The dark, cold river was flowing ten paces away; it grumbled, lapped against the hollow clay banks and raced on swiftly towards the far-away sea.  Close to the bank there was the dark blur of a big barge, which the ferrymen called a “karbos.”  Far away on the further bank, lights, dying down and flickering up again, zigzagged like little snakes; they were burning last year’s grass.  And beyond the little snakes there was darkness again.  There little icicles could be heard knocking against the barge It was damp and cold....

The Tatar glanced at the sky.  There were as many stars as at home, and the same blackness all round, but something was lacking.  At home in the Simbirsk province the stars were quite different, and so was the sky.

“It’s bad! it’s bad!” he repeated.

“You will get used to it,” said Semyon, and he laughed.  “Now you are young and foolish, the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and it seems to you in your foolishness that you are more wretched than anyone; but the time will come when you will say to yourself:  ’I wish no one a better life than mine.’  You look at me.  Within a week the floods will be over and we shall set up the ferry; you will all go wandering off about Siberia while I shall stay and shall begin going from bank to bank.  I’ve been going like that for twenty-two years, day and night.  The pike and the salmon are under the water while I am on the water.  And thank God for it, I want nothing; God give everyone such a life.”

The Tatar threw some dry twigs on the camp-fire, lay down closer to the blaze, and said: 

“My father is a sick man.  When he dies my mother and wife will come here.  They have promised.”

“And what do you want your wife and mother for?” asked Canny.  “That’s mere foolishness, my lad.  It’s the devil confounding you, damn his soul!  Don’t you listen to him, the cursed one.  Don’t let him have his way.  He is at you about the women, but you spite him; say, ‘I don’t want them!’ He is on at you about freedom, but you stand up to him and say:  ’I don’t want it!’ I want nothing, neither father nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor post, nor paddock; I want nothing, damn their souls!”

Semyon took a pull at the bottle and went on: 

“I am not a simple peasant, not of the working class, but the son of a deacon, and when I was free I lived at Kursk; I used to wear a frockcoat, and now I have brought myself to such a pass that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass.  And I wish no one a better life.  I want nothing and I am afraid of nobody, and the way I look at it is that there is nobody richer and freer than I am.  When they sent me here from Russia from the first day I stuck it out; I want nothing!  The devil was at me about my wife and about my home and about freedom, but I told him:  ‘I want nothing.’  I stuck to it, and here you see I live well, and I don’t complain, and if anyone gives way to the devil and listens to him, if but once, he is lost, there is no salvation for him:  he is sunk in the bog to the crown of his head and will never get out.