!” she said.

Looking into the bowl, Pashka saw rich cabbage soup with a piece of meat in it, and again thought that the doctor lived very well and that the doctor was not at all as angry as he had seemed at first. For a long time he ate the soup, licking his spoon after each mouthful, then, when nothing remained in the bowl but the meat, he glanced at the old man and envied him for still slurping. With a sigh he set about the meat, trying to eat it as slowly as possible, but his efforts led to nothing: soon the meat too disappeared. Only a piece of bread remained. It is not tasty to eat plain bread without anything, but there was nothing to be done. Pashka thought and ate the bread. At that moment the nurse came in with new bowls. This time in the bowls was roast meat with potatoes.

“Where’s your bread?” asked the nurse.

Instead of an answer, Pashka puffed out his cheeks and exhaled.

“Why did you gobble it up?” the nurse said reproachfully. “What will you eat your roast with?”

She went out and brought a new piece of bread. Pashka had never eaten roast meat in his life, and trying it now, found it very tasty. It disappeared quickly, and after it a piece of bread remained bigger than after the soup. The old man, having finished his dinner, hid his remaining bread in a little table; Pashka wanted to do the same but thought about it and ate his piece.

Having eaten his fill, he went for a walk. In the neighboring ward, besides those he had seen through the door, there were four more people. Of these, only one attracted his attention. This was a tall, extremely emaciated peasant with a gloomy, hairy face; he sat on the bed and kept swinging his head and his right arm like a pendulum. For a long time Pashka could not take his eyes off him. At first the pendulum-like, measured noddings of the peasant seemed funny to him, produced for general amusement, but when he looked into the peasant’s face, he felt frightened and understood that this peasant was unbearably ill. Passing into the third ward, he saw two peasants with dark-red faces, as if smeared with clay. They sat motionless on their beds, and with their strange faces, on which it was hard to distinguish features, they looked like pagan idols.

“Auntie, why are they like that?” Pashka asked the nurse.

“They have smallpox, boy.”

Returning to his ward, Pashka sat on the bed and began waiting for the doctor to go catch siskins or drive to the fair. But the doctor did not come. In the doorway of the neighboring ward the medical assistant briefly appeared. He bent over the patient who had the bag of ice on his head and called:

“Mikhailo!”

The sleeping Mikhailo did not stir. The assistant waved his hand and left. Waiting for the doctor, Pashka examined his neighbor the old man. The old man coughed without ceasing and spat into his cup; his cough was drawn-out and creaking. Pashka liked one peculiarity of the old man’s: when he coughed and inhaled air, something in his chest whistled and sang in different voices.

“Grandpa, what’s that whistling in you?” asked Pashka.

The old man did not answer. Pashka waited a little and asked:

“Grandpa, where’s the fox?”

“What fox?”

“The live one.”

“Where would it be? In the forest!”

Much time passed, but the doctor still did not appear. The nurse brought tea and scolded Pashka for not saving any bread for tea; the assistant came again and tried to wake Mikhailo; beyond the windows it turned blue, lights were lit in the wards, but the doctor did not show himself. It was already too late to go to the fair and catch siskins; Pashka stretched out on the bed and began to think. He remembered the sweets the doctor had promised, his mother’s face and voice, the darkness in his own hut, the grumbling grandmother Yegorovna… and he suddenly felt sad and dreary. He remembered that his mother would come for him tomorrow, smiled, and closed his eyes.

He was awakened by a rustling. In the neighboring ward someone was walking and speaking in a half-whisper. By the dim light of the night-lamps and icon-lamps, three figures were moving near Mikhailo’s bed.

“Shall we carry him with the bed, or just so?” asked one of them.

“Just so. You can’t get through with the bed. Well, he died at the wrong time, God rest his soul!”

One took Mikhailo by the shoulders, another by the legs, and they lifted him: Mikhailo’s arms and the folds of his gown hung weakly in the air. The third—the peasant who looked like a woman—crossed himself, and all three, shuffling their feet and stepping on Mikhailo’s gown, went out of the ward.

In the chest of the sleeping old man there were whistling and singing in different voices. Pashka listened, looked at the dark windows, and in terror jumped out of bed.

“Ma-a-ma!” he moaned in a bass voice.

And without waiting for an answer, he rushed into the neighboring ward. There the light of the icon-lamp and night-lamp barely illuminated the darkness; the patients, disturbed by Mikhailo’s death, sat on their beds; mingling with the shadows, disheveled, they seemed wider, taller, and appeared to be growing ever larger and larger; on the far bed in the corner, where it was darker, sat the peasant swaying his head and arm.

Pashka, not distinguishing doorways, rushed into the smallpox ward, from there into a corridor, from the corridor he flew into a large room where lay and sat on beds monsters with long hair and old women’s faces. Running through the women’s section, he found himself again in a corridor, saw the railing of the familiar staircase, and ran down. There he recognized the reception room where he had sat in the morning, and began looking for the exit door.

The latch clicked, cold wind blew, and Pashka, stumbling, ran out into the yard. He had only one thought—to run and run! He did not know the road, but was sure that if he ran he would certainly find himself at home with his mother. The night was cloudy, but the moon shone behind the clouds. Pashka ran from the porch straight ahead, rounded a shed, and ran into empty bushes; standing a little and thinking, he rushed back to the hospital, ran around it, and again stopped in indecision: behind the hospital building white grave crosses gleamed.

“Ma-a-ma!” he cried and rushed back.

Running past dark, stern buildings, he saw one lit window.

The bright red spot in the darkness seemed frightening, but Pashka, maddened by fear, not knowing where to run, turned toward it. Beside the window was a porch with steps and a front door with a white plaque; Pashka ran up the steps, looked in the window, and a sharp, overwhelming joy suddenly seized him. Through the window he saw the cheerful, good-natured doctor, who sat at a table and read a book. Laughing with happiness, Pashka stretched his hands toward the familiar face, wanted to shout, but some unknown force squeezed his breath, struck his legs; he swayed and fell senseless on the steps.

When he came to himself, it was already light, and a very familiar voice that had yesterday promised the fair, siskins, and fox, spoke beside him:

“What a fool you are, Pashka! Aren’t you a fool? Someone should beat you, but there’s no one to do it.”

—Anton Chekhov

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II. The Power of Childhood

“Kill him!.. Shoot him!.. Shoot the scoundrel at once!.. Kill!.. Cut his throat!.. Kill, kill!..” shouted men’s and women’s voices in the crowd.

A huge crowd was leading a bound man down the street. This man, tall and straight, walked with a firm step, holding his head high. On his handsome, manly face was an expression of contempt and anger toward the people surrounding him.

This was one of those people who, in the war of the people against authority, fight on the side of authority. He had been seized now and was being led to execution.

“What can I do! Might is not always on our side. What can I do? Now they have power. If I must die, I must die—so it seems it must be,” thought this man, and shrugging his shoulders, he smiled coldly at the shouts that continued in the crowd.

“He’s a policeman, he was shooting at us this morning!” they shouted in the crowd.

But the crowd did not stop, and they led him on. When they came to that street where yesterday’s bodies, not yet cleared away, lay killed by the troops, the crowd grew savage.

“Don’t delay any longer! Shoot the villain right here, why lead him further?” people shouted.

The prisoner frowned and only raised his head higher. He seemed to hate the crowd even more than the crowd hated him.

“Kill them all! The spies! The tsars! The priests! And these scoundrels! Kill, kill him now!” women’s voices shrieked.

But the leaders of the crowd decided to lead him to the square and finish with him there.

It was not far to the square when, in a moment of quiet in the rear ranks of the crowd, a weeping child’s voice was heard.

“Papa! Papa!” sobbed a six-year-old boy, pushing into the crowd to reach the prisoner.

“Papa! What are they doing to you? Wait, wait, take me, take me!..”

The shouts stopped in that part of the crowd where the child was coming from, and the crowd, parting before him as before a force, let the child come closer and closer to his father.

“What a darling!” said one woman.

“Who are you looking for?” said another, bending down to the boy.

“Papa! Let me go to Papa!” the boy squeaked.

“How old are you, little boy?”

“What do you want to do with Papa?” the boy answered.

“Go home, boy, go to your mother,” said one of the men to the boy.

The prisoner already heard the boy’s voice and heard what they said to him. His face became even gloomier.

“He has no mother!” he shouted in response to the words of the one who sent the child to his mother.

Pushing closer and closer through the crowd, the boy reached his father and climbed into his arms.

In the crowd they kept shouting the same thing: “Kill! Hang! Shoot the scoundrel!”

“Why did you leave home?” the father said to the boy.

“What do they want to do with you?” the boy said.

“Here’s what you do,” said the father.

“What?”

“Do you know Katyusha?”

“The neighbor? Of course I know her.”

“Well then, go to her and stay there. And I… I’ll come.”

“I won’t go without you,” said the boy, and began to cry.

“Why won’t you go?”

“They’ll beat you.”

“No, they won’t do anything, they’re just…”

And the prisoner put the boy down from his arms and approached the man who was in charge of the crowd.

“Listen,” he said, “kill me however and wherever you like, but not in front of him,” he pointed to the boy. “Untie me for two minutes and hold me by the hand, and I’ll tell him that we’re just walking together, that you’re my friend, and he’ll go away. And then… then kill me however you like.”

The leader agreed.

Then the prisoner took the boy in his arms again and said:

“Be a good boy, go to Katya.”

“But what about you?”

“You see, I’m walking with this friend here, we’ll walk a bit more, and you go, and I’ll come. Go on, be a good boy.”

The boy stared at his father, tilted his head to one side, then to the other, and thought.

“Go, dear, I’ll come.”

“Will you come?”

And the child obeyed. One woman led him out of the crowd.

When the child disappeared, the prisoner said:

“Now I am ready, kill me.”

And then something completely incomprehensible, unexpected happened. Some one and the same spirit awoke in all these people who a minute before had been cruel, merciless, hateful, and one woman said:

“You know what? Let him go.”

“Yes, God be with him,” said someone else. “Let him go.”

“Let him go, let him go!” thundered the crowd.

And the proud, merciless man, who a minute before had hated the crowd, burst into sobs, covered his face with his hands, and like a guilty man ran out of the crowd, and no one stopped him.

—Victor Hugo. Adapted by L. N. Tolstoy.

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Translator’s Notes:

• Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was the great Russian short-story writer and playwright. “The Fugitive” (Beglets, 1887) is one of his early stories, capturing with characteristic tenderness the confusion and terror of a peasant child in an unfamiliar world.
• The Russian title Beglets literally means “runaway” or “fugitive”—referring to Pashka’s nighttime escape from the hospital.
• The doctor’s manner—gruff, scolding, but fundamentally kind—is typical of Chekhov’s sympathetic portrayals of provincial doctors.
• “Siskins” (chizhi) are small songbirds (European siskins, Spinus spinus) that were commonly kept as cage birds in Russia.
• A desiatina was about 2.7 acres; a sazhen about 7 feet.
• Victor Hugo’s parable “The Power of Childhood” (Sila detstva) appears in various forms in his writings. Tolstoy’s adaptation simplifies the narrative while preserving its moral force.
• The story is set during a revolutionary uprising—Hugo wrote extensively about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune of 1871.
• The moral of Part II—that the presence of innocent childhood can awaken dormant humanity even in those consumed by hatred—was central to Tolstoy’s own philosophy, expressed in works like The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
• The pairing of these two stories in a single weekly reading emphasizes the theme of childhood’s special status: in Part I, a child’s terror before death; in Part II, a child’s power to transform a murderous crowd.
• Both stories illustrate the Tolstoyan conviction that the moral intuitions of childhood are closer to truth than the hardened judgments of adults.