The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Love and Other Stories Author: Anton Chekhov Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13414] Last Updated: May 25, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE *** Produced by James Rusk HTML file produced by David Widger
“‘He stood on the desolate ocean’s strand,
While his soul was filled with imaginings grand.’
And his handwriting was dreamy, limp like wet silk. An individual called
Kross, probably an insignificant, little man, felt his unimportance so
deeply that he gave full licence to his penknife and carved his name in
deep letters an inch high. I took a pencil out of my pocket mechanically,
and I too scribbled on one of the columns. All that is irrelevant,
however. . . You must forgive me—I don’t know how to tell a
story briefly.
“I was sad and a little bored. Boredom, the stillness, and the
purring of the sea gradually brought me to the line of thought we have
been discussing. At that period, towards the end of the 'seventies, it had
begun to be fashionable with the public, and later, at the beginning of
the ‘eighties, it gradually passed from the general public into
literature, science, and politics. I was no more than twenty-six at the
time, but I knew perfectly well that life was aimless and had no meaning,
that everything was a deception and an illusion, that in its essential
nature and results a life of penal servitude in Sahalin was not in any way
different from a life spent in Nice, that the difference between the brain
of a Kant and the brain of a fly was of no real significance, that no one
in this world is righteous or guilty, that everything was stuff and
nonsense and damn it all! I lived as though I were doing a favour to some
unseen power which compelled me to live, and to which I seemed to say:
‘Look, I don’t care a straw for life, but I am living!’
I thought on one definite line, but in all sorts of keys, and in that
respect I was like the subtle gourmand who could prepare a hundred
appetising dishes from nothing but potatoes. There is no doubt that I was
one-sided and even to some extent narrow, but I fancied at the time that
my intellectual horizon had neither beginning nor end, and that my thought
was as boundless as the sea. Well, as far as I can judge by myself, the
philosophy of which we are speaking has something alluring, narcotic in
its nature, like tobacco or morphia. It becomes a habit, a craving. You
take advantage of every minute of solitude to gloat over thoughts of the
aimlessness of life and the darkness of the grave. While I was sitting in
the summer-house, Greek children with long noses were decorously walking
about the avenues. I took advantage of the occasion and, looking at them,
began reflecting in this style:
“‘Why are these children born, and what are they living for?
Is there any sort of meaning in their existence? They grow up, without
themselves knowing what for; they will live in this God-forsaken,
comfortless hole for no sort of reason, and then they will die. . . .’
“And I actually felt vexed with those children because they were
walking about decorously and talking with dignity, as though they did not
hold their little colourless lives so cheap and knew what they were living
for. . . . I remember that far away at the end of an avenue three feminine
figures came into sight. Three young ladies, one in a pink dress, two in
white, were walking arm-in-arm, talking and laughing. Looking after them,
I thought:
“‘It wouldn’t be bad to have an affair with some woman
for a couple of days in this dull place.’
“I recalled by the way that it was three weeks since I had visited
my Petersburg lady, and thought that a passing love affair would come in
very appropriately for me just now. The young lady in white in the middle
was rather younger and better looking than her companions, and judging by
her manners and her laugh, she was a high-school girl in an upper form. I
looked, not without impure thoughts, at her bust, and at the same time
reflected about her: 'She will be trained in music and manners, she will
be married to some Greek—God help us!—will lead a grey,
stupid, comfortless life, will bring into the world a crowd of children
without knowing why, and then will die. An absurd life!’
“I must say that as a rule I was a great hand at combining my lofty
ideas with the lowest prose.
“Thoughts of the darkness of the grave did not prevent me from
giving busts and legs their full due. Our dear Baron’s exalted ideas
do not prevent him from going on Saturdays to Vukolovka on amatory
expeditions. To tell the honest truth, as far as I remember, my attitude
to women was most insulting. Now, when I think of that high-school girl, I
blush for my thoughts then, but at the time my conscience was perfectly
untroubled. I, the son of honourable parents, a Christian, who had
received a superior education, not naturally wicked or stupid, felt not
the slightest uneasiness when I paid women Blutgeld, as the Germans
call it, or when I followed high-school girls with insulting looks. . . .
The trouble is that youth makes its demands, and our philosophy has
nothing in principle against those demands, whether they are good or
whether they are loathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death
inevitable is not interested in the struggle against nature or the
conception of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don’t, you
will die and rot just the same. . . . Secondly, my friends, our philosophy
instils even into very young people what is called reasonableness. The
predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst us.
Direct feeling, inspiration—everything is choked by petty analysis.
Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold people—it’s
no use to disguise it—know nothing of chastity. That virtue is only
known to those who are warm, affectionate, and capable of love. Thirdly,
our philosophy denies the significance of each individual personality. It’s
easy to see that if I deny the personality of some Natalya Stepanovna, it’s
absolutely nothing to me whether she is insulted or not. To-day one
insults her dignity as a human being and pays her Blutgeld, and
next day thinks no more of her.
“So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Another
woman’s figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her head
uncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walked along the
avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking hold of the parapet,
looked indifferently below and into the distance over the sea. As she came
in she paid no attention to me, as though she did not notice me. I
scrutinised her from foot to head (not from head to foot, as one
scrutinises men) and found that she was young, not more than
five-and-twenty, nice-looking, with a good figure, in all probability
married and belonging to the class of respectable women. She was dressed
as though she were at home, but fashionably and with taste, as ladies are,
as a rule, in N.
“‘This one would do nicely,’ I thought, looking at her
handsome figure and her arms; ‘she is all right. . . . She is
probably the wife of some doctor or schoolmaster. . . .’
“But to make up to her—that is, to make her the heroine of one
of those impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone—was not
easy and, indeed, hardly possible. I felt that as I gazed at her face. The
way she looked, and the expression of her face, suggested that the sea,
the smoke in the distance, and the sky had bored her long, long ago, and
wearied her sight. She seemed to be tired, bored, and thinking about
something dreary, and her face had not even that fussy, affectedly
indifferent expression which one sees in the face of almost every woman
when she is conscious of the presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.
“The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, sat
down on a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw that she had
no thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance, did not
arouse in her even simple curiosity. But yet I made up my mind to speak to
her, and asked: ‘Madam, allow me to ask you at what time do the
waggonettes go from here to the town?’
“‘At ten or eleven, I believe. . . .’”
“I thanked her. She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly there
was a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on her passionless
face. . . . I made haste to assume an indifferent expression and to fall
into a suitable attitude; she was catching on! She suddenly jumped up from
the seat, as though something had bitten her, and examining me hurriedly,
with a gentle smile, asked timidly:
“‘Oh, aren’t you Ananyev?’
“‘Yes, I am Ananyev,’ I answered.
“‘And don’t you recognise me? No?’
“I was a little confused. I looked intently at her, and—would
you believe it?—I recognised her not from her face nor her figure,
but from her gentle, weary smile. It was Natalya Stepanovna, or, as she
was called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head over ears in love
with seven or eight years before, when I was wearing the uniform of a
high-school boy. The doings of far, vanished days, the days of long ago. .
. . I remember this Kisotchka, a thin little high-school girl of fifteen
or sixteen, when she was something just for a schoolboy’s taste,
created by nature especially for Platonic love. What a charming little
girl she was! Pale, fragile, light—she looked as though a breath
would send her flying like a feather to the skies—a gentle,
perplexed face, little hands, soft long hair to her belt, a waist as thin
as a wasp’s—altogether something ethereal, transparent like
moonlight—in fact, from the point of view of a high-school boy a
peerless beauty. . . . Wasn’t I in love with her! I did not sleep at
night. I wrote verses. . . . Sometimes in the evenings she would sit on a
seat in the park while we schoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently;
in response to our compliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would
shrink nervously from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile
gently, and at such times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten. As
we gazed at her every one of us had a desire to caress her and stroke her
like a cat, hence her nickname of Kisotchka.
“In the course of the seven or eight years since we had met,
Kisotchka had greatly changed. She had grown more robust and stouter, and
had quite lost the resemblance to a soft, fluffy kitten. It was not that
her features looked old or faded, but they had somehow lost their
brilliance and looked sterner, her hair seemed shorter, she looked taller,
and her shoulders were quite twice as broad, and what was most striking,
there was already in her face the expression of motherliness and
resignation commonly seen in respectable women of her age, and this, of
course, I had never seen in her before. . . . In short, of the
school-girlish and the Platonic her face had kept the gentle smile and
nothing more. . . .
“We got into conversation. Learning that I was already an engineer,
Kisotchka was immensely delighted.
“‘How good that is!’ she said, looking joyfully into my
face. ‘Ah, how good! And how splendid you all are! Of all who left
with you, not one has been a failure—they have all turned out well.
One an engineer, another a doctor, a third a teacher, another, they say,
is a celebrated singer in Petersburg. . . . You are all splendid, all of
you. . . . Ah, how good that is!’
“Kisotchka’s eyes shone with genuine goodwill and gladness.
She was admiring me like an elder sister or a former governess. ‘While
I looked at her sweet face and thought, It wouldn’t be bad to get
hold of her to-day!’
“‘Do you remember, Natalya Stepanovna,’ I asked her,
‘how I once brought you in the park a bouquet with a note in it? You
read my note, and such a look of bewilderment came into your face. . . .’
“‘No, I don’t remember that,’ she said, laughing.
‘But I remember how you wanted to challenge Florens to a duel over
me. . . .’
“‘Well, would you believe it, I don’t remember that. . .
.’
“‘Well, that’s all over and done with . . .’
sighed Kisotchka. ‘At one time I was your idol, and now it is my
turn to look up to all of you. . . .’
“From further conversation I learned that two years after leaving
the high school, Kisotchka had been married to a resident in the town who
was half Greek, half Russian, had a post either in the bank or in the
insurance society, and also carried on a trade in corn. He had a strange
surname, something in the style of Populaki or Skarandopulo. . . .
Goodness only knows—I have forgotten. . . . As a matter of fact,
Kisotchka spoke little and with reluctance about herself. The conversation
was only about me. She asked me about the College of Engineering, about my
comrades, about Petersburg, about my plans, and everything I said moved
her to eager delight and exclamations of, ‘Oh, how good that is!’
“We went down to the sea and walked over the sands; then when the
night air began to blow chill and damp from the sea we climbed up again.
All the while our talk was of me and of the past. We walked about until
the reflection of the sunset had died away from the windows of the summer
villas.
“‘Come in and have some tea,’ Kisotchka suggested.
‘The samovar must have been on the table long ago. . . . I am alone
at home,’ she said, as her villa came into sight through the green
of the acacias. ‘My husband is always in the town and only comes
home at night, and not always then, and I must own that I am so dull that
it’s simply deadly.’
“I followed her in, admiring her back and shoulders. I was glad that
she was married. Married women are better material for temporary love
affairs than girls. I was also pleased that her husband was not at home.
At the same time I felt that the affair would not come off. . . .
“We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low
ceilings, and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians like
having at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniture which
they are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), but from certain
details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husband were not badly off,
and must be spending five or six thousand roubles a year. I remember that
in the middle of the room which Kisotchka called the dining-room there was
a round table, supported for some reason on six legs, and on it a samovar
and cups. At the edge of the table lay an open book, a pencil, and an
exercise book. I glanced at the book and recognised it as ‘Malinin
and Burenin’s Arithmetical Examples.’ It was open, as I now
remember, at the ‘Rules of Compound Interest.’
“‘To whom are you giving lessons?’ I asked Kisotchka.
“‘Nobody,’ she answered. ‘I am just doing some. .
. . I have nothing to do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and
do sums.’
“‘Have you any children?’
“‘I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.’
“We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good
it was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success. And the
more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the stronger was my
conviction that I should go away without having gained my object. I was a
connoisseur in love affairs in those days, and could accurately gauge my
chances of success. You can boldly reckon on success if you are tracking
down a fool or a woman as much on the look out for new experiences and
sensations as yourself, or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If
you come across a sensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression
of weary submission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your
presence, and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To
succeed in that case needs longer than one day.
“And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by
day. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me too, and
the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not at home, no
servants visible, stillness around. . . . Though I had little confidence
in success, I made up my mind to begin the attack anyway. First of all it
was necessary to get into a familiar tone and to change Kisotchka’s
lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous one.
“‘Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,’ I
began. 'Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the
sake of old times, to call you Kisotchka.’
“She allowed me.
“‘Tell me, please, Kisotchka,’ I went on, ‘what is
the matter with all the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old
days they were all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one
asks about anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked at
human nature. . . . One young lady has eloped with an officer; another has
run away and carried off a high-school boy with her; another—a
married woman—has run away from her husband with an actor; a fourth
has left her husband and gone off with an officer, and so on and so on. It’s
a regular epidemic! If it goes on like this there won’t be a girl or
a young woman left in your town!’
“I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in
response I should have gone on in this style: ‘You had better look
out, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!’
She would have dropped her eyes and said: ‘As though anyone would
care to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking . . . .’
And I should have said: ‘Nonsense, Kisotchka—I for one should
be delighted!’ And so on in that style, and it would all have gone
swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; on the contrary, she
looked grave and sighed.
“‘All you have been told is true,’ she said. ‘My
cousin Sonya ran away from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is
wrong. . . . Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but
I do not condemn them or blame them. . . . Circumstances are sometimes too
strong for anyone!’
“‘That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce a
regular epidemic?’
“‘It’s very simple and easy to understand,’
replied Kisotchka, raising her eyebrows. ‘There is absolutely
nothing for us educated girls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone
is able to go to the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas,
in fact, as men do. They have to be married. . . . And whom would you have
them marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to the University,
never to return to your native town again, and you marry in Petersburg or
Moscow, while the girls remain. . . . To whom are they to be married? Why,
in the absence of decent cultured men, goodness knows what sort of men
they marry—stockbrokers and such people of all kinds, who can do
nothing but drink and get into rows at the club. . . . A girl married like
that, at random. . . . And what is her life like afterwards? You can
understand: a well-educated, cultured woman is living with a stupid,
boorish man; if she meets a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a
doctor—well, she gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to
her, and she runs away from her husband. And one can’t condemn her!’
“‘If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, of course,’ said Kisotchka with a sigh, ‘but
you know every girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . .
Altogether life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life
is stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here they
laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if they could see
into her soul they would not laugh. . . .’”
Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one, then
howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the wall of the
hut. . . . Ananyev’s face was puckered with pity; he broke off his
story and went out. For two minutes he could be heard outside comforting
his dog. “Good dog! poor dog!”
“Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking,” said Von
Schtenberg, laughing. “He is a good fellow,” he added after a
brief silence.
Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling and
stroking his chest, went on:
“And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put
off my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned myself to
my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is more, under the
influence of Kisotchka’s voice, the evening air, and the stillness,
I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental mood. I remember I sat in
an easy chair by the wide-open window and glanced at the trees and
darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias and the lime trees were just the
same as they had been eight years before; just as then, in the days of my
childhood, somewhere far away there was the tinkling of a wretched piano,
and the public had just the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the
avenues, but the people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked
now not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboys
and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. When to my
inquiries about acquaintances I five times received from Kisotchka the
answer, ‘He is dead,’ my melancholy changed into the feeling
one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sitting there at the
window, looking at the promenading public and listening to the tinkling
piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first time in my life with what
eagerness one generation hastens to replace another, and what a momentous
significance even some seven or eight years may have in a man’s
life!
“Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off,
grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about something or other.
Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness. And time
passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of the acacias and
lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer walking up and down
the avenues, the piano was silent and the only sound was the even murmur
of the sea.
“Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make much
of him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractive and
he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talk and talk and
talk. . . . His hosts cannot keep their eyes open, it’s past their
bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That was what I did. Once I chanced
to look at the clock; it was half-past ten. I began saying good-bye.
“‘Have another glass before your walk,’ said Kisotchka.
“I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot it
was time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men’s
voices, footsteps and the clank of spurs.
“‘I think my husband has come in . . . .’ said Kisotchka
listening.
“The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I saw
two men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout, solid,
dark man with a hooked nose, wearing a straw hat, and the other a young
officer in a white tunic. As they passed the door they both glanced
casually and indifferently at Kisotchka and me, and I fancied both of them
were drunk.
“‘She told you a lie then, and you believed her!’ we
heard a loud voice with a marked nasal twang say a minute later. ‘To
begin with, it wasn’t at the big club but at the little one.’
“‘You are angry, Jupiter, so you are wrong . . . .’ said
another voice, obviously the officer’s, laughing and coughing.
‘I say, can I stay the night? Tell me honestly, shall I be in your
way?’
“‘What a question! Not only you can, but you must. What will
you have, beer or wine?’
“They were sitting two rooms away from us, talking loudly, and
apparently feeling no interest in Kisotchka or her visitor. A perceptible
change came over Kisotchka on her husband’s arrival. At first she
flushed red, then her face wore a timid, guilty expression; she seemed to
be troubled by some anxiety, and I began to fancy that she was ashamed to
show me her husband and wanted me to go.
“I began taking leave. Kisotchka saw me to the front door. I
remember well her gentle mournful smile and kind patient eyes as she
pressed my hand and said:
“‘Most likely we shall never see each other again. Well, God
give you every blessing. Thank you!’
“Not one sigh, not one fine phrase. As she said good-bye she was
holding the candle in her hand; patches of light danced over her face and
neck, as though chasing her mournful smile. I pictured to myself the old
Kisotchka whom one used to want to stroke like a cat, I looked intently at
the present Kisotchka, and for some reason recalled her words: ‘Everyone
ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him.’ And I had a pang
at my heart. I instinctively guessed how it was, and my conscience
whispered to me that I, in my happiness and indifference, was face to face
with a good, warm-hearted, loving creature, who was broken by suffering.
“I said good-bye and went to the gate. By now it was quite dark. In
the south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets dark rapidly.
Towards ten o’clock it is so dark that you can’t see an inch
before your nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before, almost
groping, I found my way to the gate.
“‘Cab!’ I shouted, going out of the gate; not a sound,
not a sigh in answer. . . . ‘Cab,’ I repeated, ‘hey,
Cab!’
“But there was no cab of any description. The silence of the grave.
I could hear nothing but the murmur of the drowsy sea and the beating of
my heart from the wine. Lifting my eyes to the sky I found not a single
star. It was dark and sullen. Evidently the sky was covered with clouds.
For some reason I shrugged my shoulders, smiling foolishly, and once more,
not quite so resolutely, shouted for a cab.
“The echo answered me. A walk of three miles across open country and
in the pitch dark was not an agreeable prospect. Before making up my mind
to walk, I spent a long time deliberating and shouting for a cab; then,
shrugging my shoulders, I walked lazily back to the copse, with no
definite object in my mind. It was dreadfully dark in the copse. Here and
there between the trees the windows of the summer villas glowed a dull
red. A raven, disturbed by my steps and the matches with which I lighted
my way to the summer-house, flew from tree to tree and rustled among the
leaves. I felt vexed and ashamed, and the raven seemed to understand this,
and croaked 'krrra!’ I was vexed that I had to walk, and ashamed
that I had stayed on at Kisotchka’s, chatting like a boy.
“I made my way to the summer-house, felt for the seat and sat down.
Far below me, behind a veil of thick darkness, the sea kept up a low angry
growl. I remember that, as though I were blind, I could see neither sky
nor sea, nor even the summer-house in which I was sitting. And it seemed
to me as though the whole world consisted only of the thoughts that were
straying through my head, dizzy from the wine, and of an unseen power
murmuring monotonously somewhere below. And afterwards, as I sank into a
doze, it began to seem that it was not the sea murmuring, but my thoughts,
and that the whole world consisted of nothing but me. And concentrating
the whole world in myself in this way, I thought no more of cabs, of the
town, and of Kisotchka, and abandoned myself to the sensation I was so
fond of: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation when you feel that in
the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone exist. It is a proud,
demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians whose thoughts and
sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as their plains, their
forests, and their snow. If I had been an artist I should certainly have
depicted the expression of a Russian’s face when he sits motionless
and, with his legs under him and his head clasped in his hands, abandons
himself to this sensation. . . . And together with this sensation come
thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of death, and of the darkness of the
grave. . . . The thoughts are not worth a brass farthing, but the
expression of face must be fine. . . .
“While I was sitting and dozing, unable to bring myself to get up—I
was warm and comfortable—all at once, against the even monotonous
murmur of the sea, as though upon a canvas, sounds began to grow distinct
which drew my attention from myself. . . . Someone was coming hurriedly
along the avenue. Reaching the summer-house this someone stopped, gave a
sob like a little girl, and said in the voice of a weeping child: ‘My
God, when will it all end! Merciful Heavens!’
“Judging from the voice and the weeping I took it to be a little
girl of ten or twelve. She walked irresolutely into the summer-house, sat
down, and began half-praying, half-complaining aloud. . . .
“‘Merciful God!’ she said, crying, ‘it’s
unbearable. It’s beyond all endurance! I suffer in silence, but I
want to live too. . . . Oh, my God! My God!’
“And so on in the same style.
“I wanted to look at the child and speak to her. So as not to
frighten her I first gave a loud sigh and coughed, then cautiously struck
a match. . . . There was a flash of bright light in the darkness, which
lighted up the weeping figure. It was Kisotchka!”
“Marvels upon marvels!” said Von Schtenberg with a sigh.
“Black night, the murmur of the sea; she in grief, he with a
sensation of world—solitude. . . . It’s too much of a good
thing. . . . You only want Circassians with daggers to complete it.”
“I am not telling you a tale, but fact.”
“Well, even if it is a fact . . . it all proves nothing, and there
is nothing new in it. . . .”
“Wait a little before you find fault! Let me finish,” said
Ananyev, waving his hand with vexation; “don’t interfere,
please! I am not telling you, but the doctor. . . . Well,” he went
on, addressing me and glancing askance at the student who bent over his
books and seemed very well satisfied at having gibed at the engineer—“well,
Kisotchka was not surprised or frightened at seeing me. It seemed as
though she had known beforehand that she would find me in the
summer-house. She was breathing in gasps and trembling all over as though
in a fever, while her tear-stained face, so far as I could distinguish it
as I struck match after match, was not the intelligent, submissive weary
face I had seen before, but something different, which I cannot understand
to this day. It did not express pain, nor anxiety, nor misery—nothing
of what was expressed by her words and her tears. . . . I must own that,
probably because I did not understand it, it looked to me senseless and as
though she were drunk.
“‘I can’t bear it,’ muttered Kisotchka in the
voice of a crying child. ‘It’s too much for me, Nikolay
Anastasyitch. Forgive me, Nikolav Anastasyitch. I can’t go on living
like this. . . . I am going to the town to my mother’s. . . . Take
me there. . . . Take me there, for God’s sake!’
“In the presence of tears I can neither speak nor be silent. I was
flustered and muttered some nonsense trying to comfort her.
“‘No, no; I will go to my mother’s,’ said
Kisotchka resolutely, getting up and clutching my arm convulsively (her
hands and her sleeves were wet with tears). ‘Forgive me, Nikolay
Anastasyitch, I am going. . . . I can bear no more. . . .’
“‘Kisotchka, but there isn’t a single cab,’ I
said. ‘How can you go?’
“‘No matter, I’ll walk. . . . It’s not far. I can’t
bear it. . . .’
“I was embarrassed, but not touched. Kisotchka’s tears, her
trembling, and the blank expression of her face suggested to me a trivial,
French or Little Russian melodrama, in which every ounce of cheap shallow
feeling is washed down with pints of tears.
“I didn’t understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I ought
to have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear my silence
might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try to persuade her not to
go to her mother’s, but to stay at home. When people cry, they don’t
like their tears to be seen. And I lighted match after match and went on
striking till the box was empty. What I wanted with this ungenerous
illumination, I can’t conceive to this day. Cold-hearted people are
apt to be awkward, and even stupid.
“In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off. Going out of the
gate, we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft dusty
road. It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to the darkness, I
began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old gaunt oaks and lime trees
which bordered the road. The jagged, precipitous cliffs, intersected here
and there by deep, narrow ravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a
black streak on the right. Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like
sitting figures. It was uncanny. I looked sideways suspiciously at the
cliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the stillness of the country alarmed
my imagination. Kisotchka did not speak. She was still trembling, and
before she had gone half a mile she was exhausted with walking and was out
of breath. I too was silent.
“Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was a
deserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in which there
had once been a steam flour mill. It stood solitary on the cliff, and by
day it could be seen for a long distance, both by sea and by land. Because
it was deserted and no one lived in it, and because there was an echo in
it which distinctly repeated the steps and voices of passers-by, it seemed
mysterious. Picture me in the dark night arm-in-arm with a woman who was
running away from her husband near this tall long monster which repeated
the sound of every step I took and stared at me fixedly with its hundred
black windows. A normal young man would have been moved to romantic
feelings in such surroundings, but I looked at the dark windows and
thought: ‘All this is very impressive, but time will come when of
that building and of Kisotchka and her troubles and of me with my
thoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . . All is nonsense and
vanity. . . .’
“When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, took her
arm out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, but in her own:
“‘Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you.
But I am terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy! It’s
impossible to imagine it! I don’t tell you about it because one can’t
talk about it. . . . Such a life, such a life! . . .’
“Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned as
though she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain.
“‘Such a life!’ she repeated with horror, with the
cadence and the southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in
women gives to emotional speech the effect of singing. ‘It is a
life! Ah, my God, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!’
“As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged her
shoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. She spoke
as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and reminded me of a
celebrated Little Russian actress.
“‘Great God, it is as though I were in a pit,’ she went
on. ‘If one could live for one minute in happiness as other people
live! Oh, my God, my God! I have come to such disgrace that before a
stranger I am running away from my husband by night, like some
disreputable creature! Can I expect anything good after that?’
“As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyed
that she was not on good terms with her husband. ‘It would be nice
to have got on into relations with her!’ flitted through my mind;
and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the way and
grew more and more alluring.
“About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the
cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood a stone
windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived. We passed the
mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the gates of the
cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:
“‘I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God
bless you, but I am going back. I am not frightened.’
“‘Well, what next!’ I said, disconcerted. ‘If you
are going, you had better go!’
“‘I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing that
mattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put all sort of
ideas into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, and my husband said
rude things to me before that officer, and I could not bear it. . . . And
what’s the good of my going to the town to my mother’s? Will
that make me any happier? I must go back. . . . But never mind . . . let
us go on,’ said Kisotchka, and she laughed. 'It makes no difference!’
“I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an
inscription: ‘The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the
grave will hear the voice of the Son of God.’ I knew very well that
sooner or later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in the
white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard; I knew that
an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walking beside me. All this I
recognised distinctly, but at the same time I was troubled by an
oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka would turn back, and that I
should not manage to say to her what had to be said. Never at any other
time in my life have thoughts of a higher order been so closely interwoven
with the basest animal prose as on that night. . . . It was horrible!
“Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High
Street, where Kisotchka’s mother lived, we dismissed the cab and
walked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while I
looked at her, and I raged at myself, ‘Why don’t you begin?
Now’s the time!’ About twenty paces from the hotel where I was
staying, Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears.
“‘Nikolay Anastasyitch!’ she said, crying and laughing
and looking at me with wet shining eyes, ‘I shall never forget your
sympathy . . . . How good you are! All of you are so splendid—all of
you! Honest, great-hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!’
“She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense of the
word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with the emotion and
enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearly written regret
that she so rarely saw such people, and that God had not vouchsafed her
the bliss of being the wife of one of them. She muttered, ‘Ah, how
splendid it is!’ The childish gladness on her face, the tears, the
gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escaped from under the kerchief,
and the kerchief itself thrown carelessly over her head, in the light of
the street lamp reminded me of the old Kisotchka whom one had wanted to
stroke like a kitten.
“I could not restrain myself, and began stroking her hair, her
shoulders, and her hands.
“‘Kisotchka, what do you want?’ I muttered. ‘I’ll
go to the ends of the earth with you if you like! I will take you out of
this hole and give you happiness. I love you. . . . Let us go, my sweet?
Yes? Will you?’
“Kisotchka’s face was flooded with bewilderment. She stepped
back from the street lamp and, completely overwhelmed, gazed at me with
wide-open eyes. I gripped her by the arm, began showering kisses on her
face, her neck, her shoulders, and went on making vows and promises. In
love affairs vows and promises are almost a physiological necessity. There’s
no getting on without them. Sometimes you know you are lying and that
promises are not necessary, but still you vow and protest. Kisotchka,
utterly overwhelmed, kept staggering back and gazing at me with round
eyes.
“‘Please don’t! Please don’t!’ she muttered,
holding me off with her hands.
“I clasped her tightly in my arms. All at once she broke into
hysterical tears. And her face had the same senseless blank expression
that I had seen in the summer-house when I lighted the matches. Without
asking her consent, preventing her from speaking, I dragged her forcibly
towards my hotel. She seemed almost swooning and did not walk, but I took
her under the arms and almost carried her. . . . I remember, as we were
going up the stairs, some man with a red band in his cap looked
wonderingly at me and bowed to Kisotchka. . . .”
Ananyev flushed crimson and paused. He walked up and down near the table
in silence, scratched the back of his head with an air of vexation, and
several times shrugged his shoulders and twitched his shoulder-blades,
while a shiver ran down his huge back. The memory was painful and made him
ashamed, and he was struggling with himself.
“It’s horrible!” he said, draining a glass of wine and
shaking his head. “I am told that in every introductory lecture on
women’s diseases the medical students are admonished to remember
that each one of them has a mother, a sister, a fiancée, before undressing
and examining a female patient. . . . That advice would be very good not
only for medical students but for everyone who in one way or another has
to deal with a woman’s life. Now that I have a wife and a little
daughter, oh, how well I understand that advice! How I understand it, my
God! You may as well hear the rest, though. . . . As soon as she had
become my mistress, Kisotchka’s view of the position was very
different from mine. First of all she felt for me a deep and passionate
love. What was for me an ordinary amatory episode was for her an absolute
revolution in her life. I remember, it seemed to me that she had gone out
of her mind. Happy for the first time in her life, looking five years
younger, with an inspired enthusiastic face, not knowing what to do with
herself for happiness, she laughed and cried and never ceased dreaming
aloud how next day we would set off for the Caucasus, then in the autumn
to Petersburg; how we would live afterwards.
“‘Don’t worry yourself about my husband,’ she said
to reassure me. 'He is bound to give me a divorce. Everyone in the town
knows that he is living with the elder Kostovitch. We will get a divorce
and be married.’
“When women love they become acclimatised and at home with people
very quickly, like cats. Kisotchka had only spent an hour and a half in my
room when she already felt as though she were at home and was ready to
treat my property as though it were her own. She packed my things in my
portmanteau, scolded me for not hanging my new expensive overcoat on a peg
instead of flinging it on a chair, and so on.
“I looked at her, listened, and felt weariness and vexation. I was
conscious of a slight twinge of horror at the thought that a respectable,
honest, and unhappy woman had so easily, after some three or four hours,
succumbed to the first man she met. As a respectable man, you see, I didn’t
like it. Then, too, I was unpleasantly impressed by the fact that women of
Kisotchka’s sort, not deep or serious, are too much in love with
life, and exalt what is in reality such a trifle as love for a man to the
level of bliss, misery, a complete revolution in life. . . . Moreover, now
that I was satisfied, I was vexed with myself for having been so stupid as
to get entangled with a woman whom I should have to deceive. And in spite
of my disorderly life I must observe that I could not bear telling lies.
“I remember that Kisotchka sat down at my feet, laid her head on my
knees, and, looking at me with shining, loving eyes, asked:
“‘Kolya, do you love me? Very, very much?’
“And she laughed with happiness. . . . This struck me as
sentimental, affected, and not clever; and meanwhile I was already
inclined to look for ‘depth of thought’ before everything.
“‘Kisotchka, you had better go home,’ I said, or else
your people will be sure to miss you and will be looking for you all over
the town; and it would be awkward for you to go to your mother in the
morning.’
“Kisotchka agreed. At parting we arranged to meet at midday next
morning in the park, and the day after to set off together to Pyatigorsk.
I went into the street to see her home, and I remember that I caressed her
with genuine tenderness on the way. There was a minute when I felt
unbearably sorry for her, for trusting me so implicitly, and I made up my
mind that I would really take her to Pyatigorsk, but remembering that I
had only six hundred roubles in my portmanteau, and that it would be far
more difficult to break it off with her in the autumn than now, I made
haste to suppress my compassion.
“We reached the house where Kisotchka’s mother lived. I pulled
at the bell. When footsteps were heard at the other side of the door
Kisotchka suddenly looked grave, glanced upwards to the sky, made the sign
of the Cross over me several times and, clutching my hand, pressed it to
her lips.
“‘Till to-morrow,’ she said, and disappeared into the
house.
“I crossed to the opposite pavement and from there looked at the
house. At first the windows were in darkness, then in one of the windows
there was the glimmer of the faint bluish flame of a newly lighted candle;
the flame grew, gave more light, and I saw shadows moving about the rooms
together with it.
“‘They did not expect her,’ I thought.
“Returning to my hotel room I undressed, drank off a glass of red
wine, ate some fresh caviare which I had bought that day in the bazaar,
went to bed in a leisurely way, and slept the sound, untroubled sleep of a
tourist.
“In the morning I woke up with a headache and in a bad humour.
Something worried me.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I asked myself, trying to
explain my uneasiness. 'What’s upsetting me?’
“And I put down my uneasiness to the dread that Kisotchka might turn
up any minute and prevent my going away, and that I should have to tell
lies and act a part before her. I hurriedly dressed, packed my things, and
left the hotel, giving instructions to the porter to take my luggage to
the station for the seven o’clock train in the evening. I spent the
whole day with a doctor friend and left the town that evening. As you see,
my philosophy did not prevent me from taking to my heels in a mean and
treacherous flight. . . .
“All the while that I was at my friend’s, and afterwards
driving to the station, I was tormented by anxiety. I fancied that I was
afraid of meeting with Kisotchka and a scene. In the station I purposely
remained in the toilet room till the second bell rang, and while I was
making my way to my compartment, I was oppressed by a feeling as though I
were covered all over with stolen things. With what impatience and terror
I waited for the third bell!
“At last the third bell that brought my deliverance rang at last,
the train moved; we passed the prison, the barracks, came out into the
open country, and yet, to my surprise, the feeling of uneasiness still
persisted, and still I felt like a thief passionately longing to escape.
It was queer. To distract my mind and calm myself I looked out of the
window. The train ran along the coast. The sea was smooth, and the
turquoise sky, almost half covered with the tender, golden crimson light
of sunset, was gaily and serenely mirrored in it. Here and there fishing
boats and rafts made black patches on its surface. The town, as clean and
beautiful as a toy, stood on the high cliff, and was already shrouded in
the mist of evening. The golden domes of its churches, the windows and the
greenery reflected the setting sun, glowing and melting like shimmering
gold. . . . The scent of the fields mingled with the soft damp air from
the sea.
“The train flew rapidly along. I heard the laughter of passengers
and guards. Everyone was good-humoured and light-hearted, yet my
unaccountable uneasiness grew greater and greater. . . . I looked at the
white mist that covered the town and I imagined how a woman with a
senseless blank face was hurrying up and down in that mist by the churches
and the houses, looking for me and moaning, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’
in the voice of a little girl or the cadences of a Little Russian actress.
I recalled her grave face and big anxious eyes as she made the sign of the
Cross over me, as though I belonged to her, and mechanically I looked at
the hand which she had kissed the day before.
“‘Surely I am not in love?’ I asked myself, scratching
my hand.
“Only as night came on when the passengers were asleep and I was
left tête-à-tête with my conscience, I began to understand what I
had not been able to grasp before. In the twilight of the railway carriage
the image of Kisotchka rose before me, haunted me and I recognised clearly
that I had committed a crime as bad as murder. My conscience tormented me.
To stifle this unbearable feeling, I assured myself that everything was
nonsense and vanity, that Kisotchka and I would die and decay, that her
grief was nothing in comparison with death, and so on and so on . . . and
that if you come to that, there is no such thing as freewill, and that
therefore I was not to blame. But all these arguments only irritated me
and were extraordinarily quickly crowded out by other thoughts. There was
a miserable feeling in the hand that Kisotchka had kissed. . . . I kept
lying down and getting up again, drank vodka at the stations, forced
myself to eat bread and butter, fell to assuring myself again that life
had no meaning, but nothing was of any use. A strange and if you like
absurd ferment was going on in my brain. The most incongruous ideas
crowded one after another in disorder, getting more and more tangled,
thwarting each other, and I, the thinker, 'with my brow bent on the earth,’
could make out nothing and could not find my bearings in this mass of
essential and non-essential ideas. It appeared that I, the thinker, had
not mastered the technique of thinking, and that I was no more capable of
managing my own brain than mending a watch. For the first time in my life
I was really thinking eagerly and intensely, and that seemed to me so
monstrous that I said to myself: ‘I am going off my head.’ A
man whose brain does not work at all times, but only at painful moments,
is often haunted by the thought of madness.
“I spent a day and a night in this misery, then a second night, and
learning from experience how little my philosophy was to me, I came to my
senses and realised at last what sort of a creature I was. I saw that my
ideas were not worth a brass farthing, and that before meeting Kisotchka I
had not begun to think and had not even a conception of what thinking in
earnest meant; now through suffering I realised that I had neither
convictions nor a definite moral standard, nor heart, nor reason; my whole
intellectual and moral wealth consisted of specialist knowledge,
fragments, useless memories, other people’s ideas—and nothing
else; and my mental processes were as lacking in complexity, as useless
and as rudimentary as a Yakut’s. . . . If I had disliked lying, had
not stolen, had not murdered, and, in fact, made obviously gross mistakes,
that was not owing to my convictions—I had none, but because I was
in bondage, hand and foot, to my nurse’s fairy tales and to
copy-book morals, which had entered into my flesh and blood and without my
noticing it guided me in life, though I looked on them as absurd. . . .
“I realised that I was not a thinker, not a philosopher, but simply
a dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain with promise
of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six,
undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed down by any
stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with information of a sort
in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiological craving for
exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all at once quite casually
the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of life and the darkness beyond the
tomb descends upon it. It greedily sucks it in, puts its whole outlook at
its disposal and begins playing with it, like a cat with a mouse. There is
neither learning nor system in the brain, but that does not matter. It
deals with the great ideas with its own innate powers, like a
self-educated man, and before a month has passed the owner of the brain
can turn a potato into a hundred dainty dishes, and fancies himself a
philosopher . . . .
“Our generation has carried this dilettantism, this playing with
serious ideas into science, into literature, into politics, and into
everything which it is not too lazy to go into, and with its dilettantism
has introduced, too, its coldness, its boredom, and its one-sidedness and,
as it seems to me, it has already succeeded in developing in the masses a
new hitherto non-existent attitude to serious ideas.
“I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance,
thanks to a misfortune. My normal thinking, so it seems to me now, dates
from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my conscience sent
me flying back to N., when with no philosophical subleties I repented,
besought Kisotchka’s forgiveness like a naughty boy and wept with
her. . . .”
Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka.
“H’m. . . .” the student filtered through his teeth when
the engineer had finished. “That’s the sort of thing that
happens.”
His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev’s
story had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer after a
moment’s pause, began expounding his view again and repeating what
he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up from the table
and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and began undressing.
“You look as though you have really convinced some one this time,”
he said irritably.
“Me convince anybody!” said the engineer. “My dear soul,
do you suppose I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you is
impossible. You can reach conviction only by way of personal experience
and suffering!”
“And then—it’s queer logic!” grumbled the student
as he put on his nightshirt. “The ideas which you so dislike, which
are so ruinous for the young are, according to you, the normal thing for
the old; it’s as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . .
Where do the old get this privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas
are poison, they are equally poisonous for all?”
“Oh, no, my dear soul, don’t say so!” said the engineer
with a sly wink. “Don’t say so. In the first place, old men
are not dilettanti. Their pessimism comes to them not casually from
outside, but from the depths of their own brains, and only after they have
exhaustively studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered,
have made no end of mistakes, in fact—when they have climbed the
whole ladder from bottom to top. Their pessimism has both personal
experience and sound philosophic training behind it. Secondly, the
pessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, as it does
with you and me, but of Weltschmertz, of suffering; it rests in
them on a Christian foundation because it is derived from love for
humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirely free from the
egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti. You despise life because its
meaning and its object are hidden just from you, and you are only afraid
of your own death, while the real thinker is unhappy because the truth is
hidden from all and he is afraid for all men. For instance, there is
living not far from here the Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a
nice old man. At one time he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write
something; the devil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably
clever fellow and in philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and he
is continually reading now. Well, we came across him lately in the
Gruzovsky district. . . . They were laying the sleepers and rails just at
the time. It’s not a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch, not being
a specialist, looked at it as though it were a conjuring trick. It takes
an experienced workman less than a minute to lay a sleeper and fix a rail
on it. The workmen were in good form and really were working smartly and
rapidly; one rascal in particular brought his hammer down with exceptional
smartness on the head of the nail and drove it in at one blow, though the
handle of the hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a
foot long. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved,
and said to me with tears in his eyes:
“‘What a pity that these splendid men will die!’ Such
pessimism I understand.”
“All that proves nothing and explains nothing,” said the
student, covering himself up with a sheet; “all that is simply
pounding liquid in a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can be
proved by words.”
He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowning
irritably, said quickly:
“One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and to
ascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disprove anything
you like with words, and people will soon perfect the technique of
language to such a point that they will prove with mathematical certainty
that twice two is seven. I am fond of reading and listening, but as to
believing, no thank you; I can’t, and I don’t want to. I
believe only in God, but as for you, if you talk to me till the Second
Coming and seduce another five hundred Kisothchkas, I shall believe in you
only when I go out of my mind . . . . Goodnight.”
The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towards the
wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did not want to speak
or listen. The argument ended at that.
Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and I saw the
lights once more.
“We have tired you out with our chatter,” said Ananyev,
yawning and looking at the sky. “Well, my good sir! The only
pleasure we have in this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . .
What an embankment, Lord have mercy on us!” he said admiringly, as
we approached the embankment; “it is more like Mount Ararat than an
embankment.”
He paused for a little, then said: “Those lights remind the Baron of
the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts of man.
. . . You know the thoughts of each individual man are scattered like that
in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards some goal in the midst of
the darkness and, without shedding light on anything, without lighting up
the night, they vanish somewhere far beyond old age. But enough
philosophising! It’s time to go bye-bye.”
When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take his
bed.
“Oh please!” he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his
heart. “I entreat you, and don’t worry about me! I can sleep
anywhere, and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do—it’s
a favour!”
I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table and
set to work on the plans.
“We fellows have no time for sleep,” he said in a low voice
when I had got into bed and shut my eyes. “When a man has a wife and
two children he can’t think of sleep. One must think now of food and
clothes and saving for the future. And I have two of them, a little son
and a daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little face. He’s
not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities, I assure you. . .
. I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . . Ah, my children, my
children!”
He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began looking
at them. I fell asleep.
I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. Von Schtenberg
with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the doorway dressed in his
underclothes, talking loudly with some one . . . . It was getting light. A
gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping in at the door, at the windows, and
through the crevices in the hut walls, and casting a faint light on my
bed, on the table with the papers, and on Ananyev. Stretched on the floor
on a cloak, with a leather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep
with his fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that I
pitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleep in the
same room with him every night.
“Why on earth are we to take them?” shouted Von Schtenberg.
“It has nothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the
cauldrons come?”
“From Nikitin . . .” a bass voice answered gruffly.
“Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That’s not in our
department. What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!”
“Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already,” said the
bass voice still more gruffly. “Yesterday we were the whole day
looking for him down the line, and were told at his hut that he had gone
to the Dymkovsky section. Please take them, your honour! How much longer
are we to go carting them about? We go carting them on and on along the
line, and see no end to it.”
“What is it?” Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his
head quickly.
“They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin’s,” said
the student, “and he is begging us to take them. And what business
is it of ours to take them?”
“Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right! The horses have
been two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry. Are we
to take them back, or what? The railway ordered the cauldrons, so it ought
to take them. . . .”
“Can’t you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to
do with us? Go on to Tchalisov!”
“What is it? Who’s there?” Ananyev asked huskily again.
“Damnation take them all,” he said, getting up and going to
the door. “What is it?”
I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut. Ananyev and the
student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrily and
impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing before them
bare-headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently not understanding them.
Both faces looked preoccupied with workaday cares.
“What use are your cauldrons to me,” shouted Ananyev. “Am
I to put them on my head, or what? If you can’t find Tchalisov, find
his assistant, and leave us in peace!”
Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of the previous
night. The workaday expression vanished from his sleepy face and a look of
mental inertia came into it. He waved the peasant off and walked away
absorbed in thought.
It was a cloudy morning. On the line where the lights had been gleaming
the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep, were swarming.
There was a sound of voices and the squeaking of wheelbarrows. The working
day was beginning. One poor little nag harnessed with cord was already
plodding towards the embankment, tugging with its neck, and dragging along
a cartful of sand.
I began saying good-bye. . . . A great deal had been said in the night,
but I carried away with me no answer to any question, and in the morning,
of the whole conversation there remained in my memory, as in a filter,
only the lights and the image of Kisotchka. As I got on the horse, I
looked at the student and Ananyev for the last time, at the hysterical dog
with the lustreless, tipsy-looking eyes, at the workmen flitting to and
fro in the morning fog, at the embankment, at the little nag straining
with its neck, and thought:
“There is no making out anything in this world.”
And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a little
later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain and the cold
overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were discussed in the night.
I pondered while the sun-scorched plain, the immense sky, the oak forest,
dark on the horizon and the hazy distance, seemed saying to me:
“Yes, there’s no understanding anything in this world!”
The sun began to rise. . . .
——
Only one year has passed since that night, and Vassilyev has hardly had
time to wear out the boots in which he tramped through the mud behind his
wife’s coffin.
At the present time as I finish this story, he is sitting in my
drawing-room and, playing on the piano, is showing the ladies how
provincial misses sing sentimental songs. The ladies are laughing, and he
is laughing too. He is enjoying himself.
I call him into my study. Evidently not pleased at my taking him from
agreeable company, he comes to me and stands before me in the attitude of
a man who has no time to spare. I give him this story, and ask him to read
it. Always condescending about my authorship, he stifles a sigh, the sigh
of a lazy reader, sits down in an armchair and begins upon it.
“Hang it all, what horrors,” he mutters with a smile.
But the further he gets into the reading, the graver his face becomes. At
last, under the stress of painful memories, he turns terribly pale, he
gets up and goes on reading as he stands. When he has finished he begins
pacing from corner to corner.
“How does it end?” I ask him.
“How does it end? H’m. . . .”
He looks at the room, at me, at himself. . . . He sees his new fashionable
suit, hears the ladies laughing and . . . sinking on a chair, begins
laughing as he laughed on that night.
“Wasn’t I right when I told you it was all absurd? My God! I
have had burdens to bear that would have broken an elephant’s back;
the devil knows what I have suffered—no one could have suffered
more, I think, and where are the traces? It’s astonishing. One would
have thought the imprint made on a man by his agonies would have been
everlasting, never to be effaced or eradicated. And yet that imprint wears
out as easily as a pair of cheap boots. There is nothing left, not a
scrap. It’s as though I hadn’t been suffering then, but had
been dancing a mazurka. Everything in the world is transitory, and that
transitoriness is absurd! A wide field for humorists! Tack on a humorous
end, my friend!”
“Pyotr Nikolaevitch, are you coming soon?” The impatient
ladies call my hero.
“This minute,” answers the “vain and fatuous” man,
setting his tie straight. “It’s absurd and pitiful, my friend,
pitiful and absurd, but what’s to be done? Homo sum. . . .
And I praise Mother Nature all the same for her transmutation of
substances. If we retained an agonising memory of toothache and of all the
terrors which every one of us has had to experience, if all that were
everlasting, we poor mortals would have a bad time of it in this life.”
I look at his smiling face and I remember the despair and the horror with
which his eyes were filled a year ago when he looked at the dark window. I
see him, entering into his habitual rôle of intellectual chatterer,
prepare to show off his idle theories, such as the transmutation of
substances before me, and at the same time I recall him sitting on the
floor in a pool of blood with his sick imploring eyes.
“How will it end?” I ask myself aloud.
Vassilyev, whistling and straightening his tie, walks off into the
drawing-room, and I look after him, and feel vexed. For some reason I
regret his past sufferings, I regret all that I felt myself on that man’s
account on that terrible night. It is as though I had lost something. . .
.
“I have brought it, Ivan Petrovitch!” Groholsky, re-entering, whispered above his ear. “I have brought it—take it. . . . Here in this roll there are forty thousand. . . . With this cheque will you kindly get twenty the day after to-morrow from Valentinov? . . . Here is a bill of exchange . . . a cheque. . . . The remaining thirty thousand in a day or two. . . . My steward will bring it to you.”Groholsky, pink and excited, with all his limbs in motion, laid before Bugrov a heap of rolls of notes and bundles of papers. The heap was big, and of all sorts of hues and tints. Never in the course of his life had Bugrov seen such a heap. He spread out his fat fingers and, not looking at Groholsky, fell to going through the bundles of notes and bonds. . . . Groholsky spread out all the money, and moved restlessly about the room, looking for the Dulcinea who had been bought and sold. Filling his pockets and his pocket-book, Bugrov thrust the securities into the table drawer, and, drinking off half a decanter full of water, dashed out into the street. “Cab!” he shouted in a frantic voice. At half-past eleven that night he drove up to the entrance of the Paris Hotel. He went noisily upstairs and knocked at the door of Groholsky’s apartments. He was admitted. Groholsky was packing his things in a portmanteau, Liza was sitting at the table trying on bracelets. They were both frightened when Bugrov went in to them. They fancied that he had come for Liza and had brought back the money which he had taken in haste without reflection. But Bugrov had not come for Liza. Ashamed of his new get-up and feeling frightfully awkward in it, he bowed and stood at the door in the attitude of a flunkey. The get-up was superb. Bugrov was unrecognisable. His huge person, which had never hitherto worn anything but a uniform, was clothed in a fresh, brand-new suit of fine French cloth and of the most fashionable cut. On his feet spats shone with sparkling buckles. He stood ashamed of his new get-up, and with his right hand covered the watch-chain for which he had, an hour before, paid three hundred roubles. “I have come about something,” he began. “A business agreement is beyond price. I am not going to give up Mishutka. . . .” “What Mishutka?” asked Groholsky. “My son.” Groholsky and Liza looked at each other. Liza’s eyes bulged, her cheeks flushed, and her lips twitched. . . . “Very well,” she said. She thought of Mishutka’s warm little cot. It would be cruel to exchange that warm little cot for a chilly sofa in the hotel, and she consented. “I shall see him,” she said. Bugrov bowed, walked out, and flew down the stairs in his splendour, cleaving the air with his expensive cane. . . . “Home,” he said to the cabman. “I am starting at five o’clock to-morrow morning. . . . You will come; if I am asleep, you will wake me. We are driving out of town.”
“Your loving Father,
“Pyotr Bugrov, Priest.”
Groholsky read this letter aloud, and he and Liza both looked inquiringly
at Bugrov.
“You see what it is,” Ivan Petrovitch began hesitatingly.
“I should like to ask you, Liza, not to let him see you, to keep out
of his sight while he is here. I have written to him that you are ill and
gone to the Caucasus for a cure. If you meet him. . . You see yourself. .
. . It’s awkward. . . H’m. . . .”
“Very well,” said Liza.
“We can do that,” thought Groholsky, “since he makes
sacrifices, why shouldn’t we?”
“Please do. . . . If he sees you there will be trouble. . . . My
father is a man of strict principles. He would curse me in seven churches.
Don’t go out of doors, Liza, that is all. He won’t be here
long. Don’t be afraid.”
Father Pyotr did not long keep them waiting. One fine morning Ivan
Petrovitch ran in and hissed in a mysterious tone:
“He has come! He is asleep now, so please be careful.”
And Liza was shut up within four walls. She did not venture to go out into
the yard or on to the verandah. She could only see the sky from behind the
window curtain. Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch’s papa spent his
whole time in the open air, and even slept on the verandah. Usually Father
Pyotr, a little parish priest, in a brown cassock and a top hat with a
curly brim, walked slowly round the villas and gazed with curiosity at the
“strange lands” through his grandfatherly spectacles. Ivan
Petrovitch with the Stanislav on a little ribbon accompanied him. He did
not wear a decoration as a rule, but before his own people he liked to
show off. In their society he always wore the Stanislav.
Liza was bored to death. Groholsky suffered too. He had to go for his
walks alone without a companion. He almost shed tears, but . . . had to
submit to his fate. And to make things worse, Bugrov would run across
every morning and in a hissing whisper would give some quite unnecessary
bulletin concerning the health of Father Pyotr. He bored them with those
bulletins.
“He slept well,” he informed them. “Yesterday he was put
out because I had no salted cucumbers. . . He has taken to Mishutka; he
keeps patting him on the head.”
At last, a fortnight later, little Father Pyotr walked for the last time
round the villas and, to Groholsky’s immense relief, departed. He
had enjoyed himself, and went off very well satisfied. Liza and Groholsky
fell back into their old manner of life. Groholsky once more blessed his
fate. But his happiness did not last for long. A new trouble worse than
Father Pyotr followed. Ivan Petrovitch took to coming to see them every
day. Ivan Petrovitch, to be frank, though a capital fellow, was a very
tedious person. He came at dinner-time, dined with them and stayed a very
long time. That would not have mattered. But they had to buy vodka, which
Groholsky could not endure, for his dinner. He would drink five glasses
and talk the whole dinner-time. That, too, would not have mattered. . . .
But he would sit on till two o’clock in the morning, and not let
them get to bed, and, worse still, he permitted himself to talk of things
about which he should have been silent. When towards two o’clock in
the morning he had drunk too much vodka and champagne, he would take
Mishutka in his arms, and weeping, say to him, before Groholsky and Liza:
“Mihail, my son, what am I? I . . . am a scoundrel. I have sold your
mother! Sold her for thirty pieces of silver, may the Lord punish me!
Mihail Ivanitch, little sucking pig, where is your mother? Lost! Gone!
Sold into slavery! Well, I am a scoundrel.”
These tears and these words turned Groholsky’s soul inside out. He
would look timidly at Liza’s pale face and wring his hands.
“Go to bed, Ivan Petrovitch,” he would say timidly.
“I am going. . . . Come along, Mishutka. . . . The Lord be our
judge! I cannot think of sleep while I know that my wife is a slave . . .
. But it is not Groholsky’s fault. . . . The goods were mine, the
money his. . . . Freedom for the free and Heaven for the saved.”
By day Ivan Petrovitch was no less insufferable to Groholsky. To Groholsky’s
intense horror, he was always at Liza’s side. He went fishing with
her, told her stories, walked with her, and even on one occasion, taking
advantage of Groholsky’s having a cold, carried her off in his
carriage, goodness knows where, and did not bring her back till night!
“It’s outrageous, inhuman,” thought Groholsky, biting
his lips.
Groholsky liked to be continually kissing Liza. He could not exist without
those honeyed kisses, and it was awkward to kiss her before Ivan
Petrovitch. It was agony. The poor fellow felt forlorn, but fate soon had
compassion on him. Ivan Petrovitch suddenly went off somewhere for a whole
week. Visitors had come and carried him off with them . . . And Mishutka
was taken too.
One fine morning Groholsky came home from a walk good-humoured and
beaming.
“He has come,” he said to Liza, rubbing his hands. “I am
very glad he has come. Ha-ha-ha!”
“What are you laughing at?”
“There are women with him.”
“What women?”
“I don’t know. . . . It’s a good thing he has got women.
. . . A capital thing, in fact. . . . He is still young and fresh. Come
here! Look!”
Groholsky led Liza on to the verandah, and pointed to the villa opposite.
They both held their sides, and roared with laughter. It was funny. Ivan
Petrovitch was standing on the verandah of the villa opposite, smiling.
Two dark-haired ladies and Mishutka were standing below, under the
verandah. The ladies were laughing, and loudly talking French.
“French women,” observed Groholsky. “The one nearest us
isn’t at all bad-looking. Lively damsels, but that’s no
matter. There are good women to be found even among such. . . . But they
really do go too far.”
What was funny was that Ivan Petrovitch bent across the verandah, and
stretching with his long arms, put them round the shoulders of one of the
French girls, lifted her in the air, and set her giggling on the verandah.
After lifting up both ladies on to the verandah, he lifted up Mishutka
too. The ladies ran down and the proceedings were repeated.
“Powerful muscles, I must say,” muttered Groholsky looking at
this scene. The operation was repeated some six times, the ladies were so
amiable as to show no embarrassment whatever when the boisterous wind
disposed of their inflated skirts as it willed while they were being
lifted. Groholsky dropped his eyes in a shamefaced way when the ladies
flung their legs over the parapet as they reached the verandah. But Liza
watched and laughed! What did she care? It was not a case of men
misbehaving themselves, which would have put her, as a woman, to shame,
but of ladies.
In the evening, Ivan Petrovitch flew over, and with some embarrassment
announced that he was now a man with a household to look after . . . .
“You mustn’t imagine they are just anybody,” he said.
“It is true they are French. They shout at the top of their voices,
and drink . . . but we all know! The French are brought up to be like
that! It can’t be helped. . . . The prince,” Ivan Petrovitch
added, “let me have them almost for nothing. . . . He said: ‘take
them, take them. . . .’ I must introduce you to the prince sometime.
A man of culture! He’s for ever writing, writing. . . . And do you
know what their names are? One is Fanny, the other Isabella. . . . There’s
Europe, ha-ha-ha! . . . The west! Good-bye!”
Ivan Petrovitch left Liza and Groholsky in peace, and devoted himself to
his ladies. All day long sound of talk, laughter, and the clatter of
crockery came from his villa. . . . The lights were not put out till far
into the night. . . . Groholsky was in bliss. . . . At last, after a
prolonged interval of agony, he felt happy and at peace again. Ivan
Petrovitch with his two ladies had no such happiness as he had with one.
But alas, destiny has no heart. She plays with the Groholskys, the Lizas,
the Ivans, and the Mishutkas as with pawns. . . . Groholsky lost his peace
again. . . .
One morning, about ten days afterwards, on waking up late, he went out on
to the verandah and saw a spectacle which shocked him, revolted him, and
moved him to intense indignation. Under the verandah of the villa opposite
stood the French women, and between them Liza. She was talking and looking
askance at her own villa as though to see whether that tyrant, that despot
were awake (so Groholsky interpreted those looks). Ivan Petrovitch
standing on the verandah with his sleeves tucked up, lifted Isabella into
the air, then Fanny, and then Liza. When he was lifting Liza it seemed to
Groholsky that he pressed her to himself. . . . Liza too flung one leg
over the parapet. . . . Oh these women! All sphinxes, every one of them!
When Liza returned home from her husband’s villa and went into the
bedroom on tip-toe, as though nothing had happened, Groholsky, pale, with
hectic flushes on his cheeks, was lying in the attitude of a man at his
last gasp and moaning.
On seeing Liza, he sprang out of bed, and began pacing about the bedroom.
“So that’s what you are like, is it?” he shrieked in a
high tenor. “So that’s it! Very much obliged to you! It’s
revolting, madam! Immoral, in fact! Let me tell you that!”
Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears. When women feel that
they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when they are conscious
of being in fault, they shed tears only.
“On a level with those depraved creatures! It’s . . . it’s
. . . it’s . . . lower than any impropriety! Why, do you know what
they are? They are kept women! Cocottes! And you a respectable woman go
rushing off where they are. . . And he . . . He! What does he want? What
more does he want of me? I don’t understand it! I have given him
half of my property—I have given him more! You know it yourself! I
have given him what I have not myself. . . . I have given him almost all.
. . . And he! I’ve put up with your calling him Vanya, though he has
no right whatever to such intimacy. I have put up with your walks, kisses
after dinner. . . . I have put up with everything, but this I will not put
up with. . . . Either he or I! Let him go away, or I go away! I’m
not equal to living like this any longer, no! You can see that for
yourself! . . . Either he or I. . . . Enough! The cup is brimming over. .
. . I have suffered a great deal as it is. . . . I am going to talk to him
at once—this minute! What is he, after all? What has he to be proud
of? No, indeed. . . . He has no reason to think so much of himself . . . .”
Groholsky said a great many more valiant and stinging things, but did not
“go at once”; he felt timid and abashed. . . . He went to Ivan
Petrovitch three days later.
When he went into his apartment, he gaped with astonishment. He was amazed
at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surrounded himself. Velvet
hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . . One was positively ashamed to
step on the carpet. Groholsky had seen many rich men in his day, but he
had never seen such frenzied luxury. . . . And the higgledy-piggledy
muddle he saw when, with an inexplicable tremor, he walked into the
drawing-room—plates with bits of bread on them were lying about on
the grand piano, a glass was standing on a chair, under the table there
was a basket with a filthy rag in it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about
in the windows. Bugrov himself was not quite in his usual trim when
Groholsky walked in . . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was
pacing about the room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much
agitated. Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and
was making the air vibrate with a piercing scream.
“It’s awful, Grigory Vassilyevitch!” Bugrov began on
seeing Groholsky, “such disorder . . . such disorder . . . Please
sit down. You must excuse my being in the costume of Adam and Eve. . . .
It’s of no consequence. . . . Horrible disorderliness! I don’t
understand how people can exist here, I don’t understand it! The
servants won’t do what they are told, the climate is horrible,
everything is expensive. . . . Stop your noise,” Bugrov shouted,
suddenly coming to a halt before Mishutka; “stop it, I tell you!
Little beast, won’t you stop it?”
And Bugrov pulled Mishutka’s ear.
“That’s revolting, Ivan Petrovitch,” said Groholsky in a
tearful voice. “How can you treat a tiny child like that? You really
are. . .”
“Let him stop yelling then. . . . Be quiet—I’ll whip
you!”
“Don’t cry, Misha darling. . . . Papa won’t touch you
again. Don’t beat him, Ivan Petrovitch; why, he is hardly more than
a baby. . . . There, there. . . . Would you like a little horse? I’ll
send you a little horse. . . . You really are hard-hearted. . . .”
Groholsky paused, and then asked:
“And how are your ladies getting on, Ivan Petrovitch?”
“Not at all. I’ve turned them out without ceremony. I might
have gone on keeping them, but it’s awkward. . . . The boy will grow
up . . . . A father’s example. . . . If I were alone, then it would
be a different thing. . . . Besides, what’s the use of my keeping
them? Poof . . . it’s a regular farce! I talk to them in Russian,
and they answer me in French. They don’t understand a thing—you
can’t knock anything into their heads.”
“I’ve come to you about something, Ivan Petrovitch, to talk
things over. . . . H’m. . . . It’s nothing very particular.
But just . . . two or three words. . . . In reality, I have a favour to
ask of you.”
“What’s that?”
“Would you think it possible, Ivan Petrovitch, to go away? We are
delighted that you are here; it’s very agreeable for us, but it’s
inconvenient, don’t you know. . . . You will understand me. It’s
awkward in a way. . . . Such indefinite relations, such continual
awkwardness in regard to one another. . . . We must part. . . . It’s
essential in fact. Excuse my saying so, but . . . you must see for
yourself, of course, that in such circumstances to be living side by side
leads to . . . reflections . . . that is . . . not to reflections, but
there is a certain awkward feeling. . . .”
“Yes. . . . That is so, I have thought of it myself. Very good, I
will go away.”
“We shall be very grateful to you. . . . Believe me, Ivan
Petrovitch, we shall preserve the most flattering memory of you. The
sacrifice which you. . .”
“Very good. . . . Only what am I to do with all this? I say, you buy
this furniture of mine! What do you say? It’s not expensive, eight
thousand . . . ten. . . . The furniture, the carriage, the grand piano. .
. .”
“Very good. . . . I will give you ten thousand. . . .”
“Well, that is capital! I will set off to-morrow. I shall go to
Moscow. It’s impossible to live here. Everything is so dear! Awfully
dear! The money fairly flies. . . . You can’t take a step without
spending a thousand! I can’t go on like that. I have a child to
bring up. . . . Well, thank God that you will buy my furniture. . . . That
will be a little more in hand, or I should have been regularly bankrupt. .
. .”
Groholsky got up, took leave of Bugrov, and went home rejoicing. In the
evening he sent him ten thousand roubles.
Early next morning Bugrov and Mishutka were already at Feodosia.
“Yesterday I waited for my dear one. . . .”
I listened to the singing, looked at Bugrov’s well-fed countenance,
and thought: “Nasty brute!” I felt like crying. . . . When he
had finished singing, Groholsky bowed to us, and went out.
“And what am I to do with him?” Bugrov said when he had gone
away. “I do have trouble with him! In the day he is always brooding
and brooding. . . . And at night he moans. . . . He sleeps, but he sighs
and moans in his sleep. . . . It is a sort of illness. . . . What am I to
do with him, I can’t think! He won’t let us sleep. . . . I am
afraid that he will go out of his mind. People think he is badly treated
here. . . . In what way is he badly treated? He eats with us, and he
drinks with us. . . . Only we won’t give him money. If we were to
give him any he would spend it on drink or waste it . . . . That’s
another trouble for me! Lord forgive me, a sinner!”
They made me stay the night. When I woke next morning, Bugrov was giving
some one a lecture in the adjoining room. . . .
“Set a fool to say his prayers, and he will crack his skull on the
floor! Why, who paints oars green! Do think, blockhead! Use your sense!
Why don’t you speak?”
“I . . . I . . . made a mistake,” said a husky tenor
apologetically.
The tenor belonged to Groholsky.
Groholsky saw me to the station.
“He is a despot, a tyrant,” he kept whispering to me all the
way. “He is a generous man, but a tyrant! Neither heart nor brain
are developed in him. . . . He tortures me! If it were not for that noble
woman, I should have gone away long ago. I am sorry to leave her. It’s
somehow easier to endure together.”
Groholsky heaved a sigh, and went on:
“She is with child. . . . You notice it? It is really my child. . .
. Mine. . . . She soon saw her mistake, and gave herself to me again. She
cannot endure him. . . .”
“You are a rag,” I could not refrain from saying to Groholsky.
“Yes, I am a man of weak character. . . . That is quite true. I was
born so. Do you know how I came into the world? My late papa cruelly
oppressed a certain little clerk—it was awful how he treated him! He
poisoned his life. Well . . . and my late mama was tender-hearted. She
came from the people, she was of the working class. . . . She took that
little clerk to her heart from pity. . . . Well . . . and so I came into
the world. . . . The son of the ill-treated clerk. How could I have a
strong will? Where was I to get it from? But that’s the second bell.
. . . Good-bye. Come and see us again, but don’t tell Ivan
Petrovitch what I have said about him.”
I pressed Groholsky’s hand, and got into the train. He bowed towards
the carriage, and went to the water-barrel—I suppose he was thirsty!
“To prove our Russian friendship
For Persia’s mighty realm,
And show respect for you, her envoy,
Myself I’d slaughter like a lamb,
But, pardon me, for I’m a—donkey!”
The mayor was conscious of an unpleasant feeling like a gnawing in the pit
of the stomach, but not for long. By midday he was again with the
illustrious Persian, again he was regaling him and showing him the points
of interest in the town. Again he led him to the stone gates, and again
pointed to the lion, to the sun and to his own breast. They dined at the
‘Japan’; after dinner, with cigars in their teeth, both,
flushed and blissful, again mounted the fire tower, and the mayor,
evidently wishing to entertain the visitor with an unusual spectacle,
shouted from the top to a sentry walking below:
“Sound the alarm!”
But the alarm was not sounded as the firemen were at the baths at the
moment.
They supped at the ‘London’ and, after supper, the Persian
departed. When he saw him off, Stepan Ivanovitch kissed him three times
after the Russian fashion, and even grew tearful. And when the train
started, he shouted:
“Give our greeting to Persia! Tell her that we love her!”
A year and four months had passed. There was a bitter frost, thirty-five
degrees, and a piercing wind was blowing. Stepan Ivanovitch was walking
along the street with his fur coat thrown open over his chest, and he was
annoyed that he met no one to see the Lion and the Sun upon his breast. He
walked about like this till evening with his fur coat open, was chilled to
the bone, and at night tossed from side to side and could not get to
sleep.
He felt heavy at heart.
There was a burning sensation inside him, and his heart throbbed uneasily;
he had a longing now to get a Serbian order. It was a painful, passionate
longing.
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