Explore "In Exile" by Anton Chekhov on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Old Semión, nicknamed Wiseacre, and a young Tartar, whom nobody knew by name, sat by the bonfire at the side of the river. The other three ferrymen lay in the hut. Semión, an old man of sixty, gaunt and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy in appearance, was drunk; he would have been asleep long ago if it had not been for the flagon in his pocket, and his fear that his companions in the hut might ask him for vodka. The Tartar was ill and tired; and sat there, wrapped up in his rags, holding forth on the glories of life in Simbirsk, and boasting of the handsome and clever wife he had left behind him. He was about twenty-five years old, but now in the light of the camp fire his pale face, with its melancholy and sickly expression, seemed the face of a lad.
"Yes, you can hardly call it paradise," said Wiseacre. "You can take it all in at a glance -- water, bare banks, and clay about you, and nothing more. Holy Week is over, but there is still ice floating down the river, and this very morning snow."