MY LIFE
AND OTHER STORIES
COPYRIGHTED IN U.S.A., BT
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
LR
GSl
MY LIFE
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
S. S. KOTELIANSKY
AND
GILBERT CANNAN
V
4932
LONDON : C. W. DANIEL, LTD.,
GEAHAM HOUSE, TUDOE STEEET, E.G. 4
1920
CONTENTS
v MY LIFE
PAGE
1
XTHE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
. 138
. 166
. 177
. 192
* THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG .
GOUSSIEV
. 206
232
MY LIFE
THE STOEY OF A PROVINCIAL
r "pHE director said to me: "I only keep you out of
respect for your worthy father, or you would
have gone long since." I replied: " You flatter me,
your Excellency, but I suppose I am in a position to
go." And then I heard him saying: "Take the fellow
away, he is getting on my nerves."
Two days later I was dismissed. Ever since I had
been grown up, to the great sorrow of my father, the
municipal architect, I had changed my position nine
times, going from one department to another, but all
the Departments) were as like each other as drops of
water; I had to sit and write, listen to inane and
rude remarks, and just wait until I was dismissed.
When I told my father, he was sitting back in his
chair with his eyes shut. His thin, dry face, with a
dove-coloured tinge where he shaved (his face was
like that of an old Catholic organist), wore an expres
sion of meek submission. Without answering my
greeting or opening his eyes, he said :
" If my dear wife, your mother, were alive, your life
would be a constant grief to her. I can see the hand of
1
2 MY LIFE
Providence in her untimely death. Tell me, you un
happy boy," he went on, opening his eyes, " what am
I to do with you? "
When I was younger my relations and friends knew
what to do with me; some advised me to go into the
army as a volunteer, others were for pharmacy,
others for the telegraph service; but now that I was
twenty-four and was going grey at the temples and had
already tried the army and pharmacy and the tele
graph service, and every possibility seemed to be ex-
hausted, they gave me no more advice, but only sighed
and shook their heads.
" What do you think of yourself? " my father went
on. " At your age other young men have a good social
position, and just look at yourself : a lazy lout, a
beggar, living on your father! '
And, as usual, he went on to say that young men
were going to the dogs through want of faith, material
ism, and conceit, and that amateur theatricals should
be prohibited because they seduce young people from
religion and their duty.
" To-morrow we will go together, and you shall
apologise to the director and promise to do your work
conscientiously," he concluded. " You must not be
without a position in society for a single day."
Cf Please listen to me," said I firmly, though I did
not anticipate gaining anything' by speaking. ' What
you call a position in society is the privilege of capital
and education. 'But people who are poor and unedu-
MY LIFE 3
cated have to earn their living by hard physical labour,
and I see no reason why I should be an exception."
' ' It is foolish and trivial of you to talk of physical
labour/' said my father with some irritation. '' Do
try to understand, you idiot, and get it into your
brainless head, that in addition to physical strength
you have a divine spirit; a sacred fire, by which you
are distinguished from an ass or a reptile and bringing
you nigh to God. This sacred fire has been kept
alight for thousands of years by the best of mankind.
Your great-grandfather, General Polozniev, fought at
Borodino; your grandfather was a poet, an orator,
and a marshal of the nobility; your uncle was an
educationalist; and I, your father, am an architect!
Have all the Poloznievs kept the sacred fire alight for
you to put it out? "
"There must be justice," said I. "Millions of people
have to do manual labour."
"Let them. They can do nothing else! Even a
fool or a criminal can do manual labour. It is the
mark of a slave and a barbarian, whereas the sacred
fire is given only to a few ! J
It was useless to go on with the conversation. My
father worshipped himself and would not be con
vinced by anything unless he said it himself. Besides,
I knew quite well that the annoyance with which he
spoke of unskilled labour came not so much from any
regard for the sacred fire, as from a secret fear that I
should become a working man and the talk of the
4 MY LIFE
town. But the chief thing was that all my school
fellows had long ago gone through the University and
were making careers for themselves, and the son of the
director of the State Bank was already a collegiate
assessor, while I, an only son, was nothing! It was
useless and unpleasant to go on with the conversa
tion, but I still sat there and raised objections in the
hope of making myself understood. The problem
was simple and clear: how was I to earn my living?
But he could not see its simplicity and kept on talk
ing with sugary rounded phrases about Borodino and
the sacred fire, and my uncle, a forgotten poet
who wrote bad, insincere verses, and he called me a
brainless fool. But how I longed to be understood !
In spite of everything, I loved my father and my sister,
and from boyhood I have had a habit of considering
them, so strongly rooted that I shall probably never
get rid of it ; whether I am right or wrong I am always
afraid of hurting them, and go in terror lest my father's
thin neck should go red with anger and he should have
an apopleptic fit.
" It is shameful and degrading for a man of my age
to sit in a stuffy room end compete with a typewriting-
machine," I said. " What has that to do with the
sacred fire? "
" Still, it is intellectual work/' said my father.
se But that's enough. Let us drop the conversation and
I warn you that if you refuse to return to your office
and indulge your contemptible inclinations, then you
MY LIFE 5
will lose my love and your sister's. I shall cut you
out of my will that I swear, by God! '
With perfect sincerity, in order to show the purity
of my motives, by which I hope to be guided all
through my life, I said :
' The matter of inheritance does not strike me as
important. I renounce any rights I may have."
For some unexpected reason these words greatly
offended my father. ' He went purple in the face.
" How dare you talk to me like that, you fool ! " he
cried to me in a thin, shrill voice. " You scoundrel ! J:
And he struck me quickly and dexterously with a
familiar movement; once twice. " You forget your
self ! "
When I was a boy and my .father struck me, I used
to stand bolt upright like a soldier and look him
straight in the face; and, exactly as if I were still a
boy, I stood erect, and tried to look into his eyes.
My father was old and very thin, but his spare muscles
must have been as strong as whip-cord, for he hit very
hard.
I returned to the hall, but there he seized his um
brella and struck me several times over the head and
shoulders; at that moment my sister opened the
drawing-room door to see what the noise was, but
immediately drew back with an expression of pity and
horror, and said not one word in my defence.
My intention not to return to the office, but to start
/a new working life, was unshakable. It only remained
6 MY LIFE
to choose the kind of work and there seemed to be
no great difficulty about that, because I was strong,
patient, and willing. I was prepared to face a monoto
nous, laborious life, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough
surroundings, always overshadowed with the thought
of finding a job and a living. And who knows
returning from work in the Great Gentry Street, I
might often envy Dolzhikov, the engineer, who lives
by intellectual work, but I was happy in thinking of
y-my coming troubles. I used to dream of intellectual
S activity, and to imagine myself a teacher, a doctor,
S a writer, but my dreams remained only dreams. A
f liking for intellectual pleasures like the theatre and
reading grew into a passion with me, but I did not
know whether I had any capacity for intellectual
work. At school I had an unconquerable aversion for
the~Greek language, so that I had to leave when I \\as
in the fourth class. Teachers were got to coach me
up for the fifth class, and then I went into various de
partments, spending most of my time in perfect idle
ness, and this, I was told, was intellectual work.
My activity in the education department or in the
municipal office required neither mental effort, nor
talent, nor personal ability, nor creative spiritual im
pulse; it was purely mechanical, and such intellectual
> work seemed to nie lower than manual labour. I
despise it and I do not think that it for a moment
justifies an idle, careless life, because it is nothing
but a swindle, and only a kind of idleness. In all
MY LIFE 7
probability I have never known real intellectual
work.
It was evening. We lived in Great Gentry Street
the chief street in the town and our rank and fashion
walked up and down it in the evenings, as there were
no public gardens. The street was very charming,
and was almost as good as a garden, for it had two rows
of poplar-trees, which smelt very sweet, especially
after rain, and acacias, and tall trees, and apple-trees
hung over the fences and hedges. May evenings,
the scent of the lilac, the hum of the cockchafers, the
warm, still air how new and extraordinary it all is,
though spring comes every year ! I stood by the
gate and looked at the passers-by. With most of
them I had grown up and had played with them,
but now my presence might upset them, because I
was poorly dressed, in unfashionable clothes, and
people made fun of my very narrow trousers and
large, clumsy boots, and called them macaroni-on-
steamboats. And I had a bad reputation in the town
because I had no position and went to play billiards
in low cafes, and had once been taken up, for no par-
twftflar offence, by the political police.
In a large house opposite, Dolzhikov's, the en
gineer's, some one was playing the piano. It was
beginning to get dark and the stars were beginning to
shine. And slowly, answering people's salutes, my
father passed with my sister on his arm. He was
wearing an old top hat with a broad curly brim.
8 MY LIFE
"Look! " he said to my sister, pointing to the sky
with the very umbrella with which he had just struck
me. " Look at the sky! Even the smallest stars are
worlds ! How insignificant man is in comparison with
the universe. "
And he said this in a tone that seemed to convey
that he found it extremely flattering and pleasant to
be so insignificant. What an untalented man he was !
Unfortunately, he was the only architect in the town,
and during the last fifteen or twenty years I could not
remember one decent house being built. When he
had to design a house, as a rule he would draw first
the hall and the drawing-room ; as in olden days
schoolgirls could only begin to dance by the fire
place, so his artistic ideas could only evolve from the
hall and drawing-room. To them he would add the
dining-room, nursery, study, connecting them with
doors, so that in the end they were just so many pas
sages, and each room had two or three doors too many.
His houses were obscure, extremely confused, and
limited. Every time, as though he felt something was
missing, he had recourse to various additions, plaster
ing them one on top of the other, and there would
be various lobbies, and passages, and crooked stair
cases leading to the entresol, where it was only possible
to stand in a stooping position, and where instead of a
floor there would be a thin flight of stairs like a Russian
bath, and the kitchen would always be under the
house with a vaulted ceiling and a brick floor. The
MY LIFE ( J
front of his houses always had a hard, stubborn ex
pression, with stiff, timid lines, low, squat roofs,
and fat, pudding-like chimneys surmounted with
black cowls and squeaking weathercocks. And some
how all the houses built by my father were like each
other, and vaguely reminded me of his top hat, and the
stiff, obstinate back of his head. In the course of time
the people of the town grew used to my father's lack of
talent, which took root and became our style.
My father introduced the style into my sister's
life. To begin with, he gave her the name of
Cleopatra (and he called me Misail). When she was a
little girl he used to frighten her by telling her about
the stars and our ancestors; and explained the nature
of life and duty to her at great length ; and now when
she was twenty-six he went on in the same way, allow
ing her to take no one's arm but his own, and some
how imagining that sooner or later an ardent young
man would turn up and wish to enter into marriage
with her out of admiration for his qualities. And she
adored my father, was afraid of him, and believed in
his extraordinary intellectual powers.
It got quite dark and the street grew gradually
empty. In the house opposite the music stopped.
The gate was wide open and out into the street, career
ing with all its bells jingling, came a troika. It was
the engineer and his daughter going for a drive. Time
to go to bed !
I had a room in the house, but I lived in the court-
10 MY LIFE
yard in a hut, under the same roof as the coach-house,
which had been built probably as a harness-room for
there were big nails in the walls but now it was not
used, and my father for thirty years had kept his news
papers there, which for some reason he had bound
half-yearly and then allowed no one to touch. Living
there I was less in touch with my father and his guests,
and I used to think that if I did not live in a proper
room and did not go to the house every day for meals,
my father's reproach that I was living on him lost some
of its sting.
My sister was waiting for me. She had brought me
supper unknown to my father; a small piece of cold
veal and a slice of bread. In the family there were
sayings: " Money loves an account," or "A copeck
saves a rouble/' and so on, and my sister, impressed
by such wisdom, did her best to cut down expenses
and made us feed rather meagrely. She put the plate
on the table, sat on my bed, and began to cry.
" Misail," she said, "what are you doing to us?"
She did not cover her face, her tears ran down her
cheeks and hands, and her expression was sorrowful.
She fell on the pillow, gave way to her tears, trembling
all over and sobbing.
' You have left your work again ! " she said. " How
awful!"
" Do try to understand, sister!" I said, and because
she cried I was filled with despair.
As though it were deliberately arranged, the paraffin
MY LIFE 11
in my little lamp ran out, and the lamp smoked and
guttered, and the old hooks in the wall looked terrible
and their shadows nickered.
"Spare us !" said my sister, rising up. "Father is in
an awful state, and I am ill. I shall go mad. What
will become of you? " she asked, sobbing and holding
out her hands to me. " I ask you, I implore you, in the
name of our dear mother, to go back to your work."
"I cannot, Cleopatra," I said, feeling that only a
little more would make me give in. ' I cannot."
"Why?" insisted my sister, "why? If you have
not made it up with your chief, look for another place.
For instance, why shouldn't you work on the railway?
I have just spoken to Aniuta Blagovo, and she assures
me you would be taken on, and she even promised to
do what she could for you. For goodness sake, Misail,
think ! Think it over, I implore you !"
We talked a little longer and I gave in. I said that
the thought of working on the railway had never come
into my head, and that I was ready to try.
She smiled happily through her tears and clasped
my hand, and still she cried, because she could not
stop, and I went into the kitchen for paraffin.
II
Among the supporters of amateur theatricals, charity
concerts, and tableaux vivants the leaders were the
Azhoguins, who lived in their own house in Great
12 MY LIFE
Gentry Street. They used to lend their house and
assume the necessary trouble and expense. They were
a rich landowning family, and had about three thou-
said dessiatins, with a magnificent farm in the neigh
bourhood, but they did not care for village life and
lived in the town summer and winter. The family
consisted of a mother, a tall, spare, delicate lady, who
had short hair, wore a blouse and a plain skirt a 1' An
glais, and three daughters, who were spoken of, not by
their names, but as the eldest, the middle, and the
youngest; they all had ugly, sharp chins, and they
were short-sighted, high-shouldered, dressed in the
same style as their mother, had an unpleasant lisp,
and yet they always took part in every play and were
always doing something for charity acting, reciting,
singing. They were very serious and never smiled,
and even in burlesque operettas they acted without
gaiety and with a businesslike air, as though they
were engaged m. bookkeeping.
I loved ourvplay$ especially the rehearsals, which
were frequent, ralher absurd, and noisy, and we were
always given supper after them. I had no part in
the selection of the pieces and the easting of the char
acters. I had to look after the stage. I used to de
sign the scenery and copy out the parts, and prompt
and make up. And I also had to look after the various
effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale,
and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent
clothes, and during rehearsals had to hold aloof from
MY LIFE 13
the others in the darkened wings and shyly say
nothing.
I used to paint the scenery in the Azhoguins' coach
house or "yarcTr T~ "was assisted by a house-painter,
or, as he called himself, a decorating contractor, named
Andrey Ivanov, a man of about fifty, tall and very
thin and pale, with a narrow chest, hollow temples,
and dark rings under his eyes, he was rather awful to
look at. He had some kind of wasting disease, and
every spring and autumn he was said to be 011 the
point of death, but he would go to bed for a while
and then get up and say with surprise : " I'm not dead
this time!"
In the town he was called Radish, and people said it
was his real name. He loved the theatre as much as I,
and no sooner did he hear that a play was in hand
than he gave up all his work and went to the Azhoguins'
to paint scenery.
The day after my conversation with my sister I
worked from morning till night at the Azhoguins'.
The rehearsal was fixed for seven o'clock, and an
hour before it began all the players were assembled,
and the eldest, the middle, and the youngest Miss
Azhoguin were reading their parts on the stage.
Radish, in a long, brown overcoat with a scarf wound
round his neck, was standing, leaning with his head
against the wall, looking at the stage with a rapt ex
pression. Mrs. Azhoguin went from guest to guest
saying something pleasant to every one. She had a
14 MY LIFE
way of gazing into one's face and speaking in a hushed
voice as though she were telling a secret.
" It must be difficult to paint scenery," she said
softly, coming up to me. " I was just talking to Mrs.
Mufke about prejudice when I saw you come in.
Mon Dieu ! All my life I have struggled against prej
udice. To convince the servants that all their super
stitions are nonsense I always light three candles,
and I begin all my important business on the thir
teenth. "
The daughter of Dolzhikov, the engineer, was there,
a handsome, plump, fair girl, dressed as people said in
our town in Parisian style. She did not act, but at
rehearsals a chair was put for her on the stage, and
the plays did not begin until she appeared in the front
row, to astonish everybody with the brilliance of her
clothes. As coming from the metropolis, she was
allowed to make remarks during rehearsals, and she
did so with an affable, condescending smile, and it
was clear that she regarded our plays as a childish
amusement. It was said that she had studied singing
at the Petersburg conservatoire and had sung for a
winter season in opera. I liked her very much, and
during rehearsals or the performance, I never took
my eyes off her.
I had taken the book and began to prompt when
suddenly my sister appeared. "Without taking off her
coat and hat she came up to me and said :
" Please come!"
MY LIFE 15
I went. Behind the stage in the doorway stood
Aniuta Blagovo, also wearing a hat with a dark veil.
'"She was tlie daughter of the vice-president of the
Court, who had been appointed to our town years
ago, almost as soon as the High Court was established.
She was tall and had a good figure, and was considered
indispensable for the tableaux vivants, and when she
represented a fairy or a muse, her face would burn
with shame; but -she took no part in the plays, and
would only look in at rehearsals, on some business,
and never enter the hall. And it was evident now that
she had only looked in for a moment.
" My father has mentioned you," she said drily,
not looking at me and blushing. . . " Dolzhikov
has promised to find you something to do on the rail
way. If you go to his house to-morrow, he will see
you."
I bowed and thanked her for her kindness.
" And you must leave this," she said, pointing to
my book.
She and my sister went up to Mrs. Azhoguin and
began to whisper, looking at me.
" Indeed," said Mrs. Azhoguin, coming up to me,
and gazing into my face. " Indeed, if it takes you
from your more serious business" she took the book
out of my hands " then you must hand it over to
some one else. Don't worry, my friend. It will be
all right."
I said good-bye and left in some confusion. As I
2A
16 MY LIFE
went down-stairs I saw my sister and Aniuta Blagovo
going away; they were talking animatedly, I suppose
about my going on the railway, and they hurried away.
My sister had never been to a rehearsal before, and
she was probably tortured by her conscience and by
her fear of my father finding out that she had been to
the Azhoguins' without permission.
The next day I went to see Dolzhikov at one o'clock.
The man servant showed me into a charming room,
which was the engineer's drawing-room and study.
Everything in it was charming and tasteful, and to a
man like myself, unused to such things, very strange.
Costly carpets, huge chairs, bronzes, pictures in gold
and velvet frames ; photographs on the walls of beauti
ful women, clever, handsome faces, and striking atti
tudes; from the drawing-room a door led straight
into the garden, by a veranda, and I saw lilac and a
table laid for breakfast, rolls, and a bunch of roses;
and there was a smell of spring, and good cigars, and
happiness and everything seemed to say, here lives
a man who has worked and won the highest happiness
here on earth. At the table the engineer's daughter
was sitting reading a newspaper.
"Do you want my father?" she asked. "He is
having a shower-bath. He will be down presently.
Please take a chair."
I sat down.
"I believe you live opposite?" she asked after a
short silence.
MY LIFE 17
" Yes."
" When I have nothing to do I look out of the
window. You must excuse me," she added, turning
to her newspaper, " and I often see you and your
sister. She has such a kind, wistful expression."
Dolzhikov came in. He was wiping his neck with
a towel.
" Papa, this is Mr. Polozniev," said his daughter.
" Yes, yes. Blagovo spoke to me." He turned
quickly to me, but did not hold out his hand. ' But
what do you think I can give you? I'm not bursting
with situations. You are queer people!" he went 011
in a loud voice and as though he were scolding me.
" I get about twenty people every day, as though I
were a Department of State. I run a railway, sir.
I employ hard labour; I need mechanics, navvies,
joiners, well-sinkers, and you can only sit and write.
That's all! You are all clerks!"
And he exhaled the same air of happiness as his
carpets and chairs. He was stout, healthy, with red
cheeks and a broad chest; he looked clean in his pink
shirt and wide trousers, just like a china figure of a
post-boy. He had a round, bristling beard and
not a single grey hair and a nose with a slight bridge,
and bright, innocent, dark eyes.
" What can you do?" he went on. " Nothing ! I
am an engineer and well-to-do, but before I was given
this railway I worked very hard for a long time. I was
an engine-driver for two years, I worked in Belgium
18 MY LIFE
as an ordinary lubricator. Now, my dear man, just
think what work can I offer you?"
" I quite agree," said I, utterly abashed, not daring
to meet his bright, innocent eyes.
" Are you any good with the telegraph?" he asked
after some thought.
" Yes. I have been in the telegraph service."
"Mm. . . Well, we'll see. Go to Dubechnia.
There's a fellow there already. But he is a scamp."
" And what will my duties be?" I asked.
" We'll see to that later. Go there now. I'll give
orders. But please don't get drunk and don't bother
me with petitions or 1*11 kick you out."
He turned away from me without even a nod. I
bowed to him and his daughter, who was reading the
newspaper, and went out. I felt so miserable that
when my sister asked how the engineer had received
me, I could not utter a single word.
To go to Dubechnia I got up early in the morning
at sunrise. There was not a soul in the street, the
whole town was asleep, and my footsteps rang out with
a hollow sound. The dewy poplars filled the air with
a soft scent. I was sad and had no desire to leave the
town. It seemed so nice and warm ! I loved the
green trees, the quiet sunny mornings, the ringing of
the bells, but the people in the town were alien to me,
tiresome and sometimes even loathsome. I neither
liked nor understood them.
I did not understand why or for what purpose
MY LIFE 19
those thirty-five thousand people lived. I knew
that Kimry made a living by manufacturing boots,
that Tula made samovars and guns, that Odessa was
a port ; but I did not know what our town was or what
it did. The people in Great Gentry Street and two
other clean streets had independent means and salaries
paid by the Treasury, but how the people lived in the
other eight streets which stretched parallel to each
other for three miles and then were lost behind the
hill that was always an insoluble problem to me.
And I am ashamed to think of the way they lived.
They had neither public gardens, nor a theatre, nor a
decent orchestra; the town and club libraries are
used only by young Jews, so that books and magazines
would lie for months uncut. The rich and the in
telligentsia slept in close, stuffy bedrooms, with wooden
beds infested with bugs; the children were kept in
filthy, dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants,
even when they were old and respectable, slept on the
kitchen floor and covered themselves with rags. Ex
cept in Lent all the houses smelt of bortsch, and
during Lent of sturgeon fried in sunflower oil. The
food was unsavoury, the water unwholesome. On the
town council, at the governor's, at the archbishop's,
everywhere there had been talk for years about there
being no good, cheap water-supply and of borrowing
two hundred thousand roubles from the Treasury.
Even the very rich people, of whom there were about
thirty in the town, people who would lose a whole
20 MY LIFE
estate at cards, used to drink the bad water and talk
passionately about the loan and I could never under
stand this, for it seemed to me it would be simpler for
them to pay up the two hundred thousand.
I did not know a single honest man in the whole
^v town. My father took bribes, and imagined they were
? given to him out of respect for his spiritual qualities;
/ the boys at the high school, in order to be promoted,
went to lodge with the masters and paid them large
sums; the wife of the military commandant took
levies from the recruits during the recruiting, and
even allowed them to stand her drinks, and once she
was so drunk in church that she could not get up from
her knees ; during the recruiting the doctors also took
bribes, and the municipal doctor and the veterinary
surgeon levied taxes on the butcher shops and public
houses; the district school did a trade in certificates
which gave certain privileges in the civil service; the
provosts took bribes from the clergy and church
wardens whom they controlled, and on the town
council and various committees every one who came
before them was pursued with : " One expects thanks !"
and thereby forty copecks had to change hands.
And those who did not take bribes, like the High Court
officials, were stiff and proud, and shook hands with
two fingers, and were distinguished by their indiffer
ence and narrow-mindedness. They drank and played
cards, married rich women, and always had a bad,
insidious influence on those round them. Only the
^/
MY LIFE 21
girls had any moral purity; most of them had lofty
aspirations and were pure and honest at heart; but
they knew nothing of life, and believed that bribes
were given to honour spiritual qualities; and when
they married, they soon grew old and weak, and were
hopelessly lost in the mire of that vulgar, bourgeois
existence.^
Ill
A railway was being built in our district. On holi
days and thereabouts the town was filled with crowds
of ragamuffins called "railies," of whom the people
were afraid. I used often to see a miserable wretch
with a bloody face, and without a hat, being dragged
off by the police, and behind him was the proof of his
crime, a samovar or some wet, newly washed linen.
The " railies " used to collect near the public houses
and on the squares ; and they drank, ate, and swore
terribly, and whistled after the town prostitutes. To
amuse these ruffians our shopkeepers used to make
the cats and dogs drink vodka, or tie a kerosene-tin
to a dog's tail, and whistle to make the dog come
tearing along the street with the tin clattering after
him, and making him squeal with terror and think he
had some frightful monster hard at his heels, so that he
would rush out of the town and over the fields until
he could run no more. We had several dogs in the
town which were left with a permanent shiver and
used to crawl about with their tails between their
22 MY LIFE
legs, and people said that they could not stand such
tricks and had gone mad.
The station was being built five miles from the town.
It was said that the engineer had asked for a bribe of
fifty thousand roubles to bring the station nearer,
but the municipality would only agree to forty; they
would not give in to the extra ten thousand, and now
the townspeople are sorry because they had to make
a road to the station which cost them more. Sleepers
and rails were fixed all along the line, and service-
trains were running to carry building materials and
labourers, and they were only waiting for the bridges
upon which Dolzhikov was at work, and here and there
the stations were not ready.
Dubechnia the name of our first station was
seventeen versts from the town. I went on foot. The
winter and spring corn was bright green, .shining in
the morning sun. The road was smooth and bright,
and in the distance I could see in outline the sta
tion, the hills, and the remote farmhouses. . How
good it was out in the open ! And how I longed to be
filled with the sense of freedom, if only for that morn
ing, to stop thinking of what was going on in the town,
or of my needs, or even of eating ! Nothing has so
much prevented my living as the feeling of acute
hunger, which make my finest thoughts get mixed up
with thoughts of porridge, cutlets, and fried fish.
When I stand alone in the fields and look up at the
larks hanging marvellously in the air, and bursting
MY LIFE 23
with hysterical song, I think: " It would be nice to
have some bread and butter. " Or when I sit in the
road and shut my eyes and listen to the wonderful
sounds of a May-day, I remember how good hot pota
toes smell. Being big and of a strong constitution I
never have quite enoug^-4KH!ftttv.and so my chief sensa
tion during the day ikjurnggjc,} and so I can under
stand why so many people who are working for a bare
living, can talk of nothing but food.
At Dubechnia the station was being plastered inside,
and the upper story of the water-tank was being built.
It was close and smelt of lime, and the labourers were
wandering lazily over piles of chips and rubbish.
The signalman was asleep near his box with the sun
pouring straight into his face. There was not a single
tree. The telegraph wire gave a faint hum, and here
and there birds had alighted on it. I wandered over
the heaps, not knowing what to do, and remembered
how when I asked the engineer what my duties would
be, he had replied: " We will see there/' But what
was there to see in such a wilderness? The plasterers
were talking about the foreman and about one Fedot
Vassilievich. I could not understand and was filled
with embarrassment physical embarrassment. I felt
conscious of my arms and legs, and of the whole of my
big body, and did not know what to do with them or
-i ,
where to go.
After walking for at least a couple of hours I noticed
that from the station to the right of the line there were
24 MY LIFE
ttelegraph-poles which after about one and a half or
two miles ended in a white stone wall. The labourers
said it was the office, and I decided at last that I must
go there.
It was a very old farmhouse, long unused. The wall
of rough, white stone was decayed, and in places had
crumbled away, and the roof of the wing, the blind
wall of which looked toward the railway, had perished,
and was patched here and there with tin. Through
the gates there was a large yard, overgrown with tall
grass, and beyond that, an old house with Venetian
blinds in the windows, and a high roof, brown with rot.
On either side of the house, to right and left, were two
symmetrical wings; the windows of one were boarded
up, while by the other, the windows of which were
open, there was a number of calves grazing. The
last telegraph-pole stood in the yard, and the wire
went from it to the wing with the blind wall. The
door was open and I went in. By the table at the tele
graph was sitting a man with a dark, curly head in a
canvas coat ; he glared at me sternly and askance,
but he immediately smiled and said :
" How do yo^-do7>J4ttle Profit? "
It was Ivan Cheprakov, my school friend, who was
expelled, when he was in the second class, for smoking.
Once, during the autumn, we were out catching gold
finches, starlings, and hawfinches, to sell them in the
market early in the morning when our parents were
still asleep.
MY LIFE 25
We beat up flocks of starlings and shot at them with
pellets, and then picked up the wounded, and some
died in terrible agony I can still remember how
they moaned at night in my cage and some re
covered. And we sold them, and swore black and
blue that they were male birds. Once in the market!
I had only one starling left, which I Jiawked about and
finally sold for a copeck. " A little. .pjofit-! * J ' I said to
console myself, and from that time at school I was
always known as ' Little Profit," and even now,
schoolboys and the townspeople sometimes use the
name to tease me, though no one but myself remembers
how it came about.
Cheprakov never was strong. He was narrow-
chested, round-shouldered, long-] egged. His tie looked
like a piece of string, he had no waistcoat, and his
boots were worse than mine with the heels worn
down. He blinked with his eyes and had an eager
expression as though he were trying to catch some
thing and he was in a constant fidget.
" You wait," he said, bustling about. " Look here!
. . . What was I saying just now? >J
We began to talk. I discovered that the estate had
till recently belonged to the Cheprakovs and only the
previous autumn had passed to Dolzhikov, who thought
it more profitable to keep his money in land than in
shares, and had already bought three big estates in
our district with the transfer of all mortgages. When
Cheprakov's mother sold, she stipulated for the right
26 MY LIFE
to live in one of the wings for another two years and
** get her son a job in the office.
"Why shouldn't he buy?" said Cheprakov of the
engineer. (i He gets a lot from the contractors. He
bribes them all."
Then he took me to dinner, deciding in his emphatic
way that I was to live with him in the wing and board
with his mother.
" She is a screw/' he said, " bat she will not take
much from you."
In the small rooms where his mother lived there was
a queer jumble; even the hall and the passage were
stacked with furniture, which had been taken from
the house after the sale of the estate ; and the furniture
was old, and of redwood. Mrs. Cheprakov, a very
stout elderly lady, with slanting, Chinese eyes, sat by
the window, in a big chair, knitting a stocking. She
received me ceremoniously.
' It is Polozniev, mother," said Cheprakov, intro
ducing me. " He is going to work here."
"Are you a nobleman? " she asked in a strange,
unpleasant voice as though she had boiling fat in
her throat.
"Yes," I answered.
"Sit down."
The dinner was bad. It consisted only of a pie
with unsweetened curds and some milk soup. Elena
Nikifirovna, my hostess, was perpetually winking,
first with one eye, then with the other. She talked
MY LIFE 27
and ete, but in her whole aspect there was a deathlike
quality, and one could almost detect the smell of a
corpse. Life hardly stirred in her, yet she had the
air of being the lady of the manor, who had once had
her serfs, and was the wife of a general, whose ser
vants had to call him " Your Excellency," and when
these miserable embers of life flared up in her for a
moment, she would say to her son :
" Ivan, that is not the way to hold your knife ! >:
Or she would say, gasping for brea'th, with the pre-
ciseness of a hostess labouring to entertain her guest :
" We have just sold our estate, you know. It is a
pity, of course, we have got so used to being here,
but Dolzhikov promised to make Ivan station-master
at Dubechnia, so that we shan't have to leave. We
shall live here on the station, which is the same as liv
ing on the estate. The engineer is such a nice man !
Don't you think him very handsome? "
Until recently the Cheprakovs had been very well-
to-do, but with the general's death everything changed.
Elena Nikifirovna began to quarrel with the neigh
bours and to go to law, and she did not pay her bailiffs
and labourers ; she was always afraid of being robbed
and in less than ten years Dubechnia changed com
pletely.
Behind the house there was an old garden run wild,
overgrown with tall grass and brushwood. I walked
along the terrace which was still well-kept and beauti
ful ; through the glass door I saw a room with a par-
28 MY LIFE
quet floor, which must have been the drawing-room.
It contained an ancient piano, some engravings in
mahogany frames 1 on the walls and nothing else.
There was nothing left of the flower-garden but peonies
and poppies, rearing their white and scarlet heads
above the ground ; on the paths, all huddled together,
were young maples and elm-trees, which had been
stripped by the cows. The growth was dense and
the garden seemed impassable, and only near the
house, where there still stood poplars, firs, and some
old lime trees, were there traces of the former avenues,
and further on the garden was being cleared for a
hay-field, and here it was no longer allowed to run
wild, and one's mouth and eyes were no longer filled
with spiders' webs, and a pleasant air was stirring.
The further out one went, the more open it was,
and there were cherry-trees, plum-trees, wide-spreading
old apple-trees, lichened and held up with props, and
the pear-trees were so tall that it was incredible that
there could be pears on them. This part of the garden
was let to the market-women of our town, and it was
guarded from thieves and starlings by a peasant an
idiot who lived in a hut.
The orchard grew thinner and became a mere
meadow running down to the river, which was over
grown with reeds and withy-beds. There was a pool
by the mill-dam, deep and full of fish, and a little mill
with a straw roof ground and roared, and the frogs
croaked furiously. On the water, which was as smooth
e^. ?f
^&bu^&
MY LIFE 29
as glass, circles appeared from time to time, and
water-lilies trembled on the impact of a darting fish.
The village of Dubechnia was on the other side of the
river. The calm, azure pool was alluring with its
promise of coolness and rest. And now all this,
the pool, the mill, the comfortable banks of the river,
belonged to the engineer !
And here my new work began. I received and de
spatched telegrams, I wrote out various accounts and
copied orders, claims, and reports, sent in to the office
by our illiterate foremen and mechanics. But most
of the day I did nothing, walking up and down the
room waiting for telegrams, or I would tell the boy
to stay in the wing, and go into the garden until the
boy came to say the bell was ringing. I had dinner
with Mrs. Cheprakov. Meat was served very rarely;
most of the dishes were made of milk, and on Wednes
days and Fridays we had Lenten fare, and the food
was served in pink plates, which were called Lenten.
Mrs. Cheprakov was always blinking the habit grew
on her, and I felt awkward and embarrassed in her
presence.
As there was not enough work for one, Cheprakov
did nothing, but slept or went down to the pool with
his gun to shoot ducks. In the evenings he got drunk
in the village, or at the station, and before going to bed
he would look in the glass and say :
"How are you, Ivan Cheprakov?"
When he was drunk, he was very pale and used to
30 MY LIFE
rub his hands and laugh, or rather neigh, Ile-he-he !
Out of bravado he would undress himself and run naked
through the fields, and he used to eat flies and say
they were a bit sour.
IV.
Once after dinner he came running into the wing,
panting, to say:
" Your sister lias come to see you.*'
I went out and saw a fly standing by the steps of
the house. My sister had brought Aniuta Blagovo
and a military gentleman in a summer uniform. As
I approached I recognised the military gentleman as
Aniuta's brother, the doctor.
" We've come to take you for a picnic/' he said,
" if you've no objection."
My sister and Aniuta wanted to ask how I was
getting on, but they were both silent and only looked
at me. They felt that I didn't like my job, and tears
came into my sister's eyes and Aniuta Blagovo blushed.
We went into the orchard, the doctor first, and he
said ecstatically :
" What air! By jove, what air! "
He was just a boy to look at. He talked and walked
like an undergraduate, and the look in his grey eyes
was as lively, simple, and frank as that of a nice boy.
Compared with his tall, handsome sister he looked
weak and slight, and his little beard was thin and so
MY LIFE 31
was his voice a thin tenor, though quite pleasant.
He was away somewhere with his regiment and had
come home on leave, and said that he was going to
Petersburg in the autumn to take his M.D. He
already had a family a wife and three children;
he had married young, in his second year at the Uni
versity, and people said he was unhappily married
and was not living with his wife.
" What is the time? " My sister was uneasy. " We
must go back soon, for my father would only let me
be away until six o'clock."
"Oh, your father," sighed the doctor.
I made tea, and we drank it sitting on a carpet in
front of the terrace, and the doctor, kneeling, drank
from his saucer, and said that he was perfectly happy.
Then Cheprakov fetched the key and unlocked the
glass door and we all entered the house. It was dark
and mysterious and smelled of mushrooms, and our
footsteps made a hollow sound as though there were
a vault under the floor. The doctor stopped by the
piano and touched the keys and it gave out a faint,
tremulous, cracked but still melodious sound. He
raised his voice and began to sing a romance, frown
ing and impatiently stamping his foot when he touched
a broken key. My sister forgot about going home,
but walked agitatedly up and down the room and said :
" I am happy! I am very, very happy! "
There was a note of surprise in her voice as though
it seemed impossible to her that she should be happy.
3A
32 MY LIFE
It was the first time in my life that I had seen her so
gay. She even looked handsome. Her profile was
not good, her nose and mouth somehow protruded
and made her look as if she was always blowing, but
she had beautiful, dark eyes, a pale, very delicate com
plexion, and a touching expression of kindness and
sadness, and when she spoke she seemed very charm
ing and even beautiful. Both she and I took after
our mother; we were broad-shouldered, strong, and
sturdy, but her paleness was a sign of sickness, she
often coughed, and in her eyes I often noticed the
expression common to people who are ill, but who for
some reason conceal it. In her present cheerfulness
there was something childish and naive, as though all
the joy which had been suppressed and dulled during
our childhood by a strict upbringing, had suddenly
awakened in her soul and rushed out into freedom.
But when evening came and the fly was brought
round, my sister became very quiet and subdued, and
sat in the fly as though it were a prison-van.
Soon they were all gone. The noise of the fly died
away. . . I remembered that Aniuta Blagavo had
said not a single word to me all day.
"A wonderful girl !" I thought. "A wonderful girl."
Lent came and every day we had Lenten dishes.
I was greatly depressed by my idleness and the un
certainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry, dis
satisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate and
only waited for an energetic mood to leave the place.
MY LIFE 33
Once in the afternoon when Radish was sitting in
our wing, Dolzhikov entered unexpectedly, very sun
burnt, and grey with dust. He had been out on the
line for three days and had come to Dubechnia on a
locomotive and walked over. While he waited for
the carriage which he had ordered to come out to
meet him he went over the estate with his bailiff,
giving orders in a loud voice, and then for a whole
hour he sat in our wing and wrote letters. When
telegrams came through for him, he himself tapped
out the answers, while we stood there stiff and silent.
" What a mess! " he said, looking angrily through
the accounts. " I shall transfer the office to the station
in a fortnight and I don't know what I shall do with
you then."
*' I've done my best, sir," said Cheprakov.
" Quite so. I can see what your best is. You
can only draw your wages." The engineer looked at
me and went on. " You rely on getting introductions
to make a career for yourself with as little trouble as
possible. Well, I don't care about introductions.
Nobody helped me. Before I had this line, I was an
engine-driver. I worked in Belgium as an ordinary
lubricator. And what are you doing here, Panteley ? "
lie asked, turning to Radish. " Going out drink
ing?"
For some reason or other he called all simple people
I Panteley, while he despised men like Cheprakov and
myself, and called us drunkaxds, beasts, canaille.
34 MY LIFE
As a rule he was hard on petty officials, and paid and
dismissed them ruthlessly without any explanation.
At last the carriage came for him. When he left
he promised to dismiss us al] in a fortnight; called
the bailiff a fool, stretched himself out comfortably in
the carriage, and drove away.
" Andrey Ivanich," I said to Radish, " will you
take me on as a labourer? "
"Why! All right! "
We went together toward the town, and when the
station and the farm were far behind us, I asked :
"Andrey Ivanich, why did you come to Dubechnia?"
" Firstly because some of my men are working on
the line, and secondly to pay interest to Mrs. Chepra-
kov. I borrowed fifty roubles from her last summer,
and now I pay her one rouble a month interest."
The decorator stopped and took hold of my coat.
" Misail Alexeich, my friend, " he went on, " I
take it that if a common man or a gentleman takes
interest, he is a wrong-doer. The truth is not in him."
Radish, looking thin, pale, and rather terrible, shut
his eyes, shook his head, and muttered in a philosophic
tone:
" The grub eats grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the
soul. God save us miserable sinners ! "
MY LIFE 35
V.
Radish was unpractical and he was no business
man ; he undertook more work than he could do, and
when it caine to payment he always lost his reckoning
and so was always out on the wrong side. He was a
painter, a glazier, a paper-hanger, and would even
take on tiling, and I remember how he used to run
about for days looking for tiles to make an insignifi
cant profit. He was an excellent workman and would
sometime earn ten roubles a day, and but for his
desire to be a master and to call himself a con
tractor, he would probably have made quite a lot of
money.
He himself was paid by contract and paid me and
the others by the day, between seventy-five copecks
and a rouble per day. When the weather was hot
and dry we did various outside jobs, chiefly painting
roofs. Not being used to it, my feet got hot, as
though I were walking over a ret-hot oven, and when
I wore felt boots my feet swelled. But this was only
at the beginning. Later on I got used to it and every
thing went all right. I lived among the people,
to whom work was obligatory and unavoidable, people
who worked like dray-horses, and knew nothing of
the moral value of labour, and never even used the
word " labour " in their talk. Among them I also
felt like a dray-horse, more and more imbued with the
36 MY LIFE
necessity and inevitability of what I was doing, and
this made nay life easier, and saved me from doubt.
At first everything amused me, everything was new.
It was like being born again. I could sleep on the
ground and go barefoot and found it exceedingly
-pleasant. I could stand in a crowd of simple folks,
without embarrassing them, and when a cab-horse
fell down in the street, I used to run and help it up
without being afraid of soiling my clothes. But,
best of all, I was living independently and was not a
burden on any one.
The painting of roofs, especially when we mixed
our own paint, was considered a very profitable busi
ness, and therefore, even such good workmen as
Radish did not shun this rough and tiresome work.
In short trousers, showing his lean, muscular legs,
he used to> prowl over the roof like a stork, and I used
to hear him sigh wearily as he worked his brush :
" Woe, woe to us, miserable sinners! >:
He could walk as easily on a roof as on the ground.
In spite of his looking so ill and pale and corpse-like,
his agility was extraordinary; like any young man he
would paint the cupola and the top of the church with
out scaffolding, using only ladders and a rope, and it
was queer and strange when, standing there, far
above the ground, he would rise to his full height and
cry to the world at large :
" Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the
soul ! "
MY LIFE 37
Or, thinking of something, he would suddenly an
swer his own thought :
" Anything may happen ! Anything may happen ! "
When I went home from work all the people sitting
outside their doors, the shop assistants, boys, and
their masters, used to shout after me and jeer spite
fully, and at first it seemed monstrous and distressed
me greatly.
"Little Profit," they used to shout. "House-
painter! Yellow ochre! '
And no one treated me so unmercifully as those
who had only just risen above the people and had
quite recently had to work for their living. Once in
the market-place as I passed the ironmonger's a can
of water was spilled over me as if by accident, and
once a stick was thrown at me. And once a fishmonger,
a grey-haired old man, stood in my way and looked at
me morosely and said :
" It isn't you 'm sorry for, you fool, it's your
father."
And when my acquaintances met me they got con
fused. Some regarded me as a queer fish and a fool,
and they were sorry for me; others did not know how
to treat me and it was difficult to understand them.
Once, in the daytime, in one of the streets off Great
Gentry Street, I met Aniuta Blagovo. I was on my
way to my work and was carrying two long brushes
and a pot of paint. When she recognised me, Aniuta
blushed!
38 MY LIFE
" Please do not acknowledge me in the street/' she
said nervously, sternly, in a trembling voice, without
offering to shake hands with me, and tears suddenly
gleamed in her eyes. " If you must be like this, then,
so so be it, but please avoid me in public ! >;
I had left Great Gentry Street and was living in
a suburb, called Makarikha, with my nurse Karpovna,
a good-natured but gloomy old woman who was al
ways looking for evil, and was frightened by her
dreams, and saw omens and ill in the bees and wasps
which flew into her room. And in her opinion my
having become a working man boded no good.
" You are lost ! " she said mournfully, shaking her
head. " Lost ! "
With her in her little house lived her adopted son,
Prokofyi, a butcher, a huge, clumsy fellow, of about
thirty, with ginger hair and scrubby moustache.
When he met me in the hall, he would silently and re
spectfully make way for me, and when he was drunk
he would salute me with his whole hand. In the
evenings he used to have supper, and through the
wooden partition I could hear him snorting and snuf
fling as he drank glass after glass.
*' Mother,'* he would say in an undertone.
'Well," Karpovna would reply. She was passion
ately fond of him. " What is it, my son? "
' I'll do you a favour, mother. I'll feed you in your
old age in this vale of tears, and when you die I'll
bury you at my own expense. So I say and so I'll do."
&s
J
MY LIFE 39
I used to get up every day before sunrise and go to
bed early. We pamter&ate heavily and slept soundly,
and only during the night would we have any excite
ment. I never quarrelled with my comrades. All
day long there was a ceaseless stream of abuse, cursing
and hearty good wishes, as, for instance, that one's
eyes should burst, or that one might be carried off by
cholera, but, all the same, among ourselves we were
very friendly. The men suspected me of being a
religious crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly,
saying thai even my own father denounced me, and
they used to say that they very seldom went to church
and that many of them had not been to confession for
ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying
that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw among
birds.
My mates respected me and regarded me with esteem ;
they evidently liked my not drinking or smoking, and
leading a quiet, steady life. They were only rather
disagreeably surprised at my not stealing the oil, or
going with them to ask our employers for a drink.
The stealing of the employers' oil and paint was a
custom with house-painters, and was not regarded
as theft, and it was remarkable that even so honest
a man as Radish would always come away from work
with some white lead and oil. And even respectable
old men who had their own houses in Makarikha
j6 -Mr fv
were not ashamed to ask foi/tipf, and when the men,
at the beginning or end of^aTjob, made up to some
, t tut
40 MY LIFE
vulgar fool and thanked him humbly for a few pence,
I used to feel isick and sorry.
With the customers they behaved like sly courtiers,
and almost every day I was reminded of Shakespeare's
Polonius.
" There will probably be rain/' a customer would
say, staring at the sky.
" It is sure to rain," the painters would agree.
" But the clouds aren't rain-clouds. Perhaps it
won't rain."
" No, sir. It won't rain. It won't rain, sure."
Behind their backs they generally regarded the
customers ironically, and when, for instance, they saw
a gentleman sitting on his balcony with a newspaper,
they would say :
" He reads newspapers, but he has nothing to
eat."
I never visited my people. When I returned from
work I often found short, disturbing notes from my
sister about my father; how he was very absent-
minded at dinner, and then slipped away and locked
himself in his study and did not come out for a long
time. Such news upset me. I could not sleep, and
I would go sometimes at night and walk along Great
Gentry Street by our house, and look up at the dark
windows, and try to guess if all was well within. On
Sundays my sister would come to see me, but by
stealth, as though she came not to see me, but our
nurse. And if she came into my room she would look
MY LIFE 41
pale, with her eyes red, and at once she would begin
to weep.
" Father cannot bear it much longer/* she would
say. "If, as God forbid, something were to happen
to him, it would be on your conscience all your life.
It is awful, Misail ! For mother's sake I implore you
to mend your ways."
' My dear sister," I replied. " How can I reform
when I am convinced that I am acting according to my
conscience? Do try to understand me! "
" I know you are obeying your conscience, but it
ought to be possible to do so without hurting any
body."
" Oh, saints above! " the old woman would sigh be
hind the door. " You are lost. There will be a mis
fortune, my dear. It is bound to come."
VI
One Sunday, Doctor Blagavo came to see me unex
pectedly. He was wearing a white summer uniform
over a silk shirt, and high glace boots.
" I came to see you ! " he began, gripping my hand
-in his hearty, undergraduate fashion. " I hear of you
every day and I have long intended to go and see you
to have a heart-to-heart, as they say. Things are
awfully boring in the town ; there is not a living soul
worth talking to. How hot it is, by Jove! " he went
on, taking off his tunic and standing in his silk shirt.
" My dear fellow, let us have a talk."
42 MY LIFE
I was feeling bored and longing for other society
than that of the decorators. I was really glad to see
him.
" To begin with," he said, sitting on my bed, " I
sympathise with you heartily, and I have a profound
respect for your present way of living. In the town
you are misunderstood and there is nobody to under
stand you, because, as you know, it is full of Gogol ian
pig-faces. But I guessed what you were at the picnic.
You are a noble soul, an honest, high-minded man !
I respect you and think it an honour to shake hands
with you. To change your life so abruptly and sud
denly as you did, you must have passed through a
most trying spiritual process, and to go on with it
now, to live scrupulously by your convictions, you
must have to toil incessantly both in mind and in
heart. N"ow, please tell me, don't you think that if
you spent~aTT~tEIsTor^~of will, intensity, and power
on something else, like trying- to be a great scholar or
an artist, that your life would be both wider and
deeper, and altogether more productive? '
'"We talked and when we came to speak of physical
labour, I expressed this idea: that it was necessary
that the strong should not enslave the weak, and that
the minority should not be a parasite on the majority,
always sucking up the finest sap, i.e., it was necessary
that all without exception .the strong and the weak,
the rich and the poor should share equally in the
struggle for existence, every man for himself, and in
? hA^
MY LIFE 43
that respect there was no better means of levelling
than physical labour and compulsory service for all.
" You think, then," said the doctor, " that all, with
out exception, should be employed in physical labour?"
" Yes."
" But don't you think that if everybody, including
the best people, thinkers and men of science, were to
take part in the struggle for existence, each man for
himself, and took 'to breaking stones and painting roofs,
it would be^ a serious menace to progress? "
' Where is the danger? " I asked. " Progress con
sists in deeds of love, in the fulfilment of the moral
law. If you enslave no one, and are a burden upon no
one, what further progress do you want? "
* But look here! " said Blagovo, suddenly losing his
temper and getting up. "I say! If a snail in its
shell is engaged in self-perfection in obedience to the
moral law would you call that progress? "
" But why? " I was nettled. " If you don't make
your neighbours feed you, clothe you, carry you,
defend you from your enemies, surely, that is progress
amidst a life resting on slavery. My view is that that
is the most real and, perhaps, the only possible,
the only progress necessary."
' The limits of universal progress, which is common
to all men, are in infinity, and it seems to me strange
to talk of a ' possible ' progress limited by our needs
and temporal conceptions."
" If the limits of progress are in infinity, as you say,
44 MY LIFE
then it means that ifts goal is indefinite/' I said.
" Think of living* without knowing definitely what
for! "
" Why not? Your * not knowing ' is not so boring as
your * knowing/ I am walking up a ladder which is
j? called progress, civilisation, culture. I go on and on,
J nolfknowmg definitely where I am going to, but surely
it is worith while living for the sake of the wonderful
ladder alone. And you know exactly what you are
living for that some should not enslave others, that
the artist and the man who mixes his colours for him
should dine equally well. But that is the bourgeois,
kitchen side of life, and isn't it disgusting only to live
for that? If some insects devour others, devil take
them, let them ! We need not think of them, they will
perish and rot, however you save them from slavery
we must think of that great Millenium which awaits
all mankind in the distant future."
Blagovo argued hotly with me, but it was noticeable
that he was disturbed by some outside thught.
" Your sister is not coming," he said, consulting his
watch. " Yesterday she was at our house and said
she was going to see you. You go on talking about
slavery, slavery," he went on, " but it is a special
question, and all these questions are solved by man
kind gradually "
We began to talk of evolution. ^ I said that every
man decides the question of good and evil for him
self, and does not wait for mankind to solve the ques-
MY LIFE 45
tion by virtue of gradual development. Besides,
evolution is a stick with two ends. Side by side
with the gradual development of humanitarian ideas,
there is the gradual growth of ideas of a different
kind. Serfdom is past, and capitalism is growing.
And with ideas of liberation at their height the ma
jority, just as in the days of Baty, feeds, clothes, and
defends the minority; and is left hungry, naked, and
defenceless. The state of things harmonises beauti
fully with all your tendencies and movements, because
the art of enslaving is also being gradually developed.
We no longer flog our servants in the stables, but we
give slavery more refined forms; at any rate, we are
n j . . > .. ._;
able to justify it in each separate case. Ideas remain
ideas with us, but if we could, now, at the end of the
nineteenth century, throw upon the working classes
all our most unpleasant physiological functions, we
should do so, and, of course, we should justify our
selves by saying that if the best people, thinkers and
great scholars, had to waste their time on such func
tions, progress would be in serious jeopardy.
Just then my sister entered. When she saw the
doctor, she was flurried and excited, and at once be
gan to say that it was time for her to go home to
her father.
" Cleopatra Alexeyevna," said Blagovo earnestly,
laying his hands on his heart, " what will happen
to your father if you spend half an hour with your
brother and me? "
46 MY LIFE
He was a simple kind of man and could communicate
his cheerfulness to others. My sister thought for a
minute and began to laugh, and suddenly got very
happy, suddenly, unexpectedly, just as she did at the
picnic. We went out into the fields and lay on the
grass, and went on with our conversation and looked
at the town, where all the windows facing the west
looked golden in the setting sun .
After that Blagovo appeared every time my sister
came to see me, and they always greeted each other
as though their meeting was unexpected. My sister
used to listen while the doctor and I argued, and her
face was always joyful and rapturous, admiring and
curious, and it seemed to me that a new world was
slowly being discovered before her eyes, a world which
she had not seen before even in her dreams, which
now she was trying to divine; when the doctor wfas
not there she was quiet and sad, and if, as she sat on
my bed, she sometimes wept, it was for reasons of
which she did not speak.
In August Radish gave us orders to go to the rail
way. A couple of days before we were " driven " out
of town, my father") came to see me. He sat down
and, without looking at me, slowly wiped his red face,
then took out of his pocket our local paper and read
out with deliberate emphasis on each word that a
/ schoolfellow of my own age, the son of the director
\ of the State Bank, had been appointed chief clerk of
te Court of the Exchequer.
MY LIFE 47
rself^^ he said, folding up the
newspaper. " You are a beggar, a vagabond, a scoun
drel ! Even the working class people and peasants get
education to make themselves decent people, while
you, a Polozniev, with famous, noble ancestors, go
wallowing in the mire! But I did not come here to
talk to you. I have given you up already. " He
went on in a choking voice, as he stood up: " I came
here to find out where your sister is, you scoundrel !
She left me after dinner. It is now past seven o'clock
and she is not in. She has been going out lately with
out telling me, and she has been disrespectful and I
see your filthy, abominable influence at work. "Where
is she? "
He had in his hands the familiar umbrella, and I
was already taken aback, and I stood stiff and erect,
like a schoolboy, waiting for my father to thrash me,
but he saw the glance I cast at the umbrella and this
probably checked him.
" Live as you like! " he said. " My blessing is
gone from you."
" Good God! " muttered my old nurse behind the
door. " You are lost. Oh ! my heart feels some
misfortune coming. I can feel it."
I went to work on the railway. During the whole of
August there was wind and rain. It was damp and
cold ; the corn had now been gathered in the fields,
and on the big farms where the reaping was done with
machines, the wheat lay not in sheaves, but in heaps;
4 A
48 MY LIFE
and I remember how those melancholy heaps grew
darker and darker every day, and the grain sprouted.
It was hard work; the* pouring rain spoiled everything
that we succeeded in finishing. We were not allowed
either to live or to sleep in the station buildings and
had to take shelter in dirty, damp, mud huts where the
" rallies " had lived during the summer, and at night
I could not sleep from the cold and the bugs crawling
over my face and hands. And when we were working
near the bridges, then the " railies " used to come out
in a crowd to fight the painters which they regarded
as sport. They used to thrash us, steal our brushes,
and to ^infuriate us and provoke us to a fighft they
used to spoil our work, as when they smeared the
signal-boxes with green paint. To add to all our
miseries Radish began to pay us very irregularly. All
the painting on the line was given to one contractor,
who subcontracted with another, and he again with
Radish, stipulating for twenty per cent, commission.
The job itself was* unprofitable; then oame the rains;
time was wasted; we did no work and Radish had to
pay his men every day. The starving painters nearly
came to blows with him, called him a swindler, a blood
sucker, a Judas, and he, poor man, sighed and in
despair raised his hands to the heavens and was con
tinually going to Mrs. Cheprakov to borrow money.
MY LIFE 49
VII
Came the rainy, muddy, dark autumn, bringing a
slack time, and I used to sit at home three days in the
week without work, or did various jobs outside paint
ing; such as digging earth for ballast for twenty
copecks a day. Doctor Blagovo had gone to Petersburg.
My sister did not come to see me. Radish lay at home
ill, expecting to die every day.
And my mood was also autumnal; perhaps because
when I became a working man I saw only the seamy
side of the life of our town, an(J^&ei^-4ay made fresh
discoveries which brought meCsto despair.; My fellow
townsmen, both those of whom IhacTKa3a low opinion
before, and those whom I had thought fairly decent,
now seemed to me base, cruel, and up to any dirty
trick. We poor people were tricked and cheated in
the accounts, kept waiting for hours in cold passages
or in the kitchen, and we were insulted and uncivilly
treated. In the autumn I had to paper the library and
two rooms at the club. I was paid seven copecks a
piece, but was told to give a receipt for twelve copecks,
and when I refused to do it, a respectable gentleman
in gold spectacles, one of the stewards of the club,
said to me:
" If you say another word, you scoundrel, I'll knock
you down."
And when a servant whispered to him that I was the
50 MY LIFE
son of Polozniev, the architect, then he got flustered
and blushed, but he recovered himself at once and
said :
" Damn him/'
In the shops we working men were sold bad meat,
musty flour, and coarse tea. In church we were
jostled by the police, and in the hospitals we were
mulcted by the assistants and nurses, and if we could
not give them bribes through poverty, we were given
food in dirty dishes. In the post-office the lowest
official considered it his duty to treat us as animals
and to shout rudely and insolently: " Wait! Don't
you come pushing your way in here ! ' ' Even the dogs,
even they were hostile to us and hurled themselves
at us with a peculiar malignancy. But what struck
me most of^all in my new position was the entire
lack of justice', what the people call " forgetting God."
Barely a clay went by without some swindle. The
shopkeeper, who sold us oil, the contractor, the work
men, the customers themselves, all cheated. It was
an understood thing that our rights were never con
sidered, and we always had to pay for the money
we had earned, going with our hats off to the back
door.
I was paper-hanging in one of the club-rooms, next
the library, when, one evening as I was on the point
of leaving, Dolzhikov's daughter came into the room
carrying a bundle of books.
I bowed to her.
MY LIFE 51
" Ah ! How are you? " she said, recognising me at
once and holding out her hand. " I am very glad to
see you."
She smiled and looked with a curious puzzled ex
pression at my blouse and the pail of paste and the
papers lying on the floor; I was embarrassed and she
also felt awkward.
" Excuse my staring at you," she said. " I have
heard so much about you. Especially from Doctor
Blagovo. He is enthusiastic about you. I have met
your sister ; she is a dear, sympathetic girl, but I could
not make her see that there is nothing awful in your
simple life. On the contrary, you are the most inter
esting man in the town."
Once more she glanced at the pail of paste and the
paper and said :
" I asked Doctor Blagovo to bring us together, but
he either forgot or had no time However, we have
met now. I should be very pleased if you would call
on me. I do so want to have a talk. I am a simple
person," she said, holding out her hand, " and I hope
you will come and see me without ceremony. My
father is away, in Petersburg."
She went into the reading-room, with her dress
rustling, and for a long time after I got home I could
not sleep.
During that autumn some kind soul, wishing to
relieve my existence, sent me from time to time pres
ents of tea and lemons, or biscuits, or roast game.
52 MY LIFE
Karpovna said the presents were brought by a soldier,
though from whom she did not know; and the soldier
used to ask if I was well, if I had dinner every day,
and if I had warm clothes. When the frost began the
soldier came while I was out and brought a soft knitted
scarf, which gave out a soft, hardly perceptible scent,
and I guessed who my good fairy had been. For the
scarf smelled of lily-of-the-valley, Aniuta Blagovo's
favourite scent.
Toward winter there was more work and thirgs
became more cheerful. Radish came to life again and
we worked together in the cemetery church, where we
scraped the holy shrine for gilding. It was a clean,
quiet, and, as our mates said, a specially good job.
We could do a great deal in one day, and so time
passed quickly, imperceptibly. There was no swearing,
nor laughing, nor loud altercations. The place com
pelled quiet and decency, and disposed one for tranquil,
serious thoughts. Absorbed in our work, we stood or
sat immovably, like statues; there was a dead silence,
very proper to a cemetery, so that if a tool fell down, or
the oil in the lamp spluttered, the sound would be loud
and startling, and we would turn to see what it was.
After a long silence one could hear a humming like
that of a swarm of bees; in the porch, in an undertone,
the funeral service was being read over a dead baby;
or a painter painting a moon surrounded with stars on
the cupola would begin to whistle quietly, and re-
remembering suddenly that he was in a church, would
MY LIFE 53
stop; or Radish would sigh at his own thoughts:
" Anything may happen! Anything may happen! '
or above our heads there would be the slow, mourn
ful tolling of a bell, and the painters would say it must
be a rich man being brought to the church. . . .
The days I spent in the peace of the little church,
and during the evenings I played billiards, or went
to the gallery of the theatre in the new serge suit I
had bought with my own hard-earned money. They
were already beginning plays and concerts at the
Azhoguins', and Radish did the scenery by himself.
He told me about the plays and tableaux vivants at
the Azhoguins', and I listened to him enviously. I had
a great longing 1 to take part in the rehearsals, but I
dared not go to the Azhoguins'.
A week before Christmas Doctor Blagovo arrived,
and w^e resumed our arguments and played billiards
in the evenings. When he played billiards he used to
take off his coat, and unfasten his shirt at the neck,
and generally try to look like a debauchee. He drank
a little, but rowdily, and managed to spend in a cheap
tavern like the Volga as much as twenty roubles in
an evening.
Once more my sister came to see me, -and when they
met they expressed surprise, but I could see by her
happy, guilty face that these meetings were not acci
dental . One evening when we were playing billiards
the doctor said to me:
" I say, why don't you call on Miss Dolzhikov?
54 MY LIFE
You don't know Maria Yictorovna. She is a clover,
charming, simple creature."
I told him how her father, the engineer, had received
me in the spring.
" Nonsense! " laughed the doctor. " The engineer
is one thing and she is another. Really, my good
fellow, you mustn't offend her. Go and see her some
time. Let us go to-morrow evening. Will you? "
He persuaded me. Next evening I donned my
serge suit and with some perturbation set out to call
on Miss Dolzhikov. The footman did not seem to
me so haughty and formidable, or the furniture so
oppressive, as on the morning when I had come to ask
for work. Maria Yictorovna was expecting me and
greeted me as .an old friend and gave my hand a warm,
friendly grip. She was wearing a grey dress with wide
sleeves, and had her hair done in the style which when
it became the fashion a year later in our town, was
called " dog's ears." The hair was combed back over
the ears, and it made Maria Yictorovna's face look
broader, and she looked very like her father, whose
face was broad and red and rather like a coacnman's.
She was handsome and elegant, but not young; about
thirty to judge by her appearance, though she was
not more than twenty-five.
lt Dear doctor! " she said, making me sit down.
" How grateful I am to him. But for him, you would
not have come. I am bored to death ! My father has
gone and left me alone, and I do not know what to
do with myself."
MY LIFE 55
Then she began to ask where I was working, how
much I got, and where I lived.
" Do you only spend what you earn on yourself? "
she asked.
" Yes."
" You are a happy man/' she replied. " All the evil
in life, it seems to me, comes from boredom and idle
ness, and spiritual emptiness, which are inevitable
when one lives at other people's expense. Don't
think I'm showing off. I mean it sincerely. It is
dull and unpleasant to be rich. Win friends by just
riches, they say, because as a rule there is and can be
no such thing as just riches."
She looked at the furniture with a serious, cold
expression, as though she was making an inventory of
it, and went on :
" Ease and comfort possess a magic power. Little
by little they seduce even strong-willed people.
Father and I used to live poorly and simply, and now
you see how we live. Isn't it strange? " she said with
a shrug. " We spend twenty thousand roubles a year !
In the provinces ! "
" Ease and comfort ifoust not be regarded as the
inevitable privilege of capital and education," I said.
' It seems to me possible to unite the comforts of life
with work, however hard and dirty it may be. Your
ither is rich, but, as he says, he used to be a mechanic,
id just a lubricator."
She smiled and shook her head doubtfully.
56 ML LIFE
" Papa sometimes eats tiurya," she said, " but only
out of caprice."
A bell rang and she, got up.
" The rich and the educated ought to work like the
rest/' she went on, " and if there is to be any comfort,
it should be accessible to all. There should be no
privileges. However, that's enough philosophy. Tell
me something cheerful. Tell me about the painters.
What are they like? Funny ? "
The doctor came. I began to talk about the paint
ers, but, being unused to it, I felt awkward and talked
solemnly and ponderously like an ethnographist. The
doctor also told a few stories about working people.
He rocked to and fro and cried and fell on his knees,
and when he was depicting a drunkard, lay flat on the
floor. It was as good as a play, and Maria Victorovna
laughed until she cried. Then he played the piano and
sang in his high-pitched tenor, and Maria Victorovna
stood by him and told him what to sing and corrected
him when he made a mistake.
" I hear you sing, too," said I.
"Too?" cried the doctor. "She is a wonderful
singer, an artist, and you say too? Careful, care
ful ! "
" I used to study seriously," she replied, " but I
have given it up now."
She sat on a low stool and told us about her life in
Petersburg, and imitated famous singers, mimicking
their voices and mannerisms; then she sketched the
MY LIFE 57
doctor and myself in her album, not very well, but
both were good likenesses. She laughed and made
jokes and funny faces, and this suited her better than
talking about unjust riches, and it seemed to me that
what she had said about " riches and comfort" came
not from herself, but was juet mimicry. She was an
admirable comedian. I compared her mentally with
the girls of our town, and not even the beautiful, serious
Aniuta Blagovo could stand up against her; the differ
ence was as vast as that between a wild and a garden
rose.
We stayed to supper. The doctor and Maria Vic-
torovna drank red wine, champagne, and coffee with
cognac; they touched glasses and drank to friendship,
to wit, to progress, to freedom, and never got drunk,
but went rather red and laughed for no reason until they
cried. To avoid being out of it I too, drank red wine.
" People with talent and with gifted natures," said
Miss Dolzhikov, " know how to live and go their own
way; but ordinary people like myself know nothing
and can do nothing by themselves; there is nothing
for them but to find some deep social current and let
themselves be borne along by it."
" Is it possible to find that which does not exist? "
asked the doctor.
' It doesn't exist because we don't see it."
* Is that so? Social currents are the invention of
modern literature. They don't exist here."
A discussion began.
58 MY LIFE
1 We have no profound social movements ; nor have
we had them/' said the doctor. " Modern literature
has invented a lot of things, and modern literature in
vented intellectual working men in village life, but
go through all our villages and you will only find Mr.
Cheeky Snout in a jacket or black frock coat, who will
make four mistakes in the word ' one.' Civilised life
has not begun with us yet. We have the same sav
agery, the same slavery, the same triviality as we had
five hundred years ago. Movements, currents all that
is so wretched and puerile mixed up with such vulgar,
catch-penny interests and one cannot take it seriously.
You may think you have discovered a large social
movement, and you may follow it and devote your
life in the modern fashion to such problems as the
liberation of vermin from slavery, or the abolition of
meat cutlets and I congratulate you, madam. But
we have to learn, learn, learn, and there will be plenty
of time for social movements ; we are not up to them
yet, and upon my soul, we don't understand anything
at all about them."
" You don't understand, but I do," said Maria
Victorovna. " Good Heavens! What a bore you are
to-night."
"It is our business to learn and learn, to try and
accumulate as much knowledge as possible, because
serious social movements come where there is know
ledge, and the future happiness of mankind lies in
science. Here's to science!
MY LIFE 59
" One thing is certain. Life must somehow be
arranged differently," said Maria Victorovna, after
some silence and deep thought, " and life as it has been
up to now is worthless. Don't let us talk about it.
When we left her the Cathedral clock struck two.
" Did you like her? " asked the doctor. " Isn't she
a dear girl? "
We had dinner at Maria Victorovna' s on Christmas
Day, and then we went to see her every day during the
holidays. There was nobody besides ourselves, and
she was right when she said she had no friends in the
town but the doctor and me. We spent most of
the time talking, and sometimes the doctor would
bring a book or a magazine and read aloud. After
all, he was the first cultivated man I had met. I
could not tell if he knew much, but he was 1 always
generous with his knowledge because he wished others
to know too. When he talked about medicine, he
was not like any of our local doctors, but he made a
new and singular impression, and it seemed to me
that if he had wished he could have become a genuine
scientist. And perhaps he was the only person at
that time who had any real influence over me. Meet
ing him and reading the books he gave me, I began
gradually to feel a need for knowledge to inspire the
tedium of my work. It seemed strange to me that I
had not known before such things as that the whole
world consisted of sixty elements, I did not know
what oil or paint was, and that I could have
60 MY LIFE
got on without knowing these things. My
acquaintance with the doctor raised me morally
too. I used to argue with him, and though I usually
stuck to my opinion, yet, through him, I came gradu
ally to perceive that everything was not clear to me,
and I tried to cultivate 'convictions as definite as possi
ble so that the promptings of my conscience should be
precise and have nothing vague about them. Never
theless, educated and fine as he was, far and away
the best man in the town, he was by no means perfect.
There was something rather rude and priggish in his
ways and in his trick of dragging talk down to dis
cussion, and when he took of? his coat and sat in his
shirt and gave the footman a tip, it always seemed to
me that culture was just a part of him, with the rest
untamed Tartar.
After the holidays he left once more for Petersburg.
He went in the morning and after dinner my sister
came to see me. Without taking off her furs, she sat
silent, very pale, staring in front of her. She began to
shiver and seemed to be fighting against some illness.
" You must have caught a cold/' I said.
Her eyes filled with tears. She rose and went to
Karpovna without a word to me, as though I had
offended her. And a little later T heard her speaking
in a tone of bitter reproach.
11 Nurse, what have I been living for, up to now?
What for? Tell me; haven't I wasted my youth?
During the best years I have had nothing but making
MY LIFE 61
up accounts, pouring out tea, counting the copecks,
entertaining guests, without a thought that there was
anything better in the world ! Nurse, try to under
stand me, I too have human desires and I want to live
and they have made a housekeeper of me. It is awful,
awful! "
She flung her keys against the door and they fell with
a clatter in my room. They were the keys of the side
board, the larder, the cellar, and the tea-chest the
keys my mother used to carry.
"Oh! Oh! Saints above!'' cried my old nurse
in terror. " The blessed saints! "
When she left, my sister came into my room for her
keys and said :
" Forgive me. Something strange has been going
on in me lately."
VIII.
One evening when I came home late from Maria
Victorovna's I found a young policeman in a new uni
form in my room; he was sitting by the table reading.
" At last! " he said, getting up and stretching him
self. " This is the third time I have been to see you.
The governor has ordered you to go and see him to
morrow at nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late."
He made me give him a written promise to comply
with his Excellency's orders and went away. This
policeman's visit and the unexpected invitation to
see ike governor h,ad a most depressing effect on me.
^*-.. .1..,..,. ***^ 5
62 MY LIFE
From pay early childhood I have had a dread of gen
darmes, police, legal officials, and I was tormented with
anxiety as though I had really committed a crime,
and I could not sleep. Nurse and Prokofyi were also
upset end could not sleep. And, to make things
worse, nurse had an earache, and moaned and more
than once screamed out. Hearing that I could not
sleep Prokofyi came quietly into my room with a little
lamp and sat by the table.
1 You should have a drop of pepper-brandy. . ."
he said after some thought. " In this vale of tears
things go on all right when you take a drop. And if
mother had some pepper-brandy poured into her ear
she would be much better."
About three he got ready to go to the slaughter
house to fetch some meat. I knew I should not sleep
until morning, and to use up the time until nine, I
went with him. We walked with a lantern, and his
boy, Nicolka, who was about thirteeen, and had blue
spots on his face and an expression like a murderer's,
drove behind us in a sledge, urging the horse on with
hoarse cries.
" You will probably be punished at the governor's,"
said Prokofyi as we walked. " There is a governor's
rank, and an archimandrite's rank, and an officer's
rank, and a doctor's rank, and every profession has its
own rank. You don't keep to yours and they won't
allow it."
The slaughter-house stood behind the cemetery, and
MY LIFE 63
till then I had only seen it at a distance. It con
sisted of three dark sheds surrounded by a grey fence*,
from which, when the wind was in that direction in
summer, there came an overpowering stench. Now,
as I entered the yard, I could not see the sheds in the
darkness ; I groped through horses and sledges, both
empty and laden with meat; and there were men
walking about with lanterns and swearing disgustingly.
Prokofyi and Nicolka swore as filthily and there was
a continuous hum from the swearing and coughing and
the neighing of the horses.
The place smelled of corpses and offal, the snow was
thawing and already mixed with mud, and in the dark
ness it seemed to me that I was walking through a
pool of blood.
When we had filled the sledge with meat, we went
to the butcher's shop in the market-place. Day was
beginning to dawn. One after another the cooks
came with baskets end old women in mantles. With
an axe in his hand, wearing a white, blood-stained
apron, Prokofyi swore terrifically and crossed himself,
turning toward the church, and shouted so loud that
he could be heard all over the market, avowing that
he sold his meat at cost price and even at a loss. He
cheated in weighing and reckoning, the cooks saw it,
but, dazed by his shouting, they did not protest, but
only called him a gallows-bird.
Raising and dropping his formidable axe, he assumed
picturesque attitudes and constantly uttered the
5A
64 MY LIFE
sound " Hak ! " with a furious expression, and I was
really afraid of his cutting off some one's head or
hand.
I stayed in the butcher's shop the whole morning,
and when at last I went to the governor's my fur coat
smelled of meat and blood. My state of mind would
have been appropriate for an encounter with a bear
armed with no more than a staff. I remember a long
staircase with a striped carpet, and a young official
in a frock coat with shining buttons, who silently
indicated the door with both hands and went in to
announce me. I entered the hall, where the furniture
was most luxurious, but cold and tasteless, forming a
most unpleasant impression the tall, narrow pier-
glasses, and the bright, yellow hangings over the win
dows; one could see that, though governors changed,
the furniture remained the same. The young official
again pointed with both hands to the door and I went
toward a large, green table, by which stood a general
with the Order of Vladimir at his neck.
" Mr. Polozniev," he began, holding a letter in his
hand and opening his mouth wide so that it made a
round 0. "I asked you to come to say this to you :
' Your esteemed father has applied verbally and in
writing to the provincial marshal of nobility, to have
you summoned and made to see the incongruity of
your conduct with the title of nobleman which you
have the honour to bear. His Excellency Alexander
Pavlovich, justly thinking that your conduct may be
MY LIFE 65
subversive, and finding that persuasion may not be
sufficient, without serious intervention on the part of
the authorities, has given me his decision as to your
case, and I agree with him."
He said this quietly, respectfully, standing erect as
if I was his superior, and his expression was not at all
severe. He had a flabby, tired face, covered with
wrinkles, with pouches under his eyes; his hair was
dyed, and it was hard to guess his age from his appear
ance fifty or sixty.
" I hope," he went on, " that you will appreciate
Alexander Pavlovich's delicacy in applying to me,
not officially, but privately. I have invited you un
officially not as a governor, but as a sincere admirer
of your father's. And I ask you to change your con
duct and to return to the duties proper to your rank,
or, to avoid the evil effects of your example, to go to
some other place where you are not known and where
you may do what you like. Otherwise I shall have to
resort to extreme measures,"
For half a minute he stood in silence staring at me
open-mouthed.
" Are you a vegetarian-? " he asked.
" No, your Excellency, I eat meat."
He sat down and took up a document, and I bowed
and left.
It was not worth while going to work before dinner.
I went home and tried to sleep, but could not because
of the unpleasant, sickly feeling from the slaughter-
66 MY LIFE
house and my conversation with the governor. And
so I dragged through till the evening and then, feeling
gloomy and out of sorts, I went to see Maria Victor-
ovna. I told her about my visit to the governor and
she looked at me in bewilderment, as if she did not
believe me, and suddenly she began to laugh merrily,
heartily, stridently, as only good-natured, light-hearted
people can.
" If I were to tell this in Petersburg! >} she cried,
nearly dropping with laughter, bending over the
table. " If I could tell them in Petersburg ! "
IX.
Now we saw each other often, sometimes twice a
day. Almost every day, after dinner, she drove up
to the cemetery and, as she Avaited for me, read the
inscriptions on the crosses and monuments. Some
times she came into the church and stood by my side
and watched me working. The silence, the simple
industry of the painters and gilders, Badish's good
sense, and the fact that outwardly I was no different
from the other artisans and worked as they did, in a
waistcoat and old shoes, and that they addressed me
familiarly were new to her, and she was moved by it
all. Once in her presence a painter who was working,
at a door on the roof, called down to me :
" Misail, fetch me the white lead."
I fetched him the white lead and as I came down
MY LIFE 67
the scaffolding* she was moved to tears and looked at
me and smiled :
" What a dear you are! " she said.
" I have always remembered how when I was a child
a green parrot got out of its cage in one of the rich
people's houses and wandered about the town for a
whole month, flying from one garden to another, home
less and lonely. And Maria Yictorovna reminded me
of the bird.
' Except to the cemetery," she said with a laugh,
" I have absolutely nowhere to go. The town bores
me to tears. People read, sing, and twitter at the
Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your
sister is shy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me.
I don't like the theatre. What can I do with myself?"
When I was at her house I smelled of paint and tur
pentine, and my hands were stained. She liked that.
She wanted me to come to her in my ordinary working-
clothes; but I felt awkward in them in her drawing-
room, and as if I were in uniform, and so I always
wore my new serge suit. She did not like that.
" You must confess," she said once, " that you have
not got used to your new role. A working-man's
suit makes you feel awkward and embarrassed. Tell
me, isn't it because you are not sure of yourself and
are unsatisfied Does this work you have chosen,
this painting of yours, really satisfy you? " she asked
merrily. '* I know paint makes things look nicer and
wear better, but the things themselves belong to the
68 MY LIFE
rich and after all they are a luxury. Besides you have
said more than once that everybody should earn his
living" with his own hands and you earn money, not
bread. Why don't you keep to the exact meaning of
what you say? You must earn bread, real bread, you
must plough, sow, reap, thrash, or do something which
has to do directly with agriculture, such as keeping
cows, digging, or building houses. . . ."
She opened a handsome bookcase which stood by
the writing-table and said :
" I'm telling you all this because I'm going to let
you into my secret. Voila. This is my agricultural
library. Here are books on arable land, vegetable-
gardens, orchard-keeping, cattle-keeping, bee-keeping :
I read them eagerly and have studied the theory of
everything thoroughly. It is my dream to go to
Dubechnia as soon as March begins. It is wonderful
there, amazing; isn't it? The first year I shall only
be learning the work and getting used to it, and in the
second year I shall begin to work thoroughly, without
sparing myself. My father promised to give me
Dubechnia as a present, and I am to do anything I
like with it."
She blushed and with mingled laughter and tears she
dreamed aloud of her life at Dubechnia and how ab
sorbing it would be. And I envied her. March would
soon be here. The days were drawing out, and in the
bright sunny afternoons the snow dripped from the
roofs, and the smell of spring was in the air. I too
longed for the country.
MY LIFE 69
And when she said she was going to live at Du-
bechnia, I saw at once that I should be left alone in the
town, and I felt jealous of the bookcase with her books
about farming. I knew and cared nothing about farm
ing and I was on the point of telling her that agri
culture was work for slaves, but I recollected that my
father had once said something of the sort and I held
my peace.
Lent began. The engineer, Victor Ivanich, came
home from Petersburg. I had begun to forget his
existence. He came unexpectedly, not even sending a
telegram. When I went there as usual in the even
ing, he was walking up and down the drawing-room,
after a bath, with his hair cut, looking ten years
younger, and talking. His daughter was kneeling by
his trunks and taking out boxes, bottles, books, and
handing them to Pavel, the footman. When I saw
the engineer, I involuntarily stepped back and he
held out both his hands and smiled and showed his
strong, white, cab-driver's teeth.
" Here he is ! Here he is ! I'm very pleased to see
you, Mr. Housepainter ! Maria told me all about you
and sang your praises. I quite understand you and
heartily approve." He took me by the arm and went
on: " It is much cleverer and more honest to be a
decent workman than to spoil State paper and to wear
a cockade. I myself worked with my hands in Bel
gium. I was an engine-driver for five years. . ."
He was wearing a short jacket and comfortable slip
pers, and he shuffled along like a gouty man waving
70 MY LIFE
and rubbing his hands; humming and buzzing and
shrugging with pleasure at being at home again with
his favourite shower-bath.
" There's no denying," he said at supper, " there's
no denying that you are kind, sympathetic people,
but somehow as soon as you gentlefolk take on manual
*> labour or try to save the peasants, you reduce it all
~ to sectarianism. You are a sectarian. You don't
drink vodka. What is that but sectarianism? "
To please him I drank vodka. I drank wine, too.
We ate cheese, sausages, pastries, pickles, and all kinds
of dainties that the engineer had brought with him,
and we sampled wines sent from abroad during his
absence. They were excellent. For some reason the
engineer had wines and cigars sent from abroad duty
free; somebody sent him caviare and sturgeon gratis;
he did not pay rent for his house because his landlord
supplied the railway with kerosene, and generally he
' and his daughter gave me the impression of having
/ all the best things in the world at their service free of
charge.
I went on visiting them, but with less pleasure than
before. The engineer oppressed me and I felt cramped
in his presence. I could not endure his clear, innocent
eyes ; his opinions bored me and were offensive to me,
and I was distressed by the recollection that I had so
recently been subordinate to this ruddy, well-fed man,
and that he had been mercilessly rude to me. True
he would put his arm round my waist and slap me
MY LIFE 71
kindly on the shoulder and approve of my way of
living, but I felt that he despised my nullity just as
much as before and only suffered me to please his
daughter, but I could no longer laugh and talk easily,
and I thought myself ill -mannered, and all the time
was expecting him to call me Panteley as he did his
footman Pavel. How my provincial, working-man's
pride rode up against him ! I, a working man, a
painter, going every day to the house of rich strangers,
whom the whole town regarded as foreigners, and
Drinking their expensive wines and outlandish dishes !
'^ could not reconcile this with my conscience. When
I went to see them I sternly avoided those whom I met
on the way, and looked askance at them like a real sec
tarian, and when I left the engineer's house I was
ashamed of feeling so well-fed.
But chiefly I was afraid of falling in love. Whether
walking in the street, or working, oi* talkiiig to my
mates, I thought all the time of going to Maria Yic-
torovna's in the evening, and always had her voice,
her laughter, her movements with me. And always
as I got ready to go to her, I would stand for a long
time in front of the cracked mirror tying my necktie;
my serge suit seemed horrible to me, and I suffered,
but at the same time, despised myself for feeling so
small. When she called to me from another room to
say that she was not dressed yet and to ask me to wait
a bit, and I could hear her dressing, I was agitated and
felt as though the floor was sinking under me. And
72 MY LIFE
when I saw a woman in the street, even at a distance,
I fell to comparing her figure with hers, and it seemed
to me that all our women and girls were vulgar, absurdly
dressed, and without manners; and such comparisons
roused in me a feeling of pride ; Maria Victorovna was
better than all of them. And at night I dreamed of
her and myself.
Once at supper the engineer and I ate a whole
lobster. When I reached home I remembered that the
engineer had twice called me " my dear fellow/' and
I thought that they treated me as they might have
done a big, unhappy dog, separated from his master,
and that they were amusing themselves with me, and
that they would order me away like a dog when they
were bored with me. I began to feel ashamed and
hurt ; went to the point of tears, as though I had been
insulted, and, raising my eyes to the heavens, I vowed
to put an end to it all.
Next day I did not go to the Dolzhikovs'. Late at
night, when it was quite dark and pouring with rain,
I walked up and down Great Gentry Street, looking
at the windows. At the Azhoguins' everybody was
asleep and the only light was in one of the top windows ;
old Mrs. Azhoguin was sitting in her room embroidering
by candle-light and imagining herself to be fighting
against prejudice. It was dark in our house and op
posite, at the Dolzhikovs' the windows were lit up,
but it was impossible to see anything through the
flowers and curtains. I kept on walking up and
MY LIFE 73
down the street ; I was soaked through with the cold
March rain. I heard my father come home from the
club; he knocked at the door; in a minute a light
appeared at a window and I saw my; sister walking
quickly with her lamp and hurriedly arranging her
thick hair. Then my father paced up and down the
drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, and my
sister sat still in a corner, lost in thought, not listen
ing to him. . .
But soon they left the room and the light was put
out. . . I looked at the engineer's house and that
too was now dark. In the darkness and the rain I felt
desperately lonely. Cast out at the mercy of Fate,
and I felt how, compared with my loneliness, and my
suffering, actual and to come, all my work and all
my desires and all that I had hitherto thought and
read, were vain and futile. Alas ! The activities
and thoughts of human beings are not nearly so im
portant as their sorrows ! And not knowing exactly
what I was doing I pulled with all my might at the
bell at the Dolzhikovs' gate, broke it, and ran away
down the street like a little boy, full of fear, thinking
they would rush out at once and recognise me. When
I stopped to take breath at the end of the street, I
could hear nothing but the falling rain and far away a
night-watchman knocking on a sheet of iron.
For a whole week I did not go to the Dolzhikovs*.
I sold my serge suit. I had no work and I was once
more half -starved, earning ten or twenty copecks a
74 MY LIFE
day, when possible, by disagreeable work. Flounder
ing knee-deep in the mire, putting out all my strength,
I tried to drown my memories and to punish myself
for all the cheeses and preserves to which I had been
treated at the engineer's. Still, no sooner did I go to
bed, wet and hungry, than my untamed imagination
set to work to evolve wonderful, alluring pictures,
and to rny amazement I confessed that I was in love,
passionately in love, and I fell sound asleep feeling
that the hard life had only made my body stronger
and younger.
One evening it began, most unseasonably, to snow,
and the wind blew from the north, exactly as if winter
had begun again. When I got home from work I found
Maria Victorovna in my room. She was in her furs
with her hands in her muff.
" Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, look
ing at me with her bright sagacious eyes, and I was
overcome with joy and stood stiffly in front of her,
just as I had done with my father when he was going
to thrash me; she looked straight into my face and I
could see by her eyes that she understood why I was
overcome.
' Why don't you come to see me? " she repeated.
' You don't want to come? I had to come to
you."
She got up and came close to me.
" Don'lleave me," she said, and her eyes filled with
tears. " I am lonely, utterly lonely."
MY LIFE T5
She began to cry and said, covering her face with her
niuff :
" Alone! Life is hard, very hard, and in the whole
world I have no one but you. Don't leave me! ''
Looking for her handkerchief to dry her tears, she
gave a smile ; we were silent for some time, then I
embraced and kissed her, and the pin in her hat
scratched my face and drew blood.
And we began to talk as though we had been dear
to each other for a long, long time.
In a couple of days she sent me to Dubechnia and
I was beyond words delighted with it. As I walked
to the station, and as I sat in the train, I laughed
for no reason and people thought me drunk. There
were snow and frost in the mornings still, but the roads
were getting dark, and there were rooks cawing above
them.
At first I thought of arranging the side wing opposite
Mrs. Cheprakov's for myself and Maria, but it ap
peared that doves and pigeons had taken up their
abode there and it would be impossible to cleanse it
without destroying a great number of nests. We
would have to live willy-nilly in the uncomfortable
rooms with Venetian blinds in the big house. The
peasants called it a palace; there were more than
twenty rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano
76 MY LIFE
and a child's chair, lying in the attic, and even if
Maria brought all her furniture from town we should
not succeed in removing the impression of frigid
emptiness and coldness. I chose three small rooms
with windows looking on to the garden, and from early
morning till late at night I was at work in them, glaz
ing the windows, hanging paper, blocking up the
chinks and holes in the floor. It was an easy, pleasant
job. Every now and then I would run to the river
to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed
of the starlings returning. And at night when I thought
of Maria I would be filled with an inexpressibly sweet
feeling of an all-embracing joy to listen to the rats and
the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling; it
was like an old hobgoblin coughing in the attic.
The snow was deep; there was a heavy fall at the
end of March, but it thawed rapidly, as if by magic,
and the spring floods rushed down so that by the be
ginning of April the starlings were already chattering
and yellow butterflies fluttered in the garden. The
weather was wonderful. Every day toward evening
I walked toward the town to meet Masha, and how
delightful it was to walk along the soft, drying road
with bare feet! Half-way I would sit down and look
at the town, not daring to go nearer. The sight of it
upset me, I was always wondering how my acquain-
would behave toward me when they heard of my
love. What would my father say ? I was particularly
worried by the idea that my life was becoming more
MY LIFE 77
complicated, and that I had entirely lost control of it,
and that she was carrying me off like a balloon, God
knows whither. I had already given up thinking how
to make a living, and I thought indeed, I cannot re
member what I thought.
Masha used to come in a carriage. I would take a
seat beside her and together, happy and free, we used
to drive to Dubechnia. Or, having waited till sunset,
I would return home, weary and disconsolate, wonder
ing why Masha had not come, and then by the gate
or in the garden I would find my darling. She would
come by the railway and walk over from the station.
What a triumph it was ! In her plain, woollen
dress, with a simple umbrella, but keeping a trim,
fashionable figure and expensive, Parisian boots she
was a gifted actress playing the country girl. We used
to go over the house, and plan out the rooms, and the
paths, and the vegetable-garden, and the beehives.
We already had chickens and ducks and geese which
we loved because they were ours. We had oats,
clover, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds all ready for
sowing, and we used to examine them all and wonder
what the crops would be like, and everything Masha
said to me seemed extraordinarily clever and fine.
This was the happiest time of my life.
Soon after Easter we were marjciaa in the parish
church in the village of Kurilovka three miles from
Dubechnia. Masha wanted everything to be simple;
by her wish our bridesmen were peasant boys, only
78 MY LIFE
one deacon sang, and we returned from the church in
a little, shaky cart which she drove herself. My sister
was the only guest from the town. Masha had sent her
a note a couple of days before the wedding. My sister
wore a white dress and white gloves. . . During the
ceremony she cried softly for joy and emotion, and her
face had a maternal expression of infinite goodness.
She was intoxicated with our happiness and smiled
as though she were breathing a sweet perfume, and
when I looked at her I understood that there was
nothing in the world higher in her eyes than love,
earthly love, and that she was always dreaming of
love, secretly, timidly, yet passionately. She em
braced Masha and kissed her, and, not knowing how
to express her ecstasy, she said to her of me :
" He is a good man ! A very good man."
Before she left us, she put on her ordinary clothes,
and took me into the garden to have a quiet talk.
" Father is very hurt that you have not written to
him," she said. " You should have asked for his bless
ing. But, at heart, he is very pleased. He says that
this marriage will raise you in the eyes of society, and
that under Maria Victorovna's influence you will
begin to adopt a more serious attitude toward life.
In the evening now we talk about nothing but you;
and yesterday he even said, ' our Misail.' I was
delighted. He has evidently thought of a plan and I
believe he wants to set you an example of magnanimity,
and that he will be the first to talk of reconciliation.
MY LIFE T9
It is quite possible that one of these days he will come
and see you here."
She made the sign of the cross over me and said :
" Well, God bless you. Be happy. Aniuta Blagovo
is a very clever girl. She says of your marriage that
God has sent you a new ordeal. Well? Married life
is not made up only of joy but of suffering as well. It
is impossible to avoid it.'*
Masha and I walked about three miles with her, and
then walked home quietly and silently, as though it
were a rest for both of us. Masha had her hand on
my arm. We were at peace and there was no need
to talk of love; after the wedding we grew closer to
each other and dearer, and it seemed as though nothing
could part us.
1 Your sister is a dear, lovable creature," said Masha,
'' but looks as though she had lived in torture. Your
father must be a terrible man."
I began to tell her how my sister and I had been
brought up and how absurd and full of torture our
childhood had been. When she heard that my father
had thrashed me quite recently she shuddered and clung
to me:
" Don't tell me any more," she said. " It is too
horrible."
And now she did not leave me. We lived in the big
house, in three rooms, and in the evenings we bolted
the door that led to the empty part of the house, as
though some one lived there whom we did not know
6A
80 MY LIFE
and feared. I used to get up early, at dawn, and begin
working. I repaired the carts ; made paths in the gar
den, dug the flower beds, painted the roofs. When the
time came to sow oats, I tried to plough and harrow,
and sow and did it all conscientiously, and did not leave
it all to the labourer. I used to get tired, and my face
and feet used to burn with the rain and the sharp
cold wind. But work in t]^e- fields did not attract me.
I knew nothing about agriculture j|nd did not like it;
perhaps because my ancestors were not tillers of the
soil and pure town blood ran in my veins. I loved
nature dearly ; I loved the fields and the meadows and
the garden, but the peasant who turns the earth with
his plough, shouting at his miserable horse, ragged
and wet, with bowed shoulders, was to me an expres
sion of wild, rude, ugly force, and as I watched his
clumsy movements I could not help thinking of the
long-passed legendary life, when men did not yet know
the use of fire. The fierce bull which led the herd, and
the horses that stampeded through the village, filled
me with terror, and all the large creatures, strong and
hostile, a ram with horns, a gander, or a watch-dog
seemed to me to be symbolical of some rough, wild
force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong
in me in bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over
the black plough-lands. But worst of all was that
when I was ploughing or sowing, and a few peasants
stood and watched how I did it, I no longer felt the
inevitability and necessity of the work and it seemed
to me that I was trifling my time away.
MY LIFE 81
go through the gardens and the meadow
to tfie mil). It was leased by Stiepan, a Kurilovka
peasant ;' handsome, swarthy, with a black beard
an athletic appearance. He did not care for mill
work and thought it tiresome and unprofitable, and
he only lived at the mill to escape from home. He
was a saddler and always smelled of tan and leather.
He did not like talking, was slow and immovable,
and used to hum " U-lu-lu-lu," sitting on the bank or
in the doorway of the mill. Sometimes his wife and
mother-in-law used to come from Kurilovka to see
him; they were both fair, languid, soft, and they
used to bow to him humbly and call him Stiepan Petro-
vich. And he would not answer their greeting with
a word or a sign, but would turn where he sat on the
bank and hum quietly: " F-lu-lu-lu." There would
be a silence for an hour or two. His mother-in-law
and his wife would whisper to each other, get up and
look expectantly at him for some time, waiting for him
to look at them, and then they would bow humbly and
say in sweet, soft voices :
" Good-bye, Stiepan Petrovich."
And they would go away. After that, Stiepan
would put away the bundle of cracknels or the shirt
they had left for him and sigh and give a wink in their
direction and say :
"The female sex! "
The mill was worked with both wheels day and night.
I used to help Stiepan, I liked it, and when he went
away I was glad to take his place.
82 MY LIFE
XI.
After a spell of warm bright weather we had a season
of bad roads. It rained and was cold all through May.
The grinding of the millstones and the drip of the rain
induced idleness and sleep. The floor shook, the whole
place smelled of flour, and this too made one drowsy.
My wife in a short fur coat and high rubber boots used
to appear twice a day and she always said the same
thing :
" Call this summer! It is worse than October!"
We used to have tea together and cook porridge, or
sit together for hours in silence thinking the rain would
never stop. Once when Stiepan went away to a fair,
Masha stayed the night in the mill. When we got up
wte could not tell what time it was for the sky was
overcast ; the sleepy cocks at Dubechnia were crowing,
and the corncrakes were trilling in the meadow; it
was very, very early. . My wife and I walked down
to the pool and drew up the bow-net that Stiepan had
put out in our presence the day before. There was one
large perch in it and a crayfish angrily x stretched out
his claws.
" Let them go/' said Masha. " Let them be happy
too/'
Because we got up very early and had nothing to do,
the day seemed very long, the longest in my life. Stie
pan returned before dusk and I went back to the
farmhouse.
MY LIFE 83
lt Your father came here to-day, " said Masha.
"Where is he?"
" He has gone. I did not receive him/'
Seeing my silence and feeling that I was sorry for
my father, she said :
"We must be logical. I did not receive him and
sent a message to ask him not to trouble us again and
not to come and see us."
In a moment I was outside the gates, striding toward
the town to make it up with my father. It was muddy,
slippery, cold. For the first time since our marriage
I suddenly felt sad, and through my brain, tired with
the long day, there flashed the thought that perhaps
I was not living as I ought ; I got more and more tired
and was gradually overcome with weakness, inertia;
I had no desire to move or to think, and after walking
for some time, I waved my hand and went home.
In the middle of the yard stood the engineer in a
leather coat with a hood. He was shouting :
" Where's the furniture? There was some good
Empire furniture, pictures, vases. . There's nothing
left ! Damn it, I bought the place with the fur
niture!"
Near him stood Moissey, Mrs. Cheprakov's bailiff,
fumbling with his cap ; a lank fellow of about twenty-
five, with a spotty face and little, impudent eyes;
one side of his face was larger than the other as though
he had been lain on.
" Yes, Right Honourable Sir, you bought it without
84 MY LIFE
the furniture," he said sheepishly. ;< I remember that
clearly/'
" Silence !" shouted the engineer, going red in the
face, and beginning to shake, and his shout echoed
through the garden.
XII
"When I was busy in the garden or the yard, Moissey
would stand with his hands behind his back and stare
at me impertinently with his little eyes. And this used
to irritate me to such an extent that I would put aside
my work and go away.
We learned from Stiepan that Moissey had been
Mrs. Cheprakov's lover. I noticed that when people
went to her for money they used to apply to Moissey
first, and once I saw a peasant, a charcoal-burner, black
all over, grovel at his feet. Sometimes after a whis
pered conversation Moissey would hand over the money
himself without saying anything to his mistress, from
which I concluded that the transaction was settled
on his own account.
He used to shoot in our garden, under our very win
dows, steal food from our larder, borrow our horses
without leave, and we were furious, feeling that Du-
Ibechnia was no longer ours, and Masha used to go pale
(and say:
"""*" Have we to live another year and a half with these
creatures? "
MY LIFE 85
Ivan Cheprahov, the son, was a guard on the rail
way. During the winter he got very thin and weak,
so that he got drunk on one glass of vodka, and felt
cold out of the sun. He hated wearing his guard's
uniform and was ashamed of it, but found his job
profitable because he could steal candles and sell them.
My new position gave him a mixed feeling of astonish
ment, envy, and vague hope that something of the
sort might happen to him. He used to follow Masha
with admiring eyes, and to ask me what I had for din
ner nowadays, and his ugly, emaciated face used to
wear a sweet, sad expression, and he used to twitch
his fingers as though he could feel my happiness with
them.
" I say, Little Profit/' he would say excitedly, light
ing and relighting his cigarette; he always made a
mess wherever he stood because he used to waste a
whole box of matches on one cigarette. " I say, my
life is about as beastly as it could be. Every little
squirt of a soldier can shout : ' Here guard ! Here ! '
I have such a lot in the trains and you know, mine's
a rotten life L^ My mother has ruined me ! I heard a
doctor say in the train, if the parents are loose, their
children become drunkards or criminals. That's it."
Once he came -staggering into the yard. His eyes
wandered aimlessly and he breathed heavily; he
laughed and cried, and said something in a kind of
frenzy, and through his thickly uttered words I could
only hear: " My mother? Where is my mother?"
(X
86 MY LIFE
and lie wailed like a child crying, because it has lost
its mother in a crowd. I led him away into the garden
and laid him down under a tree, and all that day and
through the night Masha and I took it in turns to stay
with him. He was sick and Masha looked with dis
gust at his pale, wet face and said :
"Are we to have these creatures on the place for an
other year and a half? It is awful ! Awful ! "
And what a lot of trouble the peasants gave us !
How many disappointments we had at the outset, in
the spring, when we so longed to be happy ! My
wife built a school. I designed the school for sixty
boys, and the Zemstvo Council approved the design,
but recommended our building the school at Kurilovka,
the big village, only three miles away; besides the
Kuril ovka school, where the children of four villages,
including that of Dubechnia, were taught, was old and
inadequate and the floor was so rotten that the chil
dren were afraid to walk on it. At the end of March
Masha, by her own desire, was appointed trustee of
the Kurilovka school, and at the beginning of April
we called three parish meetings and persuaded the
peasants that the school was old and inadequate, and
that it was necessary to build a new one. A member
of the Zemstvo Council and the elementary school
inspector came down too and addressed them. After
each meeting we were mobbed and asked for a pail of
vodka; we felt stifled in the crowd and soon got tired
and returned home dissatisfied and rather abashed.
&
MY LIFE 87
At last the peasants allotted a site for the school and
undertook to cart the materials from the town. And
as soon as the spring corn was sown, on the very first
Sunday, carts set out from Kurijovka and Dubechnia
to fetch the bricks for the foundations. They went
at dawn and returned late in the evening. The
peasants were drunk and said they were tired out.
The rain and the cold continued, as though deliber
ately, all through May. The roads were spoiled and
deep in mud. When the carts came from town they
usually drove to our horror, into our yard ! A horse
would appear in the gate, straddling its fore legs, with
its big belly heaving; before it came into the yard it
would strain and heave and after it would come a
ten-yard beam in a four-wheeled wagon , wet and
slimy ; alongside it, wrapped up to keep the rain out,
never looking where he was going and splashing
through the puddles, a peasant would walk with the
skirt of his coat tucked up in his belt. Another cart
would appear with planks ; then a third with a beam ;
then a fourth . . . and the yard in front of the house
would gradually be blocked up with horses, beams,
planks. Peasants, men and women with their heads
wrapped up and their skirts tucked up, would stare
morosely at our windows, kick up a row and insist on
the lady of the house coming out to them ; and they
would curse and swear. And in a corner Moissey
would stand, and it seemed to us that he delighted in
our discomfiture.
88 MY LIFE
' We won't cart any more! " the peasants shouted.
" We are tired to death ! Let her go and cart it her
self ! "
Pale and scared, thinking they would any minute
break into the Jwaisft^Slasha would send them money
for a pail of vodka; jjter which the noise would die
down and the long beams would go jolting out of the
yard.
When I went to look at the building my wife would
get agitated and say :
' The peasants are furious. They might do some
thing to you. No. Wait. I'll go with you.
We used to drive over to Kurilovka together and
then the carpenters would ask fot tips. The frame
work was ready for the foundations to be laid, but the
masons never came and when at last the masons did
come it was apparent that there was no sand; some
how it had been forgotten that sand was wanted. Tak
ing advantage of our helplessness, the peasants asked
thirty copecks a load, although it was less than a quar-
etr of a mile from the building to the river where the
sand was to be fetched, and more than five hundred
loads were needed. There were endless misunder
standings, wrangles, and continual begging. My wife
was indignant and the building contractor, Petrov, an
old man of seventy, took her by the hand and said :
" You look here ! Look here ! Just get me sand
and I'll find ten men and have the work done in two
days. Look here! "
MY LIFE 89
Sand was brought, but two, four days, a week passed
and still there yawned a ditch where the foundations
were to be.
" I shall go mad," cried my wife furiously. "What
wretches they are ! What wretches ! '
During these disturbances Victor Ivanich used to
come and see us. He used to bring hampers of wine
and dainties, and eat for a long time, and then go to
sleep on the terrace and snore so that the labourers
shook their heads and said :
"He's all right! "
Masha took no pleasure in his visits. She did not
believe in him, and yet she used to ask his advice;
when, after a sound sleep after dinner, he got up out of
humour, and spoke disparagingly of our domestic ar
rangements, and said he was sorry he had ever bought
Dubechnia which had cost him so much, and poor
Masha looked miserably anxious and complained to
him, he would yawn and say the peasants ought to
be flogged.
He called our marriage and the life we were living
a comedy, and used to say it was a caprice, a
C, whimsy.
" She did the same sort of thing once before," he
told me. " She fancied herself as an opera singer,
and ran away from me. It took me two months to find
her, and my dear fellow, I wasted a thousand roubles
on telegrams alone."
He had dropped calling me a sectarian or the House-
90 MY LIFE
painter; and no longer approved of my life as a work
ing man, but he used to say :
" You are a queer fish! An abnormality. I don't
venture to prophesy, but you will end badly ! '
Masha slept poorly at nights and would sit by the
window of our bedroom thinking. She no longer
laughed and made faces at supper. I suffered, and
when it rained, every drop cut into my heart like a
bullet, and I could have gone on my knees to Masha
and apologised for the weather. When the peasants
made a row in the yard, I felt that it was my fault. I
would sit for hours in one place, thinking only how
splendid and how wonderful Masha was. I loved her
passionately, and I was enraptured by everything she
did and said. Her taste was for quiet indoor occu
pation; she loved to read for hours and to study; she
who knew about farm-work only from books, sur
prised us all by her knowledge and the advice she
gave was always useful, and when applied was never
in vain. And in addition she had the fineness, the
taste, and the good sense, the very sound sense which
only very well-bred people possess !
To such a woman, with her healthy, orderly mind,
the chaotic environment with its petty cares and dirty
tittle-tattle, in which we lived, was very painful. I
could see that, and I, too, could not sleep at night.
My brain whirled and I could hardly choke back my
tears. I tossed about, not knowing what to do.
I used to rush to town and bring Masha books,
.
MY LIFE 91
newspapers, sweets, flowers, and I used to go fishing
with Stiepan, dragging for hours, neck-deep in cold
water, in the rain, to catch an eel by way of varying
our fare. I used humbly to ask the peasants not to
shout, and I gave them vodka, bribed them, promised
\them anything they asked. And what a lot of other
--foolish things I did !
At last the rain stopped. The earth dried up. I
used to get up in the morning and go into the garden
dew shining on the flowers, birds and insects shrilling,
not a cloud in the sky. and the garden, the meadow,
the river were so beautiful, perfect but for the memory
of the peasants and the carts and the engineer. Masha
and I used to drive out in a car to see how the oats
were coming on. She drove and I sat behind; her
shoulders were always a little hunched, and the wind
would play with her hair.
" Keep to the right ! " she shouted to the passers-by.
" You are like a coachman ! " I once said to her.
" Perhaps. My grandfather, my father's father,
was a coachman. Didn't you know? " she asked,
turning round, and immediately she began to mimic
the way the coachmen shout and sing.
" Thank God ! " I thought, as I listened to her.
"Thank God! "
And again I remember the peasants, the carts, the
engineer. . . .
92 MY LIFE
XIII
Doctor Blagovo came over on a bicycle. My sister
began to come often. Once more we talked of manual
labour and progress, and the mysterious Cross await
ing humanity in the remote future. The doctor did
not like our life, because it interfered with our dis
cussions and he said it was unworthy of a free man
to plough, and reap, ancf breed cattle, and that in
time all such elementary forms of the struggle for ex
istence would be left to animals and machines, while
men would devote themselves exclusively to scientific
investigation. And my sister always asked me to
let her go home earlier, and if she stayed late, or for
the night, she was greatly distressed.
" Good gracious, what a baby you are," Masha
used to say reproachfully. " It is quite ridiculous. "
" Yes, it is absurd/' my sister would agree. ' I
admit it is absurd, but what can I do if I have not the
power to control myself. It always seems to me
that I am doing wrong."
During the haymaking my body, not being used to
it, ached all over ; sitting on the terrace in the evening,
I would suddenly fall asleep and they would all laugh
at me. They would wake me up and make me sit
down to supper. I would be overcome with drowsi
ness and in a stupor saw lights, faces, plates, and heard
voices without understanding what they were saying.
MY LIFE 93
And I used to get up early in the morning' and take
my scythe, or go to the school and work there all day.
When I was at home on holidays I noticed that my
wife and sister were hiding something from me and
even seemed to be avoiding me. My wife was tender
with me as always, but she had some new thought of
her own which she did not communicate to me. Cer
tainly her exasperation with the peasants had increased
and life was growing harder and harder for her, but
she r.o longer complained to me. She talked more
readily to the doctor than to me, and I could not
understand why.
It was the custom in our province for the labourers
to come to the farm in the evenings to be treated to
vodka, even the girls having a glass. We did not
keep the custom; the haymakers and the women
used to come into the yard and stay until late in the
evening, waiting for vodka, and then they went away
cursing. And then Masha used to frown and relapse
into silence or whisper irritably to the doctor:
" Savages! Barbarians! "
Newcomers to the villages were received ungra
ciously, almost with hostility ; like new arrivals at a
school. At first we were looked upon as foolish,
soft-headed people who had bought the estate because
we did not know what to do with our money. We were
laughed at. The peasants grazed their cattle in our
pasture and even in our garden, drove our cows and
horses into the village and then came and asked for
#"
94 MY LIFE
compensation. The whole village used to come into
our yard and declare loudly that in mowing we had
cut the border of common land which did not belong
to us ; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly
we used to take their word for it and pay a fine. But
afterward it appeared that we had been in the right.
They used to bark the young lime-trees in our woods.
A Dubechnia peasant, a money-lender, who sold vodka
without a licence, bribed our labourers to help him
cheat us in the most treacherous way; he substituted
/ old wheels for the new on our wagons, stole our
ploughing yokes and sold them back to us, and so on.
But worst of all was the building at Kurilovka. There
the women at night stole planks, bricks, tiles, iron ;
the bailiff and his assistants made a search ; the women
were each fined two roubles by the village council,
and then the whole lot of them got drunk on the
money.
When Masha found out, she would say to the doctor
and my sister.
" What beasts! It is horrible! Horrible! "
And more than once I heard her say she was sorry
she had decided to build the school.
" You must understand/' the doctor tried to point
out, " that if you build a school or undertake any good
work, it is not for the peasants, but for the sake of
culture and the future. The worse the peasants are
the more reason there is for building a school. Do
understand ! "
MY LIFE 95
There was a lack of confidence in his voice, and it
seemed to me that he hated the peasants as much as
Masha.
Masha used often to go to the mill with my sister
and they would say jokingly that they were going to
have a look at Stiepan because he was so> handsome.
Stiepan it appeared was reserved and silent only with
men, and in the company of women was free and talka
tive. Once when I went down to the river to bathe
I involuntarily overheard a conversation. Masha and
Cleopatra, both in white, were sitting on the bank
under the broad shade of a willow and Stiepan was
standing near with his hands behind his back, saying :
11 But are peasants human beings? Not they; they
are, excuse me, brutes, beasts, and thieves. What
does a peasant's life consist of? Eating and drink
ing, crying for cheaper food, bawling in taverns, with
out decent conversation, or behaviour or manners.
Just an ignorant beast ! He lives in filth, his wife and
children live in filth ; he sleeps in his clothes ; takes
the potatoes out of the soup with his fingers 1 , drinks
down a black beetle with his kvass because he won't
trouble to fish it out! "
"It is because of their poverty !" protested my sister.
' What poverty? of course there is want, but there
are different kinds of necessity. If a man is in prison,
or is blind, say, or has lost his legs, then he is in a bad
way and God lielp him ; but if he is at liberty and in
command of his senses, if he has eyes and hands and
7A
/&<>& <*+> "
f f fV ...X
, -rve-y.
96 MY LIFE
strength, then, good God, what more does he want?
It is lamentable, my lady, ignorance, but not poverty.
If you kind people, with your education, out of charity
try to help him, then he will spend your money in
drink, like the swine he is, or worse still, he will open a
tavern and begin to> rob the people on the strength of
your money. You say poverty. But does a rich
peasant live any better ? He lives like a pig, too, excuse
me, a clodhopper, a blusterer, a big-bellied blockhead,
with a swollen red mug makes me want to hit him
in the eye, the blackguard. Look at Larion of Du-
bechnia he is rich, but all the same he barks the trees
in your woods just like the poor; and he is a foul-
mouthed brute, and bis children are foul-mouthed,
and when he is drunk he falls flat in the mud and goes
to sleep. They are all worthless, my lady. It is just
hell to live with them in the village. The village sticks
in my gizzard, and I thank God, the King of heaven,
that I am well fed and clothed, and that I am a free
man; I can live where I like, I don't want to live in
the village and nobody can force me to do it. They
say : ' You have a wife.' They say : ' You are obliged
to live at home with your wife.' Why? I have not
sold myself to her."
" Tell me, Stiepan. Did you marry for love? "
asked Masha.
"What love is there in a village?" Stiepan answered
with a smile. " If you want to know, my lady, it is
my second marriage. I do not come from Kurilovka,
MY LIFE 9T
but from Zalegosch, and I went to Kurilovka when I
married. My father did not want to divide the land
up between us there are five of us. So I bowed to it
-and cut adrift and went to another village to my wife's
family. My first wife died when she was young.
"What did she die of?"
" Foolishness. She used to sit and cry. She was
always crying for no reason at all and so she wasted
away. She used to drink herbs to make herself prettier
and it must have ruined her inside. And my second
wife at Kurilovka what about her ? A village woman,
a peasant; that's all. When the match was being
made I was nicely had ; I thought she was young, nice
to look at and clean. Her mother was clean enough,
drank coffee and, chiefly because they were a clean lot,
I got married. Next day we sat down to dinner and
I told my mother-in-law to fetch me a spoon. She
brought me a spoon and I saw her wipe it with her
finger. So that, thought I, is their cleanliness ! I
lived with them for a year and went away. Perhaps
I ought to have married a town girl ' he went on
after a silence. f They say a wife is a helpmate to
her husband. What do I want with a helpmate.
I can look after myself. But you talk to me sensibly
and soberly, without giggling all the while. He he
he! What is life without a good talk? "
Stiepan suddenly stopped and relapsed into his
dreary, monotonous " TJ-lu-lu-lu." That meant that
he had noticed me.
^yO*
98 MY LIFE
Masha used often to visit the mill, she evidently
took pleasure in her talks with Stiepan ; he abused
the peasants so sincerely and convincingly and this
attracted her to him. When she returned from the
mill the idiot who looked after the garden used to shout
after her :
"Palashka! Hullo, Palashka!" And he would
bark at her like a dog : " Bow, wow! '
And she would stop and stare at him as if she found
in the idiot's barking an answer to her thought, and
perhaps he attracted her as much as Stiepan J s abuse.
And at home she would find some unpleasant news
awaiting her, as that the village geese had ruined the
cabbages in the kitchen-garden, or that Larion had
stolen the reins, and she would shrug her shoulders
with a smile and say :
' What .can^-you.^pect of such people? '
She i^as exaspei;ate(F^jid a fury was gathering in her
soul, ancTT, on the other hand, was getting used
to the peasants and more and more attracted to them.
For the most part, they were nervous, irritable, absurd
people ; they were people with suppressed imaginations,
ignorant, with a bare, dull outlook, always dazed by
the same thought of the grey earth, grey days, black
bread ; they were people driven to cunning, but, like
birds, they only hid their heads behind the trees they
could not reason. They did not come to us for the
twenty roubles earned by haymaking, but for the
half-pail of vodka, though they could buy four pails
MY LIFE 99
of vodka for the twenty roubles. Indeed they were
dirty, drunken, and dishonest,. but for all that one felt
that the peasant life as a whole was sound at the core.
However clumsy and brutal the peasant might look as
he followed his antiquated plough, and however he
might fuddle himself with vodka, still, looking at him
more closely, one felt that there was something vital
and important in him, something that was lacking in
Masha and the doctor, for instance, namely, that he
believes that the chief thing on earth is truth, that his
and everybody's salvation lies in truth, and therefore
above all else on earth he loves justice. I used to say
to my wife that she was seeing the stain on the win
dow, but not the glass itself; and she would be silent
or, like Stiepan, she would hum, " U-lu-lu-lu. . ."
When she, good, clever actress that she was, went pale
with fury and then harangued the doctor in a trembling
voice about drunkenness and dishonesty; her blind
ness confounded and appalled me. How oould she
forget that her father, the engineer, drank, drank
heavily, and that the money with which he bought
Dubechnia was acquired by means of a whole series
of impudent, dishonest swindles? How could she
forget?
XIV
And my sister, too, was living with her own private
thoughts which she hid from me. She used often to
sit whispering with Masha. When I went up to her,
100 MY LIFE
she would shrink away, and her eyes would look guilty
and full of entreaty. Evidently there was something
going on in her soul of which she was afraid or
ashamed. To avoid meeting ine in the garden or being
left alone with me she clung to Masha and t l hardly
dver had a chance to talk to her except at dinner.
One evening, on my way home from the school, I
came quietly through the garden. It had already
begun to grow dark. Without noticing me or hearing
footsteps, my sister walked round an old wide-spreading
apple-tree, perfectly noiselessly like a ghost. She was
in black, and walked very quickly, up and down, up
and down, with her eyes on the ground. An apple
fell from the tree, she started at the noise, stopped
and pressed her hands to, her temples. At that moment
I went up to her.
In an impulse of tenderness, which suddenly came
rushing to my heart, with tears in my eyes, somehow
remembering our mother and our childhood, I took
hold of her shoulders and kissed her.
" What is the matter? " I asked. " You are suffer
ing. I have seen it for a long time now. Tell me,
what is the matter? >J
* I am afraid. . ." she murmured, with a shiver.
" What's the matter with you? " I inquired. " For
God's sake, be frank! "
" I will, I will be frank. I will tell you the whole
truth. It is so hard, so painful to conceal anything
from you! . . . . Misail, I am in love." She
MY LIFE 101
went on in a whisper. k Love, love. ... I am
happy, but I am afraid/'
I heard footsteps and Doctor Blagovo appeared
among- the trees. He was wearing a silk shirt and high
boots. Clearly they had arranged a rendezvous by
the apple-tree. When she saw him she flung herself
impulsively into his arms with a cry of anguish, as
though he was being taken away from her :
" Vladimir! Vladimir! "
She clung to him, and gazed eagerly at him and only
then I noticed how thin and pale she had become.
It was especially noticeable through her lace collar,
which I had known for years, for it now hung loosely
about her slim neck. The doctor was taken aback,
but controlled himself at once, and said, as he stroked
her hair :
' That's- enough. Enough ! . . .Why are you
so nervous? You see, I have come."
We were silent for a time, bashfully glancing at each
other. Then we all moved away and I heard the
doctor saying to me :
" Civilised life has not yet begun with us. The old
console themselves with saying that, if there is nothing
now, there was something in the forties and the six
ties ; that is all right for the old ones, but we are young
and our brains are not yet touched with senile decay.
We cannot console ourselves with such illusions. The
beginning of Russia was in 862, and civilised Russia,
LjasJC understand it, has not yet begun."
102 MY LIFE
But I could not bother about what he was saying.
It was very strange, but I could not believe that my
sister was in love, that she had just been walking
with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at
him tenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid,
downtrodden creature as she was, loved a man who
was already married and had children. I was full of
pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was
distasteful to me and I could not make out what was
to come of such a love.
XV
Masha and I drove over to Kurilovka for the open
ing of the school.
" Autumn, autumn, autumn. . ." said Masha,
looking about her. Summer had passed. There were
no birds and only the willows were green.
Yes. Summer had passed. The days were bright
end warm, but it was fresh in the mornings; the shep
herds went out in their sheepskins, and the dew never
dried all day on the asters in the garden. There were
continual mournful sounds and it was impossible to
tell whether it was a shutter creaking! on its rusty
hinges or the cranes flying and one felt so well and so
full of the desire for life !
" Summer had passed. . ." said Masha. " Now
we can both make up our accounts. We have worked
hard and thought a great deal and we are the better
MY LIFE 103
for it all honour and praise to us ; we Lave improved
ourselves; but have our successes had any perceptible
influence on the life around us, have they been of any
use to a single person ? No ! Ignorance, dirt, drunk
enness, a terribly high rate of infant mortality every
thing is just as it was, and no one is any the better for
your having ploughed and sown and my having spent
money and read books. Evidently we have only
worked and broadened our minds for ourselves."
I was abashed by such arguments and did not know
what to think.
!< From beginning to end we have been sincere,"
I said, " and if a man is sincere, he is right."
( Who denies that? We have been right but we
have been wrong in our way of setting about it. First
of all, are not our very ways of living wrong? You
want to be useful to people, but by the mere fact of
buying an estate you make it impossible to be so.
Further, if you work, dress, and eat like a peasant you
.lend your authority and approval to the clumsy
/ clothes, and their dreadful houses and their dirty
beards. ... On the other hand, suppose you work
for a long, long time, all your life, and in the end ob
tain some practical results what will your results
amount to, what can they do against such elemental
forces as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, and degen
eracy ? A drop in the ocean ! Other methods of
fighting are necessary, strong, bold, quick ! If you
want to be useful then you must leave the narrow
'
104 MY LIFE
circle of common activity and try to act directly on
the masses T fTfit of all, you need vigorous, (noisy,
propaganda. Why are art and music, for instance, so
much alive and so popular and so powerful ? Because
the musician or the singer influences thousands
directly. Art, wonderful art! " She looked wistfully
at the sky and went on : l ' Art gives wings and carries
you far, far away. If you are bored with dirt and
pettifogging interests, if you are exasperated and out
raged and indignant, rest and satisfaction are only to
be found in beauty."
As we approached Kurilovka the weather was fine,
clear, and joyous. In the yards the peasants were
thrashing and there was a smell of corn and straw.
Behind the wattled hedges the fruit-trees were redden
ing and all around the trees were red or golden. In the
church-tower the bells were ringing, the children were
carrying ikons to the school and singing the Litany of
the Virgin. And how clear the air was, and how high
the doves soared !
The Te Deum was sung in the schoolroom. Then
the Kurilovka peasants presented Masha with an
ikon, and the Dubechnia peasants gave her a large
cracknel and a gilt salt-cellar. And Masha began to
weep.
" And if we have said anything out of the way or
have been discontented, please forgive us," said an old
peasant, bowing to us both.
As we drove home Masha looked back at the school.
MY LIFE 105
The green roof which I had painted glistened in the
sun, and we could see it for .a long time. And I felt
that Masha's glances were glances of farewell.
XVI
In the evening she got ready to go to town.
She had often been to town lately to stay the night.
In her absence I could not work, and felt listless and
disheartened; our big yard seemed dreary, disgusting,
and deserted ; there were ominous noises in the gar
den, and without her the house, the trees, the horses
were no longer " ours."
I never went out but sat all the^time at her writing-
table among her books on farming and agriculture,
those deposed favourites, wanted no more, which looked
out at me so shamefacedly from the bookcase. For
hours together, while it struck seven, eight, nine, and
the autumn night crept up *as black as soot to the
windows, I sat brooding over an old glove of hers,
or the pen she always used, and her little scissors.
I did nothing and saw clearly that everything I had
done before, ploughing, sowing, and felling trees, had
only been because she wanted it. And if she told me
to clean out a well, when I had to stand waist-deep
in water, I would go and do it, without trying to find
out whether the well wanted cleaning or not. And
now, when she was away, Dubechnia with its squalor,
its litter, its slamming shutters, with thieves 1 prowling
106 MY LIFE
about it day and night., seemed to me like a chaos in
which work was entirel^^selessT^jAnd why should I
work, then ? Why trouble and worry about the future,
when I felt that the ground was slipping away from
under me, that my position at Dubechnia was ho'low,
that, in a word, the same fate awaited me as had be
fallen the books on agriculture? Oh! what anguish
it was at night, in the lonely hours, when I lay listen
ing uneasily, as though I expected some one any min
ute to call out that it was time for me to go away.
I was mot sorry to leave Dubechnia, my sorrow was for
my love, for which it seemed that autumn had already
begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and
to be loved, and what a horror it is to feel that you
are beginning to topple down from that lofty tower!
Masha returned from town toward evening on the
following day. She was dissatisfied with something,
but conceafed it and said only : " Why have the winter
windows been put in? It will be stifling." I opened
two of the windows. We did not feel like eating, but
we sat down and had supper
" Go 1 and wash your hands," she said. ' You smell
of putty."
She had brought some new illustrated magazines
from town and we both read them after supper. They
had supplements with fashion-plates aond patterns.
Masha just glanced at them and put them aside to
look at them carefully later on ; but one dress, with a
wide, bell-shaped skirt and big sleeves interested her,
MY LIFE 107
and for a moment she looked at it seriously and atten
tively.
" That's not bad," she said.
" Yes, it would suit you very well," said I. " Very
well."
And I admired the dress, only because she liked it,
and went on tenderly :
" A wonderful, lovely dress ! Lovely, wonderful,
Masha. My dear Masha."
And tears began to drop on the fashion-plate.
" Wonderful Masha. . . ." I murmured. " Dear,
darling" Masha. ..."
She went and lay down and I sat still for an hour
and looked at the illustrations.
' You should not have opened the windows," she
called from the bedroom. "I'm afraid it will be cold.
Look how the wind is blowing in ! '
I read the miscellany, about the preparation of cheap
ink, and the size of the largest diamond in the world.
Then I chanced on the picture of the dress she had
liked and I imagined her at a ball, with a fan, and bare
shoulders, a brilliant, dazzling figure, well up in musio
and painting and literature, and how insignificant and
brief my share in her life seemed to be !
Our coming together, our marriage, was only an
episode, one of many in the life of this lively, highly
gifted creature. All the best things in the world, as
I have said, were at her service, and she had them
for nothing; even ideas and fashionable intellectual
108 MY LIFE
movements served her pleasure, a diversion in her
existence, and I was only the coachman who drove her
from one infatuation to another. Now I was no longer
necessary to her; she would fly away and I should be
left alone.
As if in answer to my thoughts a desperate scream
suddenly came from the yard :
"Mur-der! "
It was a shrill female voice, and exactly as though it
were trying to imitate it, the wind also howled dis
mally in the chimney. Half a minute passed and again
it came through the sound of the wind, but as though
from the other end of the yard :
"Mur-der! "
:t Misail, did you hear' that?" said my wife in a
hushed voice. " Did you hear? "
She came out of the bedroom in her nightgown,
with her hair down, and stood listening and staring
out of the dark window
c< Somebody is being murdered!" she muttered.
" It only wanted that ! "
I took my gun and went out; it was very dark out
side ; a violent wind was blowing so that it was hard to
stand up. I walked to the gate and listened; the
trees were moaning; the wind went whistling through
them, and in the garden the idiot's dog was howling.
Beyond the gate it was pitch dark; there was not a
light on the railway. And just by the wing, where
the offices used to be, I suddenly heard a choking cry :
MY LIFE 109
"Mur-der! "
" Who is there? " I called.
Two men were locked in a struggle. One had nearly
thrown the other, who was resisting with all his might.
And both were breathing heavily.
t( Let go ! " said one of them and I recognised Ivan
Cheprakov. It was he who had cried out in a thin,
falsetto voice. " Let go, damn you, or I'll bite your
hands! '
The other man I recognised a^^Ioissey.^''! parted
them and could not resist hitting Moissey in the face
twice. He fell down, then got up, and I struck him
again.
" He tried to kill me," he muttered. " I caught
him creeping to his mother's drawer. ... I tried to
shut him up in the wing for safety."
Cheprakov was drunk and did not recognise me. He
stood gasping for breath as though trying to get enough
wind to shriek again.
I left them and went back to the house. My wife
was lying on the bed, fully dressed. I told her what
had happened in the yard and did not keep back the
fact thnt I had struck Moissey.
" Living in the country is horrible, ""gjie said. "And
wh a taTong "nignTTF Ts "jr***"""
'Mur-der! " we heard again, a little later.
' I'll go and part them," I said.
' No. Let them kill each other," she said with an
expression of disgust.
110 MY LIFE
She lay staring at the ceiling, listening, and I eat
near her, not daring to speak and feeling that it was
my fault that screams of " murder " came from the
yard and the night was so long.
We were silent and I waited impatiently for the
light to peep in at the window. And Masha looked
as though she had wakened from a long sleep and
was astonished to find herself, so clever, so educated,
so refined, cast away in this miserable provincial hole,
among a lot of petty, shallow people, and to think that
she could have so far forgotten herself as to have been
carried away by one of them and to have been his
wife for more than half a year. It seemed to me that
we were all the same to her myself, Moissey, Chepra-
kov; all swept together into the drunken, wild scream
of " murder " myself, our marriage, our work, and
the muddy roads of autumn; and when she breathed
or stirred to make herself more comfortable I could
read in her eyes: " Oh, if the morning would come
quicker ! '
In the morning she went away.
I stayed at Dubechnia for another three days, wait
ing for her; then I moved all our things into one
room, locked it, and went to town. When I rang- the
bell at the engineer's, it was evening, and the lamps
were alight in Great Gentry Street. Pavel told me
that nobody was at home; Victor Ivanich had gone
to Petersburg and Maria Victorovna must be at a
rehearsal at the Azhoguins'. I remember the excite-
MY LIFE 111
ment with which I went to the Azhoguins', and how
my heart thumped and sank within me, as I went up
stairs and stood for a long while on the landing, not
daring to enter that temple of the Muses! In the
hall, on the table, on the piano, on the stage, there
were candles burning; all in threes, for the first per
formance was fixed for the thirteenth, and the dress
rehearsal was on Monday the unlucky day. A fight
against prejudice! All the lovers of dramatic art
were assembled ; the eldest, the middle, and the young
est Miss Azhoguin were walking about the stage,
reading their parts. Radish was standing still in a
corner all by himself, with his head against the wall,
looking at the stage with adoring eyes, waiting for the
beginning of the rehearsal. Everything was just the
same!
I went toward my hostess to greet her, when sud
denly everybody began to say " Ssh " and to wave their
hands to tell me not to make such a noise. There was
a silence. The top of the piano was raised, a lady s&t
down, screwing up her short-sighted eyes at the music,
and Masha stood by the piano, dressed up, beautiful,
but beautiful in an odd new way, not at all like the
Masha who used to come to see me at the mill in the
spring. She began to sing :
" Why do I love thee, straight night? "
It was the first time since I had known her that I
had heard her sing. She had a fine, rich, powerful
8A
112 MY LIFE
voice, and to hear her sing was like eating a ripe, sweet-
scented melon. She finished the song and was ap
plauded. She smiled and looked pleased, made play
with her eyes, stared at the music, plucked at her
dress exactly like a bird which has broken out of its
cage and preens its wings at liberty. Her hair was
combed back over her ears, and she had a sly defiant
expression on her face, as though she wished to chal
lenge us all, or to shout at us, as though we were
horses: " Gee up, old things! '
And at that moment she must have looked very
like her grandfather, the coachman.
" You here, too? " she asked, giving me her hand.
" Did you hear me sing? How did you like it? " And,
without waiting for me to answer she went on : " You
arrived very opportunely. I'm going to Petersburg
for a short time to-night. May I? >J
At midnight I took her to the station. She embraced
me tenderly, probably out of gratitude, because I did
not pester her with useless questions, and she promised
to write to me, and I held her hands for a long time
and kissed them, finding it hard to keep back my tears,
and not saying a word.
And when the train moved, I stood looking at the
receding lights, kissed her in my imagination and
whispered :
" Masha dear, wonderful Masha! . . ."
I spent the night at Makarikha, at Karpovna's,
and in the morning I worked with Radish, upholster-
XV**^'
MY LIFE 113
ing the furniture at a rich merchant's, who had married
his daughter to a doctor.
XVII
On Sunday afternoon my sister came to see me and
had tea with me.
"I read a great deal now," she said, showing me the
books she had got out of the town library on her way.
" Thanks to your wife and Vladimir. They awakened
my self -consciousness. They saved me and have made
me feel that I am a human being. I used not to sleep
at night for worrying : ' What a lot of sugar has been
wasted during the week.' ' The cucumbers must not
be oversalted ! ' I don't sleep now, but I have quite
different thoughts. I am tormented with the thought
that half my life has passed so foolishly and half
heartedly. I despise my old life. I am ashamed of
it. And I regard my father now as an enemy. Oh,
how grateful I am to your wife ! And Vladimir.
He is such a wonderful man ! They opened my eyes."
( It is not good that you can't sleep/' I said.
' You think I am ill ? No a bit. Vladimir sounded
me and says I am perfectly healthy. But health is
not the point. That doesn't matter so much. . . .
Tell me, am I right? "
She needed moral support. That was obvious.
Masha had gone, Doctor Blagovo was in Petersburg,
and there was no one except myself in the town, who
114 MY LIFE
could tell her that she was right. She fixed her eyes
on me, trying to read my inmost thoughts, and if I
were sad in her presence, she always took it upon her
self and was depressed. I had to be continually on
my guard, and when she asked me if she was right,
I hastened to assure her that she was right and that
I had a profound respect for her.
" You know, they have given me a part at the
AzhouginsV she went on. " I wanted to act. I want
to live. I want to drink deep of life; I have no talent
whatever, and my part is only ten lines, but it is im
measurably finer and nobler than pouring out tea five
times a day and watching to see that the cook does not
eat the sugar left over. And most of all I want to
let father see that I too can protest."
After tea she lay down on my bed and stayed there
for some time, with her eyes closed, and her face very
pale.
l< Just weakness ! " she said, as she got up. ' Vladi
mir said all town girls and women are anaemic from
lack of work. What a clever man Vladimir is! He
is right; wonderfully right! We do need work! r
Two days later she came to rehearsal at the Azho-
guins' with her part in her hand. She was in black,
with a garnet necklace, and a brooch that looked at a
distance like a pasty, and she had enormous earrings,
in ,each of which sparkled a diamond. I felt uneasy
when I saw her; I was shocked by her lagk of taste.
The others noticed too that she was unsuitably dressed
MY LIFE 115
and that her earrings and diamonds were out of place.
I saw their smiles and heard some one say jokingly:
" Cleopatra of Egypt! "
She was trying to be fashionable, and easy, and as
sured, and she seemed affected and odd. She lost her
simplicity and her charm.
" I just told father that I was going to a rehearsal/'
she began, coming up to me, " and he shouted that he
would take his blessing from me, and he nearly struck
me. Fancy," she added, glancing at her part, " I
don't know my part. I'm sure to make a mistake.
Well, the die is cast," she said excitedly; " the die is
cast,"
She felt that all the people were looking at her and
were all amazed at the important step she had taken
and that they were all expecting something remark
able from her, and it was impossible to convince her
that nobody took any notice of such small uninter
esting persons as she and I.
She had nothing to do until the third act, and her
part, a guest, a country gossip, consisted only in stand
ing by the door, as if she were overhearing something,
and then speaking a short monologue. For at least
an hour and a half before her cue, while the others
were walking, reading, having tea, quarrelling, she
never left me and kept on mumbling her part, and
dropping her written copy, imagining that everybody
was looking at her, and waiting for her to come on, and
she patted her hair with a trembling hand and said :
116 MY LIFE
" I'm sure to make a mistake You don't
know how awful I feel ! I am as terrified as if I were
going to the scaffold/'
At last her cue came.
" Cleopatra Alexeyevna your cue! " said the man
ager.
She walked on to the middle of the stage with an
expression of terror on her face; she looked ugly and
stiff, and for half a minute was speechless, perfectly
motionless, except for her large earrings which wabbled
on either side of her face.
" You can read your part, the first time," said some
one.
I could see that she was trembling so that she could
neither speak nor open her part, and that she had en-
en tirely forgotten the words and I had just made up
my mind to go up and say something to her when she
suddenly dropped down on her knees in the middle of
the stage and sobbed loudly.
There was a general stir and uproar. And I stood
quite still by the wings, shocked by what had hap
pened, not understanding at all, not knowing what
to do. I saw them lift her up and lead her away.
I saw Aniuta Blagovo come up to me. I had not seen
her in the hall before and she seemed ,to have sprung
up from the floor. She was wearing* a hat and veil,
and as usual looked as if she had only dropped in for
a minute.
" I told her not to try to act," she said angrily,
MY LIFE 117
biting- out each word, with her cheeks blushing-. :( It
is folly! You ought to have stopped her! '
Mrs. Azhoguin came up in a short jacket with short
sleeves. She had tobacco ash on her thin, flat bosom.
" My dear, it is too awful ! " she said, wringing her
hands, and as usual, staring into my face. :< It is
too awful I ... Your sister is in a condition. , . .
She is going to have a baby ! You must take her away
^*"T "~ 'jiT'n.._. .-~*r
af once. . . .
In her agitation she breathed heavily. And behind
her, stood her three daughters, all thin and flat-chested
like herself, and all huddled together in their dis
may. They were frightened, overwhelmed just as
if a convict had been caught in the house. What a
shame ! How awful ! And this was the family that
had been fighting the prejudices and superstitions of
mankind all their lives; evidently they thought that
all the prejudices and superstititions of mankind were
to be found in burning three candles and in the number
thirteen, or the unlucky day Monday.
" I must request . . . request . . ." Mrs. Azho
guin kept on saying, compressing her lips and accen
tuating the quest. " I must request you to take her
away."
XVIII
A little later my sister and I were walking along the
street. I covered her with the skirt of my overcoat;
we hurried along through by-streets, where there were
118 MY LIFE
no lamps, avoiding- the passers-by, and it was like a
flight. She did not weep any more, but stared at me
with dry eyes. It was about twenty minutes' walk
to Makarikha, whither I was taking her, and in that
short time we went over the whole of our lives, and
talked over everything, and considered the position
and pondered
We decided that we could not stay in the town,
and that when I could get some money, we would go
to some other place. In some of the houses the people
were asleep already, and in others they were playing
cards; we hated those houses, were afraid of them, and
we talked of the fanaticism, callousness, and nullity
of these respectable families, these lovers of dramatic
art whom we had frightened so much, and I won
dered how those stupid, cruel, slothful, dishonest
people were better than the drunken and superstitious
peasants of Kurilovka, or how they were better than
animals, which also lose their heads when some acci
dent breaks the monotony of their lives, which are
limited by their instincts. What would happen to
my sister if she stayed at home? What moral tor
ture would she have to undergo, talking* to my father
and meeting* acquaintances every day? I imagined
it all and there came into my memory people I had
known who had been gradually dropped by their
friends and relations, and I remember the tortured
dcgs which had gone mad, and sparrows plucked
alive and thrown into the water and a whole long
MY LIFE 119
series of dull, protracted sufferings which I had seen
going on in the town since my childhood; and I could
not conceive what the sixty thousand inhabitants lived
for, why they read the Bible, why they prayed, why
they skimmed books and magazines. What good
was all that had been written and said, if they were
in the same spiritual darknessi and had the sama
hatred of freedom, as if they were living hundreds and
hundreds of years ago? The builder spends his time
putting up houses all over the town, and yet would
go down to his grave saying "galdary " for " gallery.'*
And the sixty thousand inhabitants had read and heard
of truth and mercy and freedom for generations, but
to the bitter end they would go on lying from morn
ing to night, tormenting one another, fearing and
hating freedom as a deadly enemy.
" And so, my fate is decided/ 5 said my sister when
we reached home. " After what has happened I can
never go there again. My God, how good it is ! I
feel at peace. "
She lay down at once. Tears shone on her eye
lashes, but her expression was happy. She slept
soundly and softly, and it was clear that her heart
was easy and that she was at rest. For a long, long
time she had not slept so well.
So we began to live together. She was always sing
ing and said she felt very well, and I took back the
books we had borrowed from the library unread, be
cause she gave up reading ; she only wanted to dream
120 MY LIFE
and to talk of the future. She would hum as she
mended my clothes or helped Karpovna with the
cooking, or talk of her Vladimir, of his mind, and his
goodness, and his fine manners, and his extraordinary
learning. And I agreed with her, though I no longer
liked the doctor. Sh-e wanted to work, to be inde
pendent, and to live by herself, and she said she would
become a school-teacher or a nurse as soon as her
health allowed, and she would scrub the floors and
do her own washing. She loved her unborn baby
passionately, and she knew already the colour of his
eyes and the shape of his hands and how he laughed.
She liked to talk of his upbringing, and since the best
man on earth was Vladimir, all her ideas were reduced
to making the boy as charming as his father. There
was no end to her chatter, and everything she talked
about filled her with a lively joy. Sometimes I, too,
rejoiced, though I knew not why.
She must have infected me with her dreaminess,
for I, too, read nothing and just dreamed. In the
evenings, in spite of being tired, I used to pace up and
-down the room with my hands in my pockets, talking
about Masha.
" When do you think she will return? " I used to
ask my sister. " I think she'll be back at Christmas.
Not later. What is she doing there?"
" If she doesn't write to you, it means she must be
coming soon."
11 True," I would agree, though I knew very well
MY LIFE 121
that there was nothing to make Masha return to our
town.
I missed her very much, but I could not help deceiv
ing myself and wanted others to deceive me. My
sister was longing for her doctor, I for Masha, and we
both laughed and talked and never saw that we were
keeping Karpovna from sleeping. She would lie on
the stove and murmur :
"The samovar tinkled this morning. Tink-led !
That bodes nobody any good, my merry friends !
Nobody came to the house except the postman who
brought my sister letters from the doctor, and Pro-
kofyi, who used to come in sometimes in the evening
and glance secretly at my sister, and then go into
the kitchen and say :
" Every class has its ways, and if you're too proud
to understand that, the worse for you in this vale of
tears."
He loved the expression -vale of tears. And
about Christmas time when I was going through the
market, he called me into his shop, and without giving
me his hand, declared that he had some important
business to discuss. He was red in the face with the
frost and with vodka ; near him by the counter stood
Nicolka of the murderous face, holding a bloody knife
in his hand.
" I want to be blunt with you," began Prokofyi.
' This business must not happen because, as you know,
people will neither forgive you nor us for such a vale
122 MY LIFE
of tears. Mother, of course, is too dutiful to say
anything unpleasant to you herself, and tell you that
your sister must go somewhere else because of her
condition, but I don't want it either, because I do not
approve of her behaviour."
I understood and left the shop. That very day my
sister and I went to Radish's. We had no money
for a cab, so we went on foot ; I carried a bundle with
all our belongings on my back, my sister had nothing
in her hands, and she was breathless and kept coughing
and asking if we would soon be there.
XIX
,"^'''"
At last there came a letter from Masha.
" My dear, kind M. A.," she wrote, " my brave,
sweet angel, as the old painter calls you, good-bye. T
am going to America with my father for the exhibition.
In a few days I shall be on the ocean so far from Du-
bechnia. It is awful to think of ! It is vast and
open like the sky and I long for it and freedom. I
rejoice and dance about and you see how incoherent
my letter is. My dear Misail, give m^my freedom.
Quick, tear the thread which still holds ancT'binds- us.
My meeting and knowing you was a ray from heaven,
which brightened my existence. But, you know, my
becoming your wife was a mistake, and the knowledge
of the mistake weighs me down, and I implore you on
my knees, my dear, generous friend, quick quick
MY LIFE 123
before I go over the sea wire that you will agree to
correct our mutual mistake, remove then the only
<burden on my wings, and my father, who will be re
sponsible for the whole business, has promised me not
to overwhelm you with formalities. So, then, I am
free of the whole world? Yes?
" Be happy. God bless you. Forgive my wicked
ness.
" I am alive and well. I am squandering money on
all sorts of follies, and every minute I thank God that
such a wicked woman as I am has no children. T
am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing
whim. No. It is my haven, my convent cell where
I go for rest. King David had a ring with an inscrip
tion : * Everything passes.' When one is sad, these
words make one cheerful; and when one is cheerful,
they make one sad. And I have got a ring with the
words written in Hebrew, and this talisman will keep
me from losing my heart and head. Or does one
need nothing but consciousness of freedom, because,
when one is free, one wants nothing, nothing, nothing.
Snap the thread then. I embrace you and your sister
warmly. Forgive and forget your M."
My sister had one room. Radish, who had been ill
and was recovering, was in the other. Just as I re
ceived this letter, my sister went into the painter's
room and sat by his side and began to read to him.
She read Ostrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he
used to listen, staring straight in front of him, never
124 MY LIFE
laughing, shaking his head, and every now and then
muttering to himself :
" Anything may happen ! Anything may happen !"
If there was anything ugly in what she read, he
would say vehemently, pointing to the book :
" There it is ! Lies ! That's what lies do !"
Stories used to attract him by their contents as well
as by their moral and their skilfully complicated plot,
and he used to marvel at him, though he never called
him by his name.
" How well he has managed it."
Now my sister read a page quickly and then stopped,
because her breath failed her. Radish held her hand,
and moving his dry lips he said in a hoarse, hardly
audible voice :
" The soul of the righteous is white and smooth as
chalk ; and the soul of the sinner is as a pumice-strone.
The soul of the righteous is clear oil, and the soul of
the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and sorrow and
pity," he went on. '.' And if a man does not work
and sorrow he will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Woe, woe to the well fed, woe to the strong, woe to the
rich, woe to the usurers ! They will not see the king
dom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron. . ."
" And lies devour the soul," said my sister, laughing.
I read the letter once more. At that moment the
soldier came into the kitchen who had brought in
twice a week, without saying from whom, tea, French
bread, and game, all smelling of scent. I had no
MY LIFE 125
work and used to sit at home for days together, and
probably the person who sent us the bread knew that
we were in want.
I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing
merrily. Then she lay down and ate some bread and
said to me:
" When you wanted to get away from the office and
become a house-painter, Aniuta Blagovo and I knew
from the very beginning that you were right, but we
were afraid to say so. Tell me what power is it that
keeps us from saying what we feel? There's Aniuta
Blagovo. She loves you, adores you, and she knows
that you are right. She loves me, too, like a sister,
and she knows that I am right, and in her heart she
envies me, but some power prevents her coming to
see us. She avoids us. She is afraid."
My sister folded her hands across her bosom and
said rapturously :
1 ' If you only knew how she loves you ! She con
fessed it to me and to no one else, very hesitatingly,
in the dark. She used to take me out into the garden,
into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper how
dear you were to her. You will see that she will never
marry because she loves you. Are you sorry for
i .
her r
"Yes."
" It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why
should she hide herself ? I used to be silly and stupid,
but I left all that and I am not afraid of any one, and
9
126 MY LIFE
I think and say aloud what I like and I am happy.
When I lived at home I had no notion of happiness,
and now I would not change places with a queen."
Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and
was now living in the town, at his father's, taking a
rest. After which he said he would go back to Peters
burg. He wanted to devote himself to vaccination
against typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to
go abroad to increase his knowledge and then to be
come a University professor. He had already left the
army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide
trousers, and expensive ties. My sister was enraptured
with his pins and studs and his red-silk handkerchief,
which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside breast
pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I
fell to counting up his suits and came to the con
clusion that he must have at least ten. It was clear
that he still loved my sister, but never once, even in
joke, did he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad
with him, and I could not imagine what would happen
to her if she lived, or what was to become of her
child. But she was happy in her dreams and would
not think seriously of the future. She said he could
go wherevter he liked and even cast her aside, if only
he were happy himself, and what had been was enough
for her.
Usually when he came to see us he would sound her
very carefully, and ask her to drink some milk with
some medicine in it. He did so now. He sounded
MY LIFE 127
her and made her drink a glass of milk, and the room
began to smell of creosote.
" That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from
her. " You must not talk much, and you have been
chattering like a magpie lately. Please, be quiet."
She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room,
where I was sitting, and tapped me affectionately on
the shoulder.
" Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending
over the patient.
"Sir," said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir,
I make so bold . . . We are all in the hands of God,
and we must all die. . . Let me tell you the truth,
sir ... . You will never enter the kingdom of
heaven."
And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught
up into a dream: it was winter, at night, and I was
standing in the yard of the slaughter-house with Pro-
kofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-brandy ; I pulled
myself together and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed
to be going to the governor's for an explanation.
Nothing of the kind ever happened to me, before or
after, and I can only explain these strange dreams like
memories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the
nerves. I lived again through the scene in the slaugh
ter-house and the conversation with the governor, and
at the same time I was conscious of its unreality.
When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home,
but standing with the doctor by a lamp in the street.
9A
128 MY LIFE
"It is sad, sad," lie was saying with tears running
down his cheeks. '' She is happy and always laughing
and full of hope. But, poor darling, her condition is
hopeless. Old Radish hates me and keeps trying to
make me understand that I have wronged her. In his
way he is right, but I have my point of view, too, and
I do not repent of what has happened. It is necessary
to love. We must all love. That's true, isn't it?
Without love there would be no life, and a man who
avoids and fears love is not free."
We gradually passed to other subjects. He began
to speak of science and his dissertation which had been
very well received in Petersburg. He spoke enthusi
astically and thought no more of my sister, or of his
grief, or of myself. Life was carrying him away.
She has America and a ring with an inscription, I
thought, and he has his medical degree and his scien
tific career, and my sister and I are left with the past.
When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read
my letter again. And I remembered vividly how
she came to me at the mill that spring morning and
lay down and covered herself with my fur coat pre
tending to be just a peasant woman. And another
time' also in the early morning when we pulled
the bow-net out of the water, and the willows on the
bank showered great drops of water on us and we
laughed. . . .
All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street.
I climbed the fence, and, as I used to do in old days,
MY LIFE 129
I went into the kitchen by the back door to get a little
lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen. On the
stove the samovar was singing merrily, all ready for
my father. 'Who pours out my father's tea now?"
I thought. I took the lamp and went on to the shed
and made a bed of old newspapers and lay down. The
nails in the wall looked ominous as before and their
shadows flickered. It was cold. I thought I saw my
sister coming in with my supper, but I remembered
at once that she was ill at Radish's, and it seemed
strange to me that I should have climbed the fence
and be lying in the cold shed. My mind was blurred
and filled with fantastic imaginations.
A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first
the wire rustled along the wall, and then there was a
short, melancholy tinkle in the kitchen. It was my
father returning from the club. I got up and went
into the kitchen. Aksinya, the cook, clapped her
hands when she saw me and began to cry :
" Oh, my dear," she said in a whisper. " Oh, my
dear! My God!"
And in her agitation she began? to pluck at her apron.
On the window-sill were two large bottles of berries
soaking in vodka. I poured out a cup and gulped it
down, for I was very thirsty. Aksinya had just
scrubbed the table and the chairs, and the kitchen had
the good smell which kitchens always have when the
cook is clean and tidy. This smell and the trilling
of the cricket used to entice us into the kitchen when
130 MY LIFE
we were children, and there we used to be told fairy
tales, and we played at kings and queens . . .
"And where is Cleopatra? " asked Aksinya hur
riedly, breathlessly. " And where is your hat, sir?
And they say your wife has gone to Petersburg/'
She had been with us in my mother's time and used
to bathe Cleopatra and me in a tub, and we were still
children to her, and it was her duty to correct us. In
a quarter of an hour or so she laid bare all her thoughts,
which she had been storing up in her quiet kitchen all
the time I had been away. She said the doctor ought
to be made to marry Cleopatra we would only have
to frighten him a bit and make him send in a nicely
written application, and then the archbishop would
dissolve his first marriage, and it would be a good
thing to sell Dubechnia without saying anything to
my wife, and to bank the money in my own name;
and if my sister and I went on our knees to our father
and asked him nicely, then perhaps he would forgive
us ; and we ought to pray to the Holy Mother to inter
cede for us. ...
" Now, sir, go and talk to him," she said, when we
heard my father's cough. " Go, speak to him, and beg
his pardon. He won't bite your head off."
I went in. My father was sitting at his. desk work
ing on the plan of a bungalow with Gothic windows and
a stumpy tower like the lookout of a fire-station
an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As I entered
the study I stood so that I could not help seeing the
MY LIFE 131
plan. I did not know why I had come to my father,
but I remember that when I saw his thin face, red neck,
and his shadow on the wall, I wanted to throw my arms
round him and, as Aksinya had bid me, to beg his
pardon humbly ; but the sight of the bungalow with the
Gothic windows and the stumpy tower stopped me.
" Good evening, " I said.
fie" glanced at me and at once cast his eyes down on
his plan.
' What do you want ? ' ' he asked after a while.
:< I came to tell you that my sister is very ill. She
is dying/' I said dully.
" Well? " My father sighed, took off his spectacles
and laid them on the table. " As you have sown, so
you must reap. I want you to remember how you
came to me two years ago, and on this very spot I
asked you to give up your delusions, and I reminded
you of your honour, your duty, your obligations to
your ancestors, whose traditions, must be kept .sacred.
Did you listen to me? You spurned my advice and
clung to your wicked opinions; furthermore, you
dragged your sister into your abominable delusions
and brought about her downfall and her shame. Now
you are both suffering for it. As you have sown, so
.you must reap."
He paced up and down the study as he spoke. Prob
ably he thought that I had come to him to admit
that I was wrong, and probably he was waiting for me
to ask his help fof my sister and myself. I was cold,
132 MY LIFE
and I shook as though I were in a fever, and I spoke
with difficulty in a hoarse voice.
11 And I must ask you to remember," I said, "that
on this very spot I implored you to try to understand
me, to reflect, and to think what we were living for
and to what end, and your answer was to talk about
my ancestors and my grandfather who wrote verses.
Now you are told that your only daughter is in a hope
less condition and you talk of ancestors and traditions !
. . . And you can maintain such frivolity when death
is near and you have only five or ten years left to live !"
" Why did you come here?" asked my father stern
ly, evidently affronted at my reproaching him with
frivolity.
" I don't know. I love you. I am more sorry than
I can say that we are so far apart. That is why I
came. I still love you, but my sister has finally broken
with you. She does not forgive you and will never
forgive you. Your very name fills her with hatred
of her past life."
" And who is to blame?" cried my father. ' You,
you scoundrel ! ' ;
" Yes. Say that I am to blame," I said. "I admit
that I am to blame for many things, but why is your
life, which you have tried to force on us, so tedious
and frigid, and ungracious, why are there no people
in any .of the houses you have built during the last
thirty years from whom I could learn how to live
and how to avoid such suffering? These houses of
MY LIFE 133
yours are infernal dungeons in which mothers and
daughters are persecuted, children are tortured . . .
My poor mother ! My unhappy sister ! One needs
to drug oneself with vodka, cards, scandal ; cringe,
play the hypocrite, and go on year after year design
ing rotten houses, not to see the horror that lurks in
them. Our town has been in existence for hundreds of
years, and during the whole of that time it has not
given the country one useful man not one ! You
have strangled in embryo everything that was alive and
joyous ! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, and
hypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul
would be the worse if it were suddenly razed to the
ground."
" I don't want to hear you you scoundrel/' said
my father, taking a ruler from his desk. " You are
drunk ! You dare come into your father's presence
in such a state ! I tell you for the last time, and you
can tell this to your strumpet of a sister, that you will
get nothing from me. I have torn my disobedient
children out of my heart, and if they suffer through
their disobedience and obstinacy I have no pity for
them. You may go back where you came from !
God has been pleased to punish me through you. I
will humbly bear my punishment and, like Job, I find
consolation in suffering and unceasing toil. You shall
not cross my threshold until you have mended your
ways. I am a just man, and everything I say is prac
tical good sense, and if you had any regard for your
134 MY LIFE
self, you would remember what I have said, and what
I am saying now/'
I threw up my hands and went out ; I do not remem
ber what happened that night or next day.
They say that I went staggering through the street
without a hat, singing aloud, with crowds of little
boys shouting after me :
II Little Profit!- Little Profit !"
XX
If I wanted to order a ring, I would have it inscribed :
" Nothing passes. " I believe that nothing passes
without leaving some trace, and that eveiy little step
has some meaning for the present and the future life.
What I lived through was not in vain. My great
misfortunes, my patience, moved the hearts of the
people of the town and they no longer call me
" Little Profit/' they no longer laugh at me and
throw water over me as I walk through the market.
They got used to my being a working man and see
nothing strange in my carrying paint-pots and glaz
ing windows ; on the contrary, they give me orders,
and I am considered good workman and the best
contractor, after Radish, who, though he recovered
and still paints the cupolas of the church without
scaffolding, is not strong enough to manage the men,
and I have taken his place and go about the town tout
ing for orders, and take on and sack the men, and bor-
MY LIFE 135
row money at exorbitant interest. And now that I am
a contractor I can understand how it is possible to
spend several days hunting through the town for slaters
to carry out a trifling order. People are polite to me,
and address me respectfully and give me tea in the
houses where I work, and send the servant to ask me
if I would like dinner. Children and girls often come
and watch me with curious, sad eyes.
Once I was working in the governor's garden, paint
ing the summer-house marble. The governor came
into the summer-house, and having nothing better to
do, began to talk to me, and I reminded him how he
had once sent for me to caution me. For a moment he
stared at my face, opened his mouth like a round 0,
waved his hands, and said :
" I don't remember."
^1 am growing old, taciturn, crotchety, strict; I
seldom laugh, and people say I am growing like Rad
ish, and, like him, I bore the men with my aimless
moralising.
Maria Victorovna, my late wife, lives abroad, and
her father is making a railway somewhere in the
Eastern provinces and buying land there. Doctor
Blagovo is also abroad. Dubechnia has passed to
Mrs. Cheprakov, who bought it from the engineer
after haggling him into a twenty-per-cent. reduction
in the price. Moissey walks about in a bowler hat;
he often drives into town in a trap and stops outside
the bank. People say he has already bought an
136 MY LIFE
estate on a mortgage, and is always inquiring at the
bank about Dubechnia, which he also intends to buy.
Poor Ivan Cheprakov used to hang about the town,
doing nothing and drinking. I tried to give him a
job in our business, and for a time he worked with us
painting roofs and glazing, and he' rather took to it,
and, like a regular house-painter, he stole the oil, and
asked for tips, and got drunk. But it soon bored him.
He got tired of it and went back to Dubechnia, and
some time later I was told by the peasants that he
had been inciting them to kill Moissey one night and
rob Mrs. Cheprakov.
My father has got very old and bent, and just takes
a little walk in the evening near his house.
When we had the cholera, Prokofyi cured the shop
keepers with pepper-brandy and tar and took money
for it, and as I read in the newspaper, he was flogged
for libelling the doctors as he sat in his shop. His
boy Nicolka died of cholera. Karpovna is still alive,
and still loves and fears her Prokofyi. Whenever she
sees me she sadly shakes her head and says with a
sigh:
" Poor thing. You are lost! "
On week-days I am busy from early morning till
late at night. And on Sundays and holidays I take
my little niece (my sister expected a boy, but a girl
was born) and go with her to the cemetery, where
I stand or sit and look at the grave of my dear one,
and tell the child that her mother is lying there.
MY LIFE 137
Sometimes I find Aniuta Blagovo by the grave. We
greet each other and stand silently, or we talk of Cleo
patra, and the child, and the sadness of this life. Then
we leave the cemetery and walk in silence and she
lags behind on purpose, to avoid staying with me.
The little girl, joyful, happy, with her eyes half-closed
against the brilliant sunlight, laughs and holds out
her little hands to her, and we stop and together we
fondle the darling child.
And when we reach the town, Aniuta Blagovo,
blushing and agitated, says good-bye, and walks on
alone, serious and circumspect. . . And, to look at
her, none of the passers-by could imagine that she had
just been walking by my side and even fondling the
child.
y
THE HOUSE WITH THE
MEZZANINE
(A PAINTER'S STORY)
TT happened nigh on seven years ago,
living in one of the districts of the J. province, on
the estate of Bielokurov, a landowner, a young man
who used to get up early, dress himself in a long over
coat, drink beer in the evenings, and all the while com
plain to me that he could nowhere find any one in
sympathy with his ideas. He lived in a little house
in the orchard, and I lived in the old manor-house, in
a huge pillared hall where there was no furniture
except a large divan, on which I slept, and a table at
which I used to play patience. Even in calm weather
there was always a moaning in the chimney, and in
a storm the whole house would rock and seem as though
it must split, and it was quite terrifying, especially
at night, when all the ten great windows were suddenly
lit up by a flash of lightnjng^.^ _
Doomed by fate to permanent idleness, I did posi
tively nothing. For hours together I would sit and
look through the windows at the sky, the birds, the
trees and read my letters over and over again, and then
138
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 139
for hours together I would sleep. Sometimes I would
go out and wander aimlessly until evening.
Once on my way home I came unexpectedly on a
strange farmhouse. The sun was already setting,
and the lengthening shadows were thrown over the
ripening corn. Two rows of closely planted tall fir-
trees stood like two thick walls, forming a sombre,
magnificent avenue. I climbed the fence and walked
up the avenue, slipping on the fir needles which lay
two inches thick on the ground. It was still, dark,
and only here and there in the tops of the trees shim
mered a bright gold light casting the colours of the
rainbow on a spider's web. The smell of the firs
was almost suffocating. Then I turned into an avenue
of limes. And here too were desolation and decay;
the dead leaves rustled mournfully beneath my feet,
and there were lurking shadows among the trees. To
the right, in an old orchard, a goldhammer sang a
faint reluctant song, and he too must have been old.
The lime-trees soon came to an end and I came to a
white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and sud
denly a vista opened upon a farmyard with a pond and
a bathing-shed, and a row of green willows, with a
village beyond, and above it stood a tall, slender bel
fry, on which glowed a cross catching the light of the
setting sun. For a moment I was possessed with a
sense of enchantment, intimate, particular, as though
I had seen the scene before in my childhood.
By the white-stone gate surmounted with stone lions,
140 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
whicli led from the yard into the field, stood two
girls. One of them, the elder, thin, pale, very hand
some, with masses of chestnut hair and a little stub
born mouth, looked rather prim and scarcely glanced
at me; the other, who was quite young seventeen
or eighteen, no more, also thin and pale, with a big
mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise, as I
passed, said something in English and looked con
fused, and it seemed to me that I had always known
their dear faces. And I returned home feeling as
though I had awoke from a pleasant dream.
Soon after that, one afternoon, when Bielokurov
and I were walking near the house, suddenly there
came into the yard a spring-carriage in which sat one
of the two girls, the elder. She had come to ask for
subscriptions to a fund for those who had suffered in
a recent fire. Without looking at us, she told us very
seriously how many houses had been burned down in
Sianov, how many men, women, and children had been
left without shelter, and what had been done by the
committee of which she was a member. She gave us
the list for us to write our names, put it away, and
began to say good-bye.
1 You have completely forgotten us, Piotr Petro-
vich," she said to Bielkurov, as she gave him her
hand. " Come and see us, and if Mr. N. (she said my
name) would like to see how the admirers of his talent
live and would care to come and see us, then mother
and I would be very pleased."
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 141
I bowed.
When she had gonePiotr Petrovitch began to tell me
about her. The girl, he said, was of a good family
and her name was Lydia Volchaninov, and the estate,
on which she lived with her mother and sister, was
called, like the village on the other side of the pond,
Sholkovka. Her father had once occupied an eminent
position in Moscow and died a privy councillor.
Notwithstanding their large means, the Yolchaninovs
always lived in the village, summer and winter, and
Lydia was a teacher in the Zemstvo School at Shol
kovka and earned twenty-five roubles a month. She
only spent what she earned on herself and was proud
of her independence.
" They are an interesting family," said Bielokurov.
" We ought to go and see them. They will be very
glad to see you."
One afternoon, during a holiday, we remembered
the Volchaninovs and went over to Sholkovka. They
were all at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna,
had obviously once been handsome, but now she was
stouter than her age warranted, suffered from asthma,
was melancholy and absent-minded as she tried to
entertain me with talk about painting. When she
heard from her daughter that I might perhaps come
over to Sholkovka, she hurriedly called to mind a
few of my landscapes which she had seen in exhibi
tions in Moscow, and now she asked what I had tried
to express in them. Lydia, or as she was called at
10
142 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
home, Lyda, talked more to Bielokurov than to me.
Seriously and without a smile, she asked him why he
did not work for the Zemstvo and why up till now he
had never been to a Zemstvo meeting.
" It is not right of you, Piotr Petrovich," she said
reproachfully. "It is not right. It is a shame."
" True, Lyda, true," said her mother. " It is not
right."
"All our district is in Balaguin's hands," Lyda went
on, turning to me. " He is the chairman of the coun
cil and all the jobs in the district are given to his
nephews and brothers-in-law, and he does exactly as
he likes. We ought to fight him. The young people
ought to form a strong party; but you see what our
young men are like. It is a shame, Piotr Petrovich."
The younger sister, Genya, was silent during the
conversation about the Zemstvo. She did not take
part in serious conversations, for by the family she
was not considered grown-up, and they gave her her
baby name, Missyuss, because as a child she used to
call her English governess that. All the time she
examined me curiously and when I looked at the
photograph-album she explained : " This is my uncle.
. . That is my godfather," and fingered the por
traits, and at the same time touched me with her
shoulder in a childlike way, and I could see her small,
undeveloped bosom, her thin shoulders, her long, slim
waist tightly drawn in by a belt.
We played croquet and lawn-tennis, walked in the
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 143
garden, had tea, and then a large supper. After the
huge pillared hall, I felt out of tune in the small cosy
house, where there were no oleographs on the walls
and the servants were treated considerately, and every
thing seemed to me young and pure, through the
presence of Lyda and Missyuss, and everything was
decent and orderly. At supper Lyda again talked
to Bielokurov about the Zemstvo, about Balaguin,
about school libraries. She was a lively, sincere,
serious girl, and it was interesting to listen to her,
though she spoke at length and in a loud voice
perhaps because she was used to holding forth at school.
On the other hand, Piotr Petrovich, who from his
university days had retained the habit of reducing any
conversation to a discussion, spoke tediously, slowly,
and deliberately, with an obvious desire to be taken
for a clever and progressive man. He gesticulated
and upset the sauce with his sleeve and it made a
large pool on the table-cloth, though nobody but my
self seemed to notice it.
When we returned home the night was dark and
still.
" I call it good breeding/' said Bielokurov, with a
sigh, " not so much not to upset the sauoe on the
table, as not to notice it when some one else has done
it. Yes. An admirable intellectual family. I'm
rather out of touch with nice people. Ah ! terribly.
And all through business, business, business ! ''
He went on to say what hard work being a good
10 A
144 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
farmer meant. And I thought : What a stupid, lazy
lout! When we talked seriously ho would drag it
out with his awful drawl er, er, er and he works
just as he talks slowly, always behindhand, never
up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't
believe it, for he often keeps letters given him to post
for weeks in his pocket.
" The worst of it is," he murmured as he walked
along by my side, " the worst of it is that you go work
ing away and never get any sympathy from anybody."
II
I began to frequent the Volchaninovs' house. Usu
ally I sat on the bottom step of the veranda.
I was filled with dissatisfaction, vague discontent with
my life, which had passed so quickly and uninter
estingly, and I thought all the while how good it would
be to tear out of my breast my heart which had grown
so weary. There would be talk going on on the ter
race, the rustling of dresses, the fluttering of the pages
of a book. I soon got used to Lyda receiving the sick!
all day long, and distributing books, and I used often
to go with her to the village, bareheaded, under an
umbrella. And in the evening she would hold forth
about the Zemstvo and schools. She was very hand
some, subtle, correct, and her lips were thin and sen
sitive, and whenever a serious conversation started
she would say to me drily :
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 145
" This won't interest you."
I was not sympathetic to her. She did not like me
because I was a landscape-painter, and in my pictures
did not paint the suffering of the masses, and I seemed
to her indifferent to what she believed in. I remem
ber once driving along the shore of the Baikal and I
met a Bouryat girl, in shirt and trousers of Chinese
cotton, on horseback : I asked her if she would sell
me her pipe and, while we were talking, she looked
with scorn at my European face and hat, and in a
moment she got bored with talking to me, whooped
and galloped away. And in exactly the same way
Lyda despised me as a stranger. Outwardly she never
showed her dislike of me, but I felt it, and, as I sat on
the bottom step of the terrace, I had a certain irritation
and said that treating the peasants without being a
doctor meant deceiving them, and that it is easy to be
a benefactor when one owns four thousand acres.
Her sister, Missyuss, had no such cares and spent
her time in complete idleness, like myself. As soon
as she got up in the morning she would take a book and
read it on the terrace, sitting far back in a lounge
chair so that her feet hardly touched the ground, or
she would hide herself with her book in the lime-walk,
or she would go through the gate into the field. She
would read all day long, eagerly poring over the book,
and only through her looking fatigued, dizzy, and pale
sometimes, was it possible to guess how much her
reading exhausted her. When she saw me come she
146 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
would blush a little and leave her book, and, looking
into my face with her big eyes, she would tell me of
things that had happened, how the chimney in the
servants' room had caugbt fire, or how the labourer
had caught a large fish in the pond. On week-days
she usually wore a bright-coloured blouse and a dark-
blue skirt. We used to go out together and pluckl
cherries for jam, in the boat, and when she jumped io
reach a cherry, or pulled the oars, her thin, round arms
would shine through her wide sleeves. Or I would
make a sketch and she would stand end watch me
breathlessly.
One Sunday, at the end of June, I went over to the*
Volchaninovs in the morning about nine o'clock. I
walked through the park, avoiding the house, looking
for mushrooms, which were very plentiful that sum
mer, and marking them so as to pick them later with
Genya. A warm wind was blowing. I met Genya
and her mother, both in bright Sunday dresses, going
home from church, and Genya was holding her haii
against the wind. They told me they were going to
have tea on the terrace.
As a man without a care in the world, seeking somje-
how to justify his constant idleness, I have always
found such festive mornings in a country house uni
versally attractive. When the green garden, still
moist with dew, shines in the sun and seems happy,
and when the terrace smells of mignonette and olean
der, and the young people have just returned- from
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 147
church and drink tea in the garden, and when they are
all so gaily dressed and so merry, and when you know
that all these healthy, satisfied, beautiful people will
do nothing all day long, then you long for all life to be
like that. So I thought then as I walked through the
garden, quite prepared to drift like that without
occupation or purpose, all through the day, all through
the summer.
Genya carried a basket and she looked as though she
knew that she would find me there. We gathered
mushrooms and talked, and whenever she asked me
a question she stood in front of me to see my face.
" Yesterday," she said, " a miracle happened in our
village. Pelagueya, the cripple, has been ill for a
whole year, and no doctors or medicines were any good,
but yesterday an old woman muttered over her and she
got better."
"That's nothing/' I staid. " One should not go to
sick people and old women for miracles. Is not
health a miracle? And life itself? A miracle is some
thing incomprehensible."
" And you are not afraid of the incomprehensible? "
'No. I like to face things I do not understand and
I do not submit to them. I am superior to them.
Man must think himself higher than lions, tigers,
stars, higher than anything in nature, even higher
than that which seems incomprehensible and miracu
lous. Otherwise he is not a man, but a mouse which
is afraid of everything."
148 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
Genya thought that I, as an artist, knew a great
deal and could guess what I did not know. She
wanted me to lead her into the region of the eternal
and the beautiful, into the highest world, with which,
as she thought, I was perfectly familiar, and she
talked to me of God, of eternal life, of the miraculous.
And I, who did not admit that I and my imagination
would perish for ever, would reply: " Yes. Men are
immortal. Yes, eternal life awaits us." And she
would listen and believe me and never asked for proof.
As we approached the house she suddenly stopped
and said :
" Our Lyda is a remarkable person, isn't she? I love
her dearly and would gladly sacrifice my life for her
at any time. But tell me " Genya touched my sleeve
with her finger " but tell me, why do you argue with
her all the time? Why are you so irritated? "
" Because she is not right."
Genya shook her head and tears came to her eyes.
" How incomprehensible! " she muttered.
At that moment Lyda came out, and she stood by
the balcony with a riding-whip in her hand, and looked
very fine and pretty in the sunlight as she gave some
orders to a farm-hand. Bustling about and talking
loudly, she tended two or three of her patients, and
then with a businesslike, preoccupied look she walked
through the house,, opening one cupboard after another,
and at last went off to the aftic ; it took some time to
find her for dinner and she did not come until we had
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 149
finished the soup. Somehow I remember all these
little details and love to dwell on them, and I remem
ber the whole of that day vividly, though nothing
particular happened. After dinner Genya read, lying
in her lounge chair, and I sat on the bottom step of the
terrace. We were silent. The sky was overcast and
a thin fine rain began to fall. It was hot, the wind had
dropped, and it seemed the day would never end.
Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on to the terrace with a
fan, looking very sleepy.
" 0, mamma/' said Genya, kissing her hand. " It
is not good for you to sleep during the day."
They adored each other. When one went into the
garden, the other would stand on the terrace and
look at the trees and call : " Hello ! " " Genya ! " or
"Mamma, dear, where are you?" They always
prayed together and shared the same faith, and they
understood each other very well, even when they were
silent. And they treated other people in exactly the
same way. Ekaterina Pavlovna also soon got used to
me and became attached to me, and when I did not turn
up for a few days she would send to inquire if I was
well. And she too used to look admiringly at my
sketches, and with the same frank loquacity she would
tell me things that happened, and she would confide
her domestic secrets to me.
She revered her elder daughter. Lyda never came
to her for caresses, and only talked about serious
things : she went her own way and to her mother and
150 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
sister she was as sacred and enigmatic as the admiral,
sitting in his cabin, to his sailors.
ct Our Lyda is a remarkable person/' her mother
would often say; "isn't she? "
And, now, as the soft rain fell, we spoke of Lyda:
" She is a remarkable woman/' said her mother, and
added in a low voice like a, conspirator's as she looked
round, " such as she have to be looked for with a lamp
in broad daylight, though you know, I am beginning
to be anxious. The school, pharmacies, books all
very well, but why go to such extremes? She is
twenty-three and it is time for her to think seriously
about herself. If she goes on with her books and her
pharmacies she won't know how life has passed. . .
She ought to marry."
Genya, pale with reading, and with her hair ruffled,
looked up and said, as if to herself, as she glanced at
her mother :
" Mamma, dear, everything depends on the will of
God."
And once more she plunged into her book.
Bielokurov came over in a po-ddiovlta, wearing an
embroidered shirt. We played croquet and lawn-
tennis, and when it grew dark we had a long supper,
and Lyda once more spoke of her schools and Balaguin,
who had got the whole district into his own hands. As
I left the Volchaninovs that night I carried away an
impression of a long, long idle day, with a sad con
sciousness that everything ends, however long it may
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 151
be. Genya took me to the gate and perhaps, because
she had spent the whole day with me from the be
ginning to end, I felt somehow lonely without her, and
the whole kindly family was dear to me: and for the
first time during the whole of that summer I had a
desire to work.
" Tell me why you lead such a monotonous life,"
I asked Bielokurov, as we went home. " My life is
tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a
queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy,
discontent, disbelief in my work : I am always poor,
I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal man,
a landowner, a gentleman why do you live so tamely
and take so little from life? Why, for instance,
haven't you fallen in love with Lyda or Genya? "
"You forget that I love another woman," answered
Bielokurov.
He meant his mistress Lyubov Ivanovna, who lived
with him in the orchard house. I used to see the lady
every day, very stout, podgy, pompous, like a fatted
goose, walking in the garden in a Russian head-dress,
always with a sunshade, and the servants used to call
her to meals or tea. Three years ago she rented a
part of his house for the summer, and stayed on to
live with Bielokurov, apparently for ever. She was
ten years older than he and managed him very strictly,
so that he had to ask her permission to go out. She
would often sob and make horrible noises like a man
with a cold, and then I used to send and tell her that
152 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
if she did not stop I would go away. Then she would
stop.
. When we reached home, Bielokurov sat down on
the divan and frowned and brooded, and I began to
pace up and down the hall, feeling a sweet stirring in
me, exactly like the stirring of love. I wanted to talk
about the Volchaninovs.
" Lyda could only fall in love with a Zemstvo worker
like herself, some one who is run off his legs with hos
pitals and schools, " I said. " For the sake of a girl
like that a man might not "only become a Zemstvo
worker, but might even become worn out, like /the tale
of the iron boots. And Missyuss? How charming
Missyuss is! "
Bielokurov began to talk at length and with his
drawling er-er-ers of the disease of the century
pessimism. He spoke confidently and argumentatively.
Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, blackened
steppe could not so forcibly depress the mind as a
man like that, sitting and talking and showing no signs
of going away.
" The point is neither pessimism nor optimism," I
said irritably, " but that ninety-nine out of a hundred
have no sense."
Bielokurov took this to mean himself, was offended,
and went away.
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 153
III
" The Prince is on a visit to Malozyomov and sends
you his regards," said Lyda to her mother, as she came
in and took off her gloves. " He told me many inter
esting things. He promised to bring forward in the
Zemstvo Council the question of a medical station at
Malozyomov, but he says there is little hope." And
turning to me, she said : '"' Forgive me, I keep forget
ting that you are not interested."
I felt irritated.
" Why not? " I asked and shrugged my shoulders.
" You don't care about my" opinion, but I assure you,
the question greatly interests me."
" Yes?"
" In my opinion there is absolutely no need for a
medical station at Malozyomov."
My irritation affected her : she gave a glance at me,
half closed her eyes and said :
" What is wanted then? Landscapes?"
" Not landscapes either. Nothing is wanted there."
She finished taking off her gloves and took up a
newspaper which had just come by post; a moment
later, she said quietly, apparently controlling herself :
u Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if a medi
cal man had been available she would have lived.
However, I suppose landscape-painters are entitled to
their opinions."
154 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
" I have a very definite opinion, I assure you," said
I, and she took refuge behind the newspaper, as though
she did not wish to listen. " In my opinion medical
stations, schools, libraries, pharmacies, under existing
conditions, only lead to slavery. The masses are
caught in a vast chain : you do not cut it but only
add new links to it. That is my opinion."
She looked at me and smiled mockingly, and I went
on, striving to catch the thread of my ideas.
" It does not matter that Anna should die in child
birth, but it does matter that all these Annas, Marfas,
Pelagueyas, from dawn to sunset should be grinding
away, ill from overwork, all their lives worried about
their starving sickly children; all their lives they are
afraid of death and disease, and have to be looking after
themselves; they fade in youth, grow old very early,
and die in filth and dirt ; their children as they grow up
go the same way and hundreds of years slip by and
millions of people live worse than animals in con
stant dread of never having a crust to eat; but the
horror of their position is that they have no time to
think of their souls, no time to remember that they are
made in the likeness of God ; hunger, cold, animal fear,
incessant work, like drifts of snow block all the ways
to spiritual activity, to the very thing that distin
guishes man from the animals, and is the only thing
indeed that makes life worth living. You come to their
assistance with hospitals and schools, but you do not
free- them from their fetters; on the contrary, you en-
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 155
slave them even more, since by introducing new
prejudices into their lives, you increase the number
of their demands, not to mention the fact that
they have to pay the Zemstvo for their drugs and
pamphlets, and therefore, have to work harder than
ever."
" I will not argue with you/' said Lyda. " I have
heard all that." She put down her paper. !< I will
only tell you one thing, it is no good sitting with
folded hands. It is true, we do not save mankind, and
perhaps we do make mistakes, but we do what we can
and we are right. The highest and most sacred truth
for an educated being is to help his neighbours, and
we do what we can to help. You do not like it, but it
is impossible to please everybody."
" True, Lyda, true," said her mother.
In Lyda's presence her courage always failed her,
and as she talked she would look timidly at her, for
she was afraid of saying something foolish or out of
place : and she never contradicted, but would always
agree: " True, Lyda, true."
' Teaching peasants to read and write, giving them
little moral pamphlets and medical assistance, cannot
decrease either ignorance or mortality, just as the light
from your windows cannot illuminate this huge gar
den," I said. " You give nothing by your interference
in the lives of these people. You only create new de
mands, and a new compulsion to work."
" Ah ! My God, but we must do something! " said
156 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
Lyda exasperatedly, and I could tell by her voice that
she thought my opinions negligible and despised me.
" It is necessary," I said, " to free people from hard
physical work. It is necessary to relieve them of their
yoke, to give them breathing space, to save them
from spending their whole lives in the kitchen or the
byre, in the fields ; they should have time to take
thought of their souls, of God and to develop their
spiritual capacities. Every human being's salvation
lies in spiritual activity in his continual search for
truth and the meaning of life. Give them some relief
from rough, animal labour, let them feel free, then you
will see how ridiculous at bottom your pamphlets and
pharmacies are. Once a human being is aware ot his
vocation, then he can only be satisfied with religion,
service, art, and not with trifles like that."
" Free them from work? " Lyda gave a smile. " Is
that possible? "
" Yes. . . Take upon yourself a part of their
work. If we all, in town and country, without excep
tion, agreed to share the work which is being spent
by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands,
then none of us would have to work more than two or
three hours a day. If all of us, rich and poor, worked
three hours a day the rest of our time would be free.
And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we
should invent machines to do the work and we should
try to reduce our demands to the minimum. We should
toughen ourselves and our children should not be
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 157
afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be
anxious about their health, as Anna, Maria, Pelagueya
were anxious. Then supposing we did not bother about
doctors and pharmacies, and did away with tobacco
factories and distilleries what a lot of free time we
should have! We should give our leisure to service
and the arts. Just as peasants all work together to
repair the roads, so the whole community would work
together to seek truth and the meaning of life, and, I
am sure of it truth would be found very soon, man
would get rid of his continual, poignant, depressing
fear of death and even of death itself."
" But you contradict yourself," said Lyda. " You
talk about service and deny education."
te I deny the education of a man who can only use it
to read the signs on the public houses and possibly
a pamphlet which he is incapable of understanding
the kind of education we have had from the time of
Rurik : and village life has remained exactly as it was
then. Not education is wanted but freedom for the
full development of spiritual capacities. Not schools
are wanted but universities."
" You deny medicine too."
" Yes. It should only be used for the investigation
of diseases, as natural phenomenon, not for their cure.
It is no good curing diseases if you don't cure their
causes. Remove the chief cause physical labour,
and there will be no diseases. I don't acknowledge
the science which cures," I went on excitedly.
11
158 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
" Science and art, when they are true, are directed not
to temporary or private purposes, but to the eternal and
the general they seek the truth and the meaning of
life, they seek God, the soul, and when they are har
nessed to passing needs and activities, like pharmacies
and libraries, then they only complicate and encumber
life. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists,
lawyers, and highly educated people, but we have no
biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. All
our intellectual and spiritual energy is wasted on
temporary passing needs. . . Scientists, writers,
painters work and work, and thanks to them the
comforts of life grow greater every day, the demands
of the body multiply, but we are still a long way from
the truth and man still remains the most rapacious and
unseemly of animals, and everything tends to make the
majority of mankind degenerate and more and more
lacking in vitality. Under such conditions the life of
an artist has no meaning and the more talented he is,
the more strange and incomprehensible his position is,
since it only amounts to his working for the amuse
ment of the predatory, disgusting animal, man, and
supporting the existing state of things. And I don't
want to work and will not. . . Nothing is wanted,
so let the world go to hell."
" Missyuss, go away," said Lyda to her sister, evi
dently thinking my words dangerous to so young a girl.
Genya looked sadly at her sister and mother and
went out.
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 159
"People generally talk like that/' said Lyda, "when
they want to excuse their indifference. It is easier to
deny hospitals and schools than to come and teach."
" True, Lyda, true," her mother agreed.
" You say you will not work," Lyda went on.
" Apparently you set a high price on your work, but
do stop arguing. We shall never agree, since I value
the most imperfect library or pharmacy, of which you
spoke so scornfully just now, more than all the land
scapes in the world." And at once she turned to her
mother and began to talk in quite a different tone :
" The Prince has got very thin, and is much changed
since the last time he was here. The doctors are send
ing him to Vichy."
She talked to her mother about the Prince to avoid
talking to me. Her face was burning, and, in order to
conceal her agitation, she bent over the table as if she
were short-sighted and made a show of reading the
newspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I
took my leave and went home.
IY
All was quiet outside : the village on the other side
of the pond was already asleep, not a single light was
to be seen, and on the pond there was only the faint
reflection of the stars. By the gate with the stone lions
stood Genya, waiting to accompany me.
" The village is asleep," I said, trying to see her
11 A
160 THE HOUSE WITH THE^ MEZZANINE
face in the darkness, and I could see her dark sad eyes
fixed on me. " The innkeeper and the horse-stealers
are sleeping quietly, and decent people like ourselves
quarrel and irritate each other."
It was a melancholy August night melancholy
because it already smelled of the autumn : the moon
rose behind a purple cloud and hardly lighted the road
and the dark fields of winter corn on either side. Stars
fell frequently, Genya walked beside me on the road
and tried not to look at the sky, to avoid seeing the
falling stars, which somehow frightened her.
" I believe you are right," she said, trembling in
the evening chill. " If people could give themselves to
spiritual activity, they would soon burst everything. "
" Certainly. We are superior beings, and if we
really knew all the power of the human genius and
lived only for higher purposes then we should become
like gods. But this will never be. Mankind will
degenerate and of their genius not a trace will be left."
When the gate was out of sight Genya stopped and
hurriedly shook my hand.
:< Good night," she said, trembling; her shoulders
were covered only with a thin blouse and she was
shivering with cold. " Come to-morrow."
I was filled with a sudden dread of being left alone
with my inevitable dissatisfaction with myself and
people, and I, too, tried not to see the falling stars.
" Stay with me a little longer," I said. " Please."
I loved Genya, and she must have loved me, because
THE HOUSED WITH THE MEZZANINE 161
she used to meet me and walk with me, and because she
looked at me with tender admiration. How thrillingly
beautiful her pale face was, her thin nose, her arms,
her slenderness, her inactivity, her constant reading.
And her mind? I suspected her of having an unusual
intellect: I was fascinated by the breadth of her
views, perhaps because she thought differently from the
strong, liandsome Lyda, who did not love me. Genya
liked me as a painter, I had conquered her heart by
my talent, and I longed passionately to paint only for
her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen, who
would one clay possess with me the trees, the fields, the
river, the dawn, all Nature, wonderful and fascinating,
with whom, as with them, I have felt hopeless and use-
" Stay with me a moment longer," I called. " I
implore you."
I took off my overcoat and covered her childish
shoulders. Fearing that she would look queer and
ugly in a man's coat, she began to laugh and threw it
off, and as she did so, I embraced her and began to
cover her face, her shoulders, her arms with kisses.
" Till to-morrow," she whispered timidly as though
she was afraid to break the stillness of the night.
She embraced me : ' ' We have no secrets from one an
other. I must tell mamma and my sister. . . Is
it so terrible? Mamma will be pleased. Mamma
loves you, but Lyda! "
She ran to the gates.
162 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
" Good-bye, " she called out.
For a couple of minutes I stood and heard her
running. I had no desire to go home, there was
nothing there to go for. I stood for a while lost in
thought, and then quietly dragged myself back, to
have one more look at the house in which she lived,
the dear, simple, old house, which seemed to look at
me with the windows of the mezzanine for eyes, and
to understand everything. I walked past the terrace,
sat down on a bench by the lawn-tennis court, in the
darkness under an old elm-tree, and looked at the
house. In the windows of the mezzanine, where Miss-
yuss had her room, shone a bright light, and then a
faint green glow. The lamp had been covered with a
shade. Shadows began to move. . . I was filled
with tenderness and a calm satisfaction, to think tha/t
I could let myself be carried away and fall in love, and
at the same time I felt uneasy at the thought that only
a few yards away in one of the rooms of the house lay
Lyda who did not love me, and perhaps hated me. I
sat and waited to see if Genya would come out. I lis
tened attentively and it seemed to me they were sitting
in the mezzanine^
An hour passed. The green light went out, and the
shadows were no longer visible. The moon hung high
above the house and lit the sleeping garden and the
avenues : I could distinctly see the dahlias and roses in
the flower-bed in front of the house, and all seemed to
be of one colour. It was very cold. I left the gar-
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 163
den, picked up my overcoat in the road, and walked
slowly home.
Next day after dinner when I went to the Volchani-
novs', the glass door was wide open. I sat down on
the terrace expecting- Genya to come from behind the
flower-bed or from out of the rooms ; then I went into
the drawing-room and the dining-room. There was
not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room I went
down a long passage into the hall, and then back again.
There were several doors in the passage and behind
one of them I could hear Lyda's voice :
"To the crow somewhere. . .God. . ." she
spoke slowly and distinctly, and was probably dictat
ing " . . . God sent a piece of cheese. . . To
the crow. . . somewhere. . . Who is there? "
she called out suddenly as she heard my footsteps.
" It is I."
" Oh! excuse me. I can't come out just now. I
am teaching Masha."
" Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"
" No. She and my sister left today for my Aunt's
in Penza, and in the winter they are probably going
abroad." She added after a short silence: ""To the
crow somewhere God sent a pi-ece of cheese. Have
you got that? '*
I went out into the halJ, and, without a thought in
my head, stood and looked out at the pond and the
village, and still I heard :
164 THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
" A piece of cheese. . . To the crow somewhere
God sent a piece of cheese."
And I left the house by the way I had come the
first time, only reversing the order, from the yard into
the garden, past the house, then along the lime-walk.
Here a boy overtook me and handed me a note : "I
have told niy sister everything and she insists on my
parting from you," I reed. " I could not hurt her
by disobeying. God will give you happiness. If you
knew how bitterly mamma and I have cried."
Then through the fir avenue and the rotten fence.
. . Over the fields where the corn was ripening
and the quails screamed, cows and shackled horses now
were browsing. Here and there on the hills the winter
corn was already showing green. A sober, workaday
mood possessed me and I was ashamed of all I had
said at the Volchaninovs', and once more it became
tedious to go on living. I went home, packed my
things, and left that evening for Petersburg.
I never saw the Volcbaninovs again. Lately on
my way to the Crimea I met Bielokurov at a station.
As of old he was in a poddiovka, wearing an em
broidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he
replied : " Quite well, thanks be to God." He began
to talk. He had sold his estate and bought another,
smaller one in the name of Lyubov Ivanovna. He told
me a little about the Volchaninovs. Lyda, he said,
still Jived at Sholkovka and taught the children in the
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE 165
,1 school, little by little she succeeded in gathering round
| herself a circle of sympathetic people, who formed a
i. strong party, and at the last Zemstvo election they
drove out Balaguin, who up till then had had the whole
district in his hands. Of Genya Bielokurov said that
she did not live at home and he did not know where she
was.
I have already begun to forget about the house with
the mezzanine, and only now and then, when I am
working or reading, suddenly without rhyme or
reason I remember the green light in the window, and
the sound of my own footsteps as I walked through the
fields that night, when I was in love, rubbing my hands
to keep them warm. And even more rarely, when I am
sad and lonely, I begin already to recollect and it seems
to me that I, too, am being remembered and waited for,
and that we shall meet.
Missyuss, where are you ?
' TYPHUS
TN a smoking-compartment of the mail-train from
Petrograd to Moscow sat a young lieutenant,
Klimov by name. Opposite him sat an elderly man
with a clean-shaven, shipmaster's face, to all appear
ances a well-to-do Finn or Swede, who all through the
journey smoked a pipe and talked round and round
the same subject.
"Ha! you are an officer! My brother is also an
officer, but he is a sailor. He is a sailor and is stationed
at Kronstadt. Why are you going to Moscow? >3
" I am stationed there/'
" Ha . I Are you married ? "
" No. I live with my aunt and sister."
" My brother is also an officer, but he is married
f and has a wife and three children. Ha! "
The Finn looked surprised at something, smiled
broadly and fatuously as he exclaimed, " Ha," and
every now and then blew through the stem of his pipe.
Klimov, who was feeling rather unwell, end not at all
inclined to answer questions, hated him, with all his
heart. He thought how good it would be to snatch
his gurgling pipe out of his hands and throw it under
the seat and to order the Finn himself into another car.
166
TYPHUS 167
" They are awful people, these Finns and. . . .
Greeks," he thought. " Useless, good-for-nothing, dis
gusting people. They only cumber the earth. What
is the good of them? "
And the thought of Finns and Greeks filled him with
a kind of nausea. He tried to compare them with the
French and the Italians, but the idea of those races
somehow roused in him the notion of organ-grinders,
naked women, and the foreign oleographs which hung
over the chest of drawers in his aunt's house.
The young officer felt generally out of sorts. There
seemed to be no room for his arms and legs, though he
had the whole seat to himself ; his mouth was dry and
sticky, his head was heavy and his clouded thoughts
seemed to wander at random, not only in his head, but
also outside it among the seats and the people loom
ing in the darkness. Through the turmoil in his brain,
as through a dream, he heard the murmur of voices,
the rattle of the wheels, the slamming of doors. Bells,
whistles, conductors, the tramp of the people on the
platforms came oftener than usual. The time slipped
by quickly, imperceptibly, and it seemed that the train
istopped every minute at a station as now and then
there would come up the sound of metallic voices :
" Is the post ready? "
" Ready."
It seemed to him that the stove-heater came in too
often to look at the thermometer, and that trains
never stopped passing and his own train was always
168 TYPHUS
roaring over bridges. The noise, the whistle, the
Finn, the tobacco smoke all mixed with the ominous
shifting of misty shapes, weighed on Klimov like an
intolerable nightmare. In terrible anguish he lifted
up his aching head, looked at the lamp whose light
was encircled with shadows and misty spots ; he wanted
to ask for water, but his dry tongue would hardly
move, and he had hardly strength enough to answer
the Finn's questions. He tried to lie down more
comfortably and sleep, but he did not succeed :
the Finn fell asleep several times, woke up and lighted
his pipe, talked to him with his " Ha! " and went to
sleep again ; and the lieutenant could still not find
room for his legs on the seat, and all the while the
ominous figures shifted before his eyes.
At Spirov he got out to have a drink of water. He
saw some people sitting at a table eating hurriedly.
" How can they eat? " he thought, trying to avoid
the smell of roast meat in the air and seeing the chew
ing mouth, for both seemed to him utterly disgusting
and made him feel sick.
A handsome lady was talking to a military man in
a red cap, and she showed magnificent white teeth when
she smiled; her smile, her teeth, the lady herself pro
duced in Elimov the same impression of disgust as
the ham and the fried cutlets. He could itet^under-
stand how the military man in the red cap could bear
to sit near her and look at her healthy smiling face.
Aifter he had drunk some water, he went back to
TYPHUS 169
his place. The Finn sat and smoked. His pipe gurgled
and sucked like a galoche full of holes' in dirty weather.
"Ha! " he said with some surprise. ' What
station is this? "
if I don't know/' said Klimov, lying down and
shutting his mouth to keep out the acrid tobacco
smoke.
"When do we get to TTer."
" I don't know. I am sorry, I. . . I can't talk.
I am not well. I have a cold."
The Finn knocked out his pipe against the window-
frame and began to talk of his brother, the sailor.
Klimov paid no more attention to him and thought
in agony of his soft, comfortable bed, of the bottle of
cold water, of his sister Katy, who knew so well how
to tuck him up and cosset him. He even smiled when
there flashed across his mind his soldier-servant Pavel,
taking off his heavy, close-fitting boots and putting
water on the table. It seemed to him that he would
only have to lie on his bed and drink some water and
his nightmare would give way to a sound, healthy
sleep.
" Is the post ready? " came a dull voice from a dis
tance.
' Ready," answered a loud, bass voice almost by the
very window.
It was the second or third station from Spirov.
Time passed quickly, seemed to gallop along, and
there would be no end to the bells, whistles, and stops.
1TO TYPHUS
In despair Klimov pressed his face into the corner of
the cushioD, held his head in his hands, and again be
gan to think of his sister Katy and his orderly Pavel ;
but his sister arid his orderly got mixed up with the
looming figures and whirled about and disappeared.
His breath, thrown back from the cushion, burned
his face, and his legs ached and a draught from the
window poured into- his back, but, painful though it
was, he refused to change his position. . . A
heavy, drugging torpor crept over him and chained
his limbs.
When at length he raised his head, the car was quite
light. The passengers were putting on their over
coats and moving about. The train stopped. Porters
in white aprons and number-plates bustled about the
passengers and seized their boxes. Klimov put on
his greatcoat mechanically and left the train, and he
felt as though it were not himself walking, but some
one else, a stranger, and he felt that he was accom
panied by the heat of the train, his thirst, and the omi
nous, lowering figures which all night long had pre
vented his sleeping. Mechanically he got his luggage
and took a cab. The cabman charged him one rouble
and twenty-five copecks for driving him to Povarska
Street, but he did not haggle and submissively took
his seat in the sledge. He could still grasp the differ
ence in numbers, but money had no value to him
whatever.
At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister
TYPHUS 171
Katy, a girl of eighteen. Katy had a copy-book and
a pencil in her hands as she greeted him, and he re-
member ed that she was preparing for a teacher's
examination. He took no notice of her greetings
and questions, but gasped from the heat, and walked
aimlessly through the rooms until he reached his own,
and then he fell prone on the bed. The Finn, the red
cap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of roast
meat, the shifting spot in the lamp, filled his mind and
he lost consciousness and did not hear the frightened
voices near him.
When he came to himself he found himself in bed,
undressed, and noticed the water-bottle and Pavel,
but it did not make him any more comfortable nor
easy. His legs and arms, as before, felt cramped, his
tongue clove to his palate, and he could hear the
chuckle of the Finn's pipe. . . By the bed, grow
ing out of Pavel's broad back, a stout, black-bearded
doctor was bustling.
" All right, all right, my lad," he murmured.
" Excellent, excellent. . . .Jist so, jist so. . ."
The doctor called Klimov "my lad." Instead of
" just so," he said " jist saow," and instead of " yes,"
" yies."
" Yies, yies, yies," he said. " Jist saow, jist saow.
. . . Don't be downhearted !"
The doctor's quick, careless way of speaking, his
well-fed face, and the condescending tone in which
he said " my lad " exasperated Klimov.
172 TYPHUS
" Why do you call me 'my lad' ' he moaned.
" Why this familiarity, damn it all? "
And he was frightened by the sound of his own
voice. It was so dry, weak, and hollow that he could
hardly recognise it.
" Excellent, excellent," murmured the doctor, not
at all offended. " Yies, yies. You musn't be cross."
And at home the time galloped away as alarmingly
quickly as in the train. . . The light of day in his
bedroom was every now and then changed to the
dim light of evening. . . The doctor never seemed
to leave the bedside, and his " Yies, yies, yies," could
be heard at every moment. Through the room
stretched an endless row of faces ; Pavel, the Finn,
Captain Taroshevich, Sergeant Maximenko, the red
cap, the lady with the white teeth, the doctor. All
of them talked, waved their hands, smoked, ate. Once
in broad daylight Klimov saw his regimental priest,
Father Alexander, in his stole and with the host in
his hands, standing by the bedside and muttering
something with euch a serious expression as Klimov
had never seen him wear before. The lieutenant
remembered that Father Alexander used to call all the
Catholic officers Poles, and wishing to make the priest
laugh, he exclaimed :
" Father Taroshevich, the Poles have fled to the
woods."
But Father Alexander, usually a gay, light-hearted
man, did not laugh and looked even more serious, and
TYPHUS 173
made the sign of the cross over Klimov. At night,
one after the other, there would eoine slowly creeping
in and out two shadows. They were his aunt and
his sister. The shadow of his sister would kneel down
and pray; she would bow to the ikon, and her grey
shadow on the wall would bow, too, so that two shadows
prayed to God. And all the time there was a
smell of roast meat and of the Finn's pipe, but once
Klimov could detect a distinct smell of incense. He
nearly vomited and cried :
" Incense! Take it away."
There was no reply. He could only hear priests
chanting in an undertone and some one running on
the stairs.
When Klimov recovered from his delirium there was
not a soul in the bedroom. The morning sun flared
through the window and the drawn curtains,
and a trembling beam, thin and keen as a sword,
played on the water-bottle. He could hear the rattle
of wheels that meant there was no more snow in the
streets. The lieutenant Looked at the sunbeam, at
the familiar furniture and the door, and his first
inclination was to laugh. His chest and stomach
trembled with a sweet, happy, tickling laughter.
From head to foot his whole body was filled with a
feeling of infinite happiness, like that which the first
man must have felt when he stood erect and beheld
the world for the first time. Klimov had a passionate
longing for people, movement, talk. His body lay
12
174 TYPHUS
motionless; he could only move his hands, but he
hardly noticed it, for his whole attention was fixed on
little things. He was delighted with his breathing
and with his laughter; he was delighted with the
existence of the water-bottle, the ceiling, the sun
beam, the ribbon on the curtain. God's world, even
in such a narrow corner as his bedroom, seemed to him
beautiful, varied, great. When the doctor appeared
the lieutenant thought how nice his medicine was,
how nice and sympathetic the doctor was, how nice
and interesting people were, on the whole.
" Yies, yies, yies," said the doctor. c ' Excellent,
excellent. Now we are well again. Jist saow. Jist
saow."
The lieutenant listened and laughed gleefully. He
remembered the Finn, the lady with the white teeth,
the train, and he wanted to eat and smoke.
" Doctor/' he said, " tell them to bring me a slice of
rye bread and salt, and some sardines. . ."
The doctor refused. Pavel did not obey his order
and refused to go for bread. The lieutenant could
not bear it and began to cry like a thwarted child.
" Ba-by," the doctor laughed. " Mamma! Hush
aby! "
Klimov also. began to laugh, and when the doctor
had gone, he fell sound asleep. He woke up with the
same feeling of joy and happiness. His aunt was
sitting by his bed.
TYPHUS 1T5
" Oh, aunty! " He was very happy. " What has
been the matter with me? "
" Typhus."
" I say! And now I am well, quite well! Where
is Katy?"
" She is not at home. She has probably gone to
see some one after her examination."
The old woman bent over her stocking as she said
this; her lips began to tremble; she turned her face
away and suddenly began to sob. In her grief, she
forgot the doctor's orders and cried :
"Oh! Katy! Katy! Our angel is gone from us!
She is gone! >:
She dropped her stocking and stooped down for it,
and her cap fell off her head. Klimov stared at her
grey hair, could not understand, was alarmed for Katy,
and asked :
" But where is she, aunty? >J
The old woman, who had already forgotten Klimov
and remembered only her grief, said :
" She caught typhus from you and . . and died.
She was buried the day before yesterday."
This sudden appalling piece of news came home to
Klimov's mind, but dreadful and shocking though it
was it could not subdue the animal joy which thrilled
through the convalescent lieutenant. He cried,
laughed, and soon began to complain that he was
given nothing to eat.
Only a week later, when, supported by Pavel, he
12 A
176
TYPHUS
walked in a dressing-gown to the window, and saw
the grey spring sky and heard the horrible rattle of
some old rails being caried by on a lorry, then his
heart ached with sorrow and he began to weep and
pressed his forehead against the window-frame.
" How unhappy I am ! " he murmured. " My God,
how unhappy I am ! J;
And joy gave way to his habitual weariness and a
sense of his irreparable loss.
GOOSEBERRIES
"C^ROM early morning the sky had been overcast
with clouds ; the day was still, cool, and weari
some, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds
hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which
never comes. Ivan Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon,
*B!i^2HL^!5t-^_!L c ^ ?iH l MSrj. were tired of walking
and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead
they could just see the windmills of the village) of
Mirousky, to the right stretched away to disappear
behind the village a line of hills, and they knew that
it was the bank of the river ; meadows, green willows,
farmhouses; and from one of the hillss there could
be seen a field as endless, telegraph posts, and the
train, looking from a distance like a crawling cater
pillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the
calm weather when all Nature seemed gentle and
melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were filled
with love for the fields and thought how grand and
beautiful the country was.
:< Last time, when we stopped in Prokufyi's shed,"
said Bourkin, " you were going to fell me a story."
" Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."
Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his
pipe before beginning his story, but just then the
177
178 GOOSEBERRIES
rain began to fall. And in about five minutes it came
pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. Ivan
Ivanich stopped and hesitated ; the dogs, wet through,
stood with their tails between their legs and looked at
them mournfully.
<f We ought to take shelter," said Bourkin. " Let
us go to Aliokhin. It is close by."
"Very well."
They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then
bore to the right, until they came to the road. Soon
there appeared poplars, a garden, the red roofs of gran
aries; the river began to glimmer and they came to
a wide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It
was Sophino, where Aliokhin lived.
The mill was working, drowning the sound of the
rain, and the dam shook. Round the carts stood wet
horses, hanging their heads, and men were walking
about with their heads covered with sacks. It was
wet, muddy, and unpleasant, and the river looked
cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin felt wet
and uncomfortable through and through ; their feet
were tired with walking in the mud, and they walked
past the dam to the barn in silence as though they
were angry with each other.
In one of the barns a winnowing-machine was work
ing, sending out clouds of dust. On the threshold
stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and
stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter
than a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt
GOOSEBERRIES 179
and rope belt, and pants instead of trousers ; and his
boots were covered with mud and straw. His nose
and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan
Ivanich and was apparently very pleased.
" Please, gentlemen/' he said, "go to the house.
I'll be with you in a minute."
The house was large and two-storied. Aliokhin
lived down-stairs in two vaulted rooms with little
windows designed for the farm-hands ; the farmhouse
was plain, and the place smelled of rye bread and
vodka, and leather. He rarely used the reception-
rooms, only when guests arrived. Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a
pretty young woman that both of them stopped and
exchanged glances.
' You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you,
gentlemen," said Aliokhin, coming after them into
the hall. " I never expected you. Pelagueja/' he
said to the maid, " give my frienHF~aT"change of
clothes. And I will change, too. But I must have
a bath. I haven't had one since the spring. Wouldn't
you like to come to the bathing-shed ? And mean
while our things will be got ready."
Pretty Pelagueya, dainty and sweet, brought towels
and soap, and Aliokhin led his guests to the bathing-
shed.
( Yes," he said, "it is a long time since I had a bath.
[y bathing-shed is all right, as you see. My father
and I put it up, but somehow I have no time to bathe."
180 GOOSEBEBRIES
He sat down on the step and lathered his long hair
ancTheck, and the water round him became brown.
ft Yes. I see," said Ivan Ivanich heavily, looking
at his head.
"It is a long time since I bathed/' said Aliokhin
shyly, as he soaped himself again, and the water
round him became dark blue, like ink.
Ivan Ivanich came out of the shed, plunged into the
water with a splash, and swam about in the rain, flap
ping his arms, and sending waves back, and on the
waves tossed white lilies ; he swam out to the middle of
the pool and dived, and in a minute came up again in
another place and kept on swimming and diving,
trying to reach the bottom. " Ah! how delicious! *'
he shouted in his glee. "How delicious!" He swam
to the mill, spoke to the peasants, and came back,
and in the middle of the pool he lay on his back to let
the rain fall on his face. Bourkin and Aliokhin were
already dressed and ready to go, but he kept on swim
ming and diving.
" Delicious," he said. " Too delicious !"
' You've had enough," shouted Bourkin.
They went to the house. And only when the
lamp was lit in the large drawing-room up-stairs, and
Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silk dressing-
gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and
Aliokhin himself, washed and brushed, in a new frock
coat, paced up and down evidently delighting in the
warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes and slippers,
GOOSEBERRIES 181
and pretty Pelagueya; noiselessly tripping over the
carpet and smiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam
on a tray, only then did Ivan Ivanich begin his story,
and it was as lEbtfgH lie was being listened to not only
by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and
young ladies and the officer who looked down so staidly
and tranquilly from the golden frames.
"We are two brothers," he began, "I, Ivan Ivanich,
and Nicholai Ivanich, two years younger. I went in
for study and became a veterinary surgeon, while
Mcholai was at the Exchequer Court when he was
nineteen. Our father, Tchimsha-Himalaysky, was a
cantonist, but he died with an officer's rank and left
us his title of nobility and a small estate. After his
death the estate went to pay his debts. However,
we spent our childhood there in the country. We
were just like peasant's children, spent days and nights
in the fields and the woods, minded the house, barked
the lime-trees, fished, and so on. . . And you know
once a man has fished, or watched the thrushes hover
ing in flocks over the village in the bright, cool, autumn
days, he can never really be a townsman, and to the
day of his death he will be drawn to the country.
My brother pined away in the Exchequer. Years
passed and he sat in the same place, wrote out the same
documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back
to the country. And little by little his distress be
came a definite disorder, a fixed idea to buy a small
farm somewhere by the bank of a river or a lake.
182 GOOSEBERRIES
" He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never
sympathised with the desire to shut oneself up on
one's own farm. It is a common saying that a man
needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants
that, not a man. And I hear that our intellectuals
have a longing for the land and want to acquire farms.
But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To
leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and
go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life it is
egoism, laziness ; it is a kind of monasticism, but
monasticism without action. A man needs, not six
feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature,
where in full liberty he can display all the properties
and qualities of the free spirit.
" My brother Nicholai, sitting in his office, would
dream of eating his own schi, with its savoury smell
floating across the farmyard ; and of eating out in the
open air, and of sleeping in the sun, and of sitting for
hours together on a seat by the gate and gazing at
the fields and the forest. Books on agriculture and
the hints in almanacs were his joy, his favourite
spiritual food ; and he liked reading newspapers, but
only the advertisements of land to be sold, so many
acres of arable and grass land, with a farmhouse, river,
garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he would dream of
garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond,
don't you know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies
of his use-d to vary according to the advertisements
he found, but somehow there was always a gooseberry
GOOSEBERRIES 183
bush in every one. Not a house, not a romantic spot
could he imagine without its gooseberry-bush.
" ' Country life has its advantages/ he used to say.
'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings
swim on the pond, and everything smells good . . and
there are gooseberries.'
"He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always
the same things were shewn on it : (a) Farmhouse,
(b) cottage, (c) vegetable garden, (d) gooseberry-bush.
He used to live meagrely and never had enough to eat
and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a
beggar, and always saved and put his money into the
bank. He was terribly stingy. It used to hurt me
to see him, and I used to give him money to go away
for a holiday, but he would put that away, too. Once
a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
"Years passed; he was transferred to another prov
ince. He completed his fortieth year and was still
reading advertisements in the papers and saving up his
money. Then I heard he was married. Still with the
same idea of buying a farmhouse with a gooseberry-
bush, he married an elderly, ugly widow, not out of
any feeling for her, but because she had money. With
her he still lived stingily, kept her half-starved, and
put the money into the bank in his own name. She
had been the wife of a postmaster and was used to
good living, but with her second husband she did
not even have enough black bread; she pined away in
her new life, and in three years or so gave up her soul
184 GOOSEBERRIES
to God. And my brother never for a moment thought
himself to blame for her death. Money, like vodka,
can play queer tricks with a man. Once in our town
a merchant lay dying. Before his death he asked for
some honey, and he ate all his notes and scrip with the
honey so that nobody should get it. Once I was
examining a herd of cattle at a station and a horse-
jobber fell under the engine, and his foot was cut oft'.
"We carried him into the waiting-room, with the blood
pouring down a terrible business and all the while he
kept on asking anxiously for his foot ; he? had twenty-
five roubles in his boot and did not want to lose them."
" Keep to your story," said Bourkin.
" After the death of his wife," Ivan Ivanich contin
ued, after a long pause, " my brother began to look out
for an estate. Of course you may search for five
years, and even then buy a pig in a poke. Through
an agent my brother Nicholai raised a mortgage and
bought three hundred acres with a farmhouse, a
cottage, and a park, but there was no orchard, no
gooseberry-bush, no duck-pond ; there was a riverl
but the water in it was coffee-coloured because the
estate lay between a brick-yard and a gelatine factory.
But my brother Nicholai was not worried about that;
he ordered twenty gooseberry-bushes and settled down
to a country life.
"Last year I paid him a visit. I thought I'd go and
see how things were with him. In his letters my
brother called his estate Tchimbarshov Corner, or
GOOSEBERRIES 185
Himalayskoe. I arrived at Himalayskoe in the
afternoon. It was hot. There were ditches, fences,
hedges, rows of- young fir-trees, trees everywhere, and
there was no telling how to cross the yard or where
to put your horse. I went to the house and was met
by a red-haired dog, as fat as a pig. He tried to bark
but felt too lazy. Out of the kitchen came the cook,
barefooted, and also as fat as a pig, and said that the
master was having his afternoon rest. I went in to
my brother and found him sitting on his bed with his
knees covered with a blanket ; he looked old, stout,
flabby; his cheeks, nose, and lips were pendulous. I
half expected him to grunt like a pig.
' We embraced and shed a tear of joy and also of
sadness to think that we had once been young, but
were now both going grey and nearing death. He
dressed and took me to see his estate.
" 'Well? How are you getting on?' I asked.
' 'All right, thank God. I am doing very well.'
' He was no longer the poor, tired official, but a
real landowner and a person of consequence. He
had got used to the place and Jiked it, ate a great deal,
took Russian baths, was growing fat, had already gone
to law with the parish and the two factories, and was
much offended if the peasants did not call him ' Your
Lordship.' And, like a good landowner, he looked
after his soul and did good works pompously, never
simply. What good works? He cured the peasants
of all kinds of diseases with soda and castor-oil, and on
186 GOOSEBERRIES
his birthday he would have a thanksgiving service held
in the middle of the village, and would treat the
peasants to half a bucket of vodka, which he thought
the right thing to do. Ah ! Those horrible buckets
of vodka. One day a greasy landowner will drag the
peasants before the Zemstvo Court for trespass, and the
next, if it's a holiday, he will give them a bucket of
vodka, and they drink and shout Hooray ! and lick
his boots in their drunkenness. A change to good
eating and idleness always fills a Russian with the most
preposterous self-conceit. Nicholai Ivanich who, when
he was in the Exchequer, was terrified to have an
opinion of his own, now imagined that what he said
was law. 'Education is necessary for the masses, but
they are not fit for it.' ' Corporal punishment is
generally harmful, but in certain cases it is useful and
indispensable.'
; 'I know the people and I know how to treat them/
he would say. ' The people love me. I have only to
raise my finger and they will do as I wish.'
" And all this, mark you, was said with a kindly
smile of wisdom. Ho was constantly saying : ' We
noblemen,' or ' I, as a nobleman.' Apparently he
had forgotten that our grandfather was a peasant and
our father a common soldier. Even our family name,
Tchimacha-Himalaysky, which is really an absurd
one, seemed to him full-sounding, distinguished, and
very pleasing.
" But my point does not concern him so much as
GOOSEBERRIES 187
myself. I want to tell you what a change took place
in me in those few hours while I was in his house. In
the evening, while we were having tea, the cook laid
a plateful of gooseberries on the table. They had not
been bought, but were his own gooseberries, plucked
for the first time since the bushes were planted. TsTicho-
lai Ivanich laughed with joy and for a minute or two
he looked in silence at the gooseberries with tears in
his eyes. He could not speak for excitement, then put
one into his mouth, glanced at me in triumph, like a
child at last being given its favourite toy, and said :
" 'How good they are !'
"He went on eating greedily, and saying all the while :
' How good they are! Do try one!'
" It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the
illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten
thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose
dearest dream had come true, who had attained his
goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was
pleased with his destiny and with himself. In my
idea of human life there is always some alloy of sad
ness, but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled
with something like despair. And at night it grew on
me. A bed was made up for me in the room near my
brother's and I could hear him, unable to sleep, going
again and again to the plate of gooseberries. I thought :
' After all, what a lot of contented, happy people there
must be ! What an overwhelming power that means !
I look at this life and see the arrogance and the idle-
188 GOOSEBERRIES
ness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the
weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowd
ing, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood . . . Mean
while in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace ;
out of fifty thousand people who live in our town
there is not one to kick against it all. Think of the
people who go to the market for food : during the
day they eat ; at night they sleep, talk nonsense, marry,
grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery;
one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the
horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes.
Every thing is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there
is only the silent protest of statistics ; so many go
mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children
die of starvation . . . And such a state of things is
obviously what we want ; apparently a happy man
only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden
in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible.
It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should
have some one with a little hammer at his door to
knock and remind him that there are unhappy people,
and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner
or later show its claws, and some misfortune will be
fall him illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see
or hear him, just as he now neither see's nor hears
others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the
happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty
cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind and
everything is all right.'
GOOSEBERRIES 189
" That night I was able to understand how I, too,
had been content and happy/' Ivan Ivanich went on,
getting up. " I, too, at meals or out hunting, used to
lay down the law about living, and religion, and govern
ing the mases. JL^too, used to say that teaching is
light, that education is necessary, but that for simple
folk reading and writing is enough for the present.
Freedom is a boon, I used to say, as essential as the
air we breathe, but we must wait. Yes I used to
say so, but now I ask : ( Why do we wait ?' ' Ivan
Ivanich glanced angrily at Bourkin. ' Why do we
wait, I ask you? What considerations keep us fast?
I am told that we cannot have everything at once,
and that every idea is realised in time. But who says
so? Where is the proof that it is so? You refer me
to the natural order of things, to the law of cause and
effect, but is there order or natural law in that I,
a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch
until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could jump
it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why
should we wait? Wait, when we have no strength
to live, and yet must live and are full of the desire to
live !
' I left my brother early the next morning, and
from that time on I found it impossible to live in town.
The peace and the quiet of it oppress me. I dare not
look in at the windows, for nothing is more dreadful to
see than the sight of a happy family, sitting round a
table, having tea. I am an old man now and am no
13
190 GOOSEBERRIES
good for the struggle. I commenced late. I can
only grieve within my soul, and fret and sulk. At
night my head buzzes with the rush of my thoughts
and I cannot sleep ... Ah! If I were young!"
Ivan Ivanich walked excitedly up and down the
room and repeated:
''If I were young."
He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him
first by one hand and then by the other.
/^" Pavel Konstantinich," he said in a voice of en-
/ treaty, " don't be satisfied, don't let yourself be lulled
{ to sleep ! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not
cease to do good ! Happiness does not exist, nor
should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in
life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but
in something reasonable and grand. Do good !"
Ivan Ivanich said, this with a piteous supplicating
smile, as though he were asking a personal favour.
Then they all three sat in different corners of the
drawing-room and were silent. Ivan Ivanich's story
had satisfied neither Bourkin nor Aliokhin. With the
generals and ladies looking down from their gilt
frames, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to
hear the story of a miserable official who ate goose
berries . . . Somehow they had a longing to hear
and to speak of charming people, and of women.
And the mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where
every thing the lamp with its coloured shade, the
chairs, and the carpet under their feet told how the
'
GOOSEBERRIES 191
very people who now looked down at them from their
frames once walked, and sat and had tea there, .T1
the fact that pretty Pelagueya was near was much
better than any story.
Aliokhin wanted very much to go to bed ; he had to
get up for his work very early, about two in the morn
ing, and now his eyes were closing, but he was afraid
of his guests saying something interesting without his
hearing it, so he would not go. He did not trouble
to think whether what Ivan Ivanich had been saying-
was clever or right ; his guests were talking of neither
groats, nor hay, nor tar, but of something which had
no bearing on his life, and he liked it and wanted them
to go on. . . .
"However, it's time to go to bed," said Bourkin,
getting up. " I will wish you good night."
Aliokhin said good night and went down-stairs, and
left his guests. Each had a large room with an old
wooden bed and carved ornaments ; in the corner was
an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by
pretty Pelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen.
Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down.
" God forgive me, a wicked sinner," he murmured,
as he drew the clothes over his head.
A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which
lay on the table, and Bourkin could not sleep for a
long time and was worried because he could not make
out where the unpleasant smell came from.
The rain beat against the windows all night long.
13 A
IN EXILE
/^\ LD Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a
young Tartar, whose name nobody knew, were
sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The
other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who
was an old man of about sixty, skinny and toothless,
but broad-shouldered and healthy, was drunk. He
would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle
in his pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking
him for vodka. The Tartar was ill and miserable,
and, pulling his rags about him, he went on talking
about the good things in the province of Simbirsk,
and what a beautiful and clever wife he had left at
home. He was not more than twenty-five, and now,
by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale, sorrowful,
sickly face, he looked a mere boy.
"Of course, it is not a paradise here," said Brains,
" you see, water, the bare bushes by the river, clay
everywhere nothing else . . It is long past Easter
and there is still ice on the water and this morning
there was snow ..."
"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frighten<
look.
A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, mutter
ing, dashing against the holes in the clayey banks as
192
IN EXILE 198
it tore along to the distant sea. By the bank they
were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the
ferrymen call a karbass. Far away and away, flashing
out, flaring up, were fires crawling like snakes last
year's grass being burned. And behind the water
again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be
heard knocking against the barge ... It was very
damp and cold ....
The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many
stars as at home, and the darkness was the same, but
something was missing. At home in the Simbirsk
province the stars and the sky were altogether different.
"Bad! Bad!" he repeated.
' You will get used to it," said Brains with a laugh.
" You are young yet and foolish; the milk is hardly
dry on your lips, and in your folly you imagine that
there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come
a time when you will say : God give every one such a
life! Just look at me. In a week's time the floods
will be gone, and we will fix the ferry here, and all of
you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here,
going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last
two-and-twenty years, but, thank God, I want nothing.
God give everybody such a life."
The Tartar threw some branches on to the fire,
crawled near to it and said :
" My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and
my wife have promised to come here."
"What do you want your mother and your wife for?"
194 IN EXILE
asked Brains. " Just foolishness, my friend. It's the
devil tempting you, plague take him. Don't listen to
the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks
to you about women you should answer him sharply :
' I don't want them ! ' When he talks of freedom,
you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I
want nothing ! No father, no mother, no wife, no
freedom, no home, no love! I want nothing.' Plague
take 'em all."
Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on :
" My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I
don't come from the servile masses. I am the son of
a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, I used
to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself
to such a point that I can sleep naked on the ground
and eat grass. God give such a life to everybody. I
want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there
is no man richer or freer than I. When they sent
me here from Russia I set my teeth at once and said :
' I want nothing ! ' The devil whispers to me about my
wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to
him : ' I want nothing ! ' I stuck to it, and, you see, I
live happily and have nothing to grumble at. If r
man gives the devil the least opportunity and listens
to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of
salvation : he will be over ears in the mire and will
never get out. Not only peasants the like of you are
lost, but the nobly born and the educated also. About
fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was banished here
IN EXILE 195
from Russia. He had had some trouble with his
brothers and had made a forgery in a will. People
said he was a prince or a baron, but perhaps he was
only a high official who knows? "Well, he came here
and at once bought a house and land in Moukhzyink.
' I want to live by my own work/ said he, ' in the
sweat of my brow, because I am no longer" a nobleman
but an exile.' ' Why/ said I. ' God help you, for that
is good.' He was a young man then, ardent and eager;
he used to mow and go fishing, and he would ride sixty
miles on horseback. Only one thing was wrong;
from the very beginning he was always driving to the
post-office at Guyrin. He used to sit in my boat and
sigh : f Ah ! Simeon, it is a long time since they sent
me any money from home.' ( You are better with
out money, Yassili Serguevich/ said I. ' What's the
good of it? You just throw away the past, as though
it had never happened, as though it were only a dream,
and start life afresh. Don't listen to the devil/ I said,
'he won't do you any good, and he will only tighten
the noose. You want money now, but in a little while
you will want something else, and then more and more.
If/ said I, ' you want to be happy you must want
nothing. Exactly. . . .If/ I said, ' fate has been
hard on you and me, it is no good asking her for
charity and falling at her feet. We must ignore her
and laugh at her.' That's what I said to him. . .
Two years later I ferried him over and he rubbed his
hands and laughed. ' I'm going/ said he, ' to Guyrin
196 IN EXILE
to meet my wife. She had taken pity on me, she says,
and she is coming here. She is very kind and good.'
And he gave a gasp of joy. Then one day he came with
his wife, a beautiful young lady with a little girl
in her arms and a lot of luggage. And Vassili An-
dreich kept turning and looking at her and could not
look at her or praise her enough. ' Yes, Simeon, my
friend, even in Siberia people live/ Well, thought
I, all right, you won't be content. And from that
time on, mark you, he used to go to Guyrin every
week to find out if money had been sent from Russia.
A terrible lot of money was wasted. ' She stays here/
said he, ' for my sake, and her youth and beauty wither
away here in Siberia. She shares my bitter lot with
me/ said he, ' and I must give her all the pleasure I
can afford. . . / To make his wife happier he took up
with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they
couldn't have company without giving food and drink,
and then must have a piano and a fluffy little dog on
the sofa bad cess to it. . . Luxury, in a word, all
kinds of tricks My lady did not stay with him long.
How could she? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no
fruit; uneducated people and drunkards, with no
manners, and she was a pretty pampered young lady
from the metropolis. . . Of course she got bored.
And her husband was no longer a gentleman, but an
exile quite a different matter. Three years later, I
remember, on the eve of the Assumption, I heard
shouts from the other bank. I went over in the ferry
IN EXILE 197
and saw my lady, all wrapped up, with a young gentle
man, a government official, in a troika. . . ,1 ferried
them across, they got into the carriage and disappeared,
and I saw no more of them. Toward the morning
Vassili Andreich came racing up in a coach and pair.
' Has my wife been across, Simeon, with a gentleman
in spectacles?' 'She has,' said I, ' but you might as
well look for the wind in the fields.' He raced after
them and kept it up for five days and nights. When he
came back he jumped on to the ferry and began to
knock his head against the side and to cry aloud.
' You see,' said I, ' there you are.' And I laughed and
reminded him : ' Even in Siberia people live.' But he
went on beating his head harder than ever. . . Then
he got the desire for freedom. His wife had gone to
Russia and he longed to go there to see her and take her
away from her lover. And he began to go to the
post-office every day, and then to the authorities of the
town. He was always sending applications or per
sonally handing them to the authorities, asking to have
his term remitted and to be allowed to go, and he told
me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on
telegrams. He sold his land and mortgaged his, house
to the money-lenders. His hair went grey, he grew
round-shouldered, and his face got yellow and con
sumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he
spoke and tears used to come into his eyes. He spent
eight years on his applications, and at last he be-
came happy again and lively : he had thought of a
198 IN EXILE
new dodge. His daughter, you see, had grown up.
He doted on her and could never take his eyes off her.
And, indeed, she was very pretty, dark and clever.
Every Sunday he used to go to church with her at Guy-
rin. They would stand side by side on the ferry, and
she would smile and he would devour her with his eyes.
' Yes, Simeon/ he would say. ' Even in Siberia people
live. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look what
a fine daughter I have. You wouldn't find one like her
in a thousand miles' journey.' ' She's a nice girl/
said I. ' Oh. yes.' . . . And I thought to myself :
' You wait. . . She is young. Young blood will
have its way; she wants to live and what life is there
here? " And she began to pine away. . . Wasting,
wasting away, she withered away, fell ill and had to
keep to her bed. . . Consumption. That's Siberian
happiness, plague take it; that's Siberian life. . . .
He rushed all over the place after the doctors and
dragged them home with him. If he heard of a doctor
or a quack three hundred miles off he would rush off
after him. He spent a terrific amount o<f money on
doctors and I think it would have been much better
spent on drink. All the same she had to die. No help
for it. Then it was all up with him. He thought of
hanging himself, and of trying to escape to Russia.
That would be the end of him. He would try to escape :
he would be caught, tried, penal servitude, flogging."
" Good ! Good ! " muttered the Tartar with a shiver.
" What is good? " asked Brains.
IN EXILE 199
" Wife and daughter. What does penal servitude
and suffering matter ? He saw his wife and his daugh
ter. You say one should want nothing. But nothing
is evil I His wife spent three years with him. God
gave him that. Nothing is evil, and three years is
good. Why don't you understand that? J;
Trembling and stammering as he groped for Russian
words, of which he knew only a few, the Tartar began
to say : "God forbid he should fall ill among strangers,
and die and be buried in the cold sodden earth, and
then, if his wife could come to him if only for one day
or even for one hour, he would gladly endure any tor
ture for such happiness, and would even thank God.
Better one day of happiness than nothing."
Then once more he said what a beautiful clever wife
he had left at home, and with his head in his hands
he began to cry and assured Simeon that he was inno
cent, and had been falsely accused. His two brothers
and his uncle had stolen some horses from a peasant
and beat the old man nearly to death, and the com
munity never looked into the matter at all, and judg
ment was passed by which all three brothers were
exiled to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, remained
at home.
" You will get used to it," said Simeon.
The Tartar relapsed into silence and stared into the
fire with his eyes red from weeping; he looked per
plexed end frightened, as if he could not understand
why he was in the cold and the darkness, among
200 IN EXILE
strangers, and not in the province of Simbirsk. Brains
lay down near the fire, smiled at something, and be
gan to say in an undertone :
" But what a joy she must be to your father/' he
muttered after a pause. " He loves her and she is a
comfort to him, eh? But, my man, don't tell me. He
is a strict, harsh old man. And girls don't want strict
ness ; they want kisses and laughter, scents and po
made. Yes. . . Ah! What a life!" Simeon
swore heavily. " No more vodka ! That means bed
time. What! I'm going, my man."
Left alone, the Tartar threw more branches on the
fire, lay down, and, looking into the blaze, began to
think of his native village end of his wife; if she could
come if only for a month, or even a day, and then, if
she liked, go back again ! Better a month or even a
day, than nothing. But even if his wife kept her
promise and came, how could he provide for her?
Where was she to live?
" If there is nothing to eat; how are we to live? "
asked the Tartar aloud.
For working at the oars day and night he was paid
two copecks a day ; the passengers gave tips, but the
ferrymen shared them out and gave nothing to the
Tartar, and only laughed at him. And he was poor,
cold, hungry, and fearful. . . . With his whole body
aching and shivering he thought it would be good to
go into the hut and sleep ; but there was nothing to
cover himself with, and it was colder there than on the
IN EXILE 201
bank. He had nothing to cover himself with there,
but he could make up a fire. . . .
In a week's time, when the floods had subsided and
the ferry would be fixed up, all the ferrymen except
Simeon would not be wanted any longer and the
Tartar would have to go from village to village, beg
ging and looking for work. His wife was only seven
teen; beautiful, soft, and shy. . . . Could she go
unveiled begging through the villages No. The
idea of it was horrible.
It was already dawn. The barges, the bushy willows
above the water, the swirling flood began to take shape,
and up above in a clayey cliff a hut thatched with
straw, and above that the straggling houses of the
village, where the cocks had begun to crow.
The ginger-coloured clay cliff, the barge, the river,
the strange wild people, hunger, cold, illness perhaps
all these things did not really exist. Perhaps, thought
the Tartar, it was only a dream. He felt that he must
be asleep, and he heard his own snoring. . . Cer
tainly he was at home in the Simbirsk province; he
had but to call his wife and she would answer; and
his mother was in the next room. . . But what
awful dreams there are! Why? The Tartar smiled
and opened his eyes. What river was that? The
Volga?
It was snowing.
' Hi ! Ferry! " some one shouted on the other
bank. "Karba-a-assl "
202 IN EXILE
The Tartar awoke and went to fetch his mates
to row over to the other side. Hurrying- into their
skeepskins, swearing sleepily in hoarse voices, and
shivering from the cold, the four men appeared on
the hank. After their sleep, the river from which
there came a piercing blast, seemed to them horrible
and disgusting. They stepped slowly into the barge.
. . The Tartar and the three ferrymen took the
long, broad-bladed oars, which in the dim light looked
like a crab's claw, and Simeon flung himself with his
belly against the tiller. And on the other side the
voice kept on shouting, and a revolver was fired twice,
for the man probably thought the ferrymen were asleep
or gone to the village inn.
"All right. Plenty of time!" said Brains in the
tone of one who was convinced that there is no need for
hurry in this world and indeed there is no reason
for it.
The heavy, clumsy barge left the bank and heaved
through the willows, and by the willows slowly reced
ing it was possible to tell that the barge was moving.
The ferrymen plied the oars with a slow measured
stroke; Brains hung over the tiller with his stomach
pressed against it and swung from side to side. In
the dim light they looked like men sitting on some
antediluvian animal with long limbs, swimming out
to a cold dismal nightmare country.
Thy got clear of the willows and swung out into
mid-stream. The thud of the oars and the splash
IN EXILE 203
could be heard on the other bank and shouts came:
"Quicker! Quicker!" After another ten minutes
the barge bumped heavily against the landing-stage.
" And it is still snowing, snowing all the time,"
Simeon murmured, wiping the snow off his face.
" God knows where it comes from! "
On the other side a tall, lean old man was waiting
in a short fox-fur coat and a white astrachan hat. He
was standing some distance from his horses and did
not move; he had a stern concentrated expression as
if he were trying to remember something and were
furious with his recalcitrant memory. When Simeon
went up to him and took off his hat with a smile he
said :
" I'm in a hurry to get to Anastasievka. My
daughter is worse again and they tell me there's a
new doctor at Anastasievka."
The coach was clamped onto the barge and they
rowed back. All the while as they rowed the man,
whom Simeon called Vassili Andreich, stood motion
less, pressing his thin lips tight and staring in front
of him. When the driver craved leave to smoke in
his presence, he answered nothing, as if he did not
hear. And Simeon hung over the rudder and looked
at him mockingly and said :
" Even in Siberia people live. L-i-v-e ! ' :
On Brain's face was a triumphant expression as if
he were proving something, as if pleased that things
had happened just as he thought they would. The
204 IN EXILE
unhappy, helpless look of the man in the fox-fur
ooat seemed to give him great pleasure.
" The roads are now muddy, Vassili Andreich," he
said, when the horses had been harnessed on the
bank. " You'd better wait a couple of weeks, until
it gets dryer. . . If there were any point in going
but you know yourself that people are always on the
move day and night and there's no point in it. Sure ! '
Vassili Andreich said nothing, gave him a tip, took
his seat in the coach and drove away.
" Look! He's gone galloping after the doctor! ' ;
said Simeon, shivering in the cold. " Yes. To look
for a real doctor, trying to overtake the wind in the
fields, and catch the devil by the tail, plague take
him ! What queer fish there are ! God forgive me, a
miserable sinner."
The Tartar went up to Brains, "and, looking at him
with mingled hatred and disgust, trembling, and mix
ing Tartar words up with his broken Russian, said :
" He good. . . good. And you. . . bad! You are
bad! The gentleman is a good soul, very good, and
you are a beast, you are bad ! The gentleman is alive
and you are dead. . . God made man that he should
fbe alive, that he should have happiness, sorrow, grief,
and you want nothing, so you are not alive, but a
stone! A stone wants nothing and so do you.
You are a stone and God does not love you and the
gentleman he does."
They all began to laugh : the Tartar furiously knit
IN EXILE 205
his brows, waved his hand, drew his rags round him.
and went to the fire. The ferrymen and Simeon went
slowly to the hut.
:< It's cold/' said one of the ferrymen hoarsely, as
he stretched himself on the straw with which the
damp, clay floor was covered.
1 Yes. It's not warm/' another agreed. . . .
" It's a hard life."
All of them lay down. The wind blew the door
open. The snow drifted into the hut. Nobody could
bring himself to get up and shut the door; it was cold,
but they put up with it.
" And I am happy," muttered Simeon as he fell
asleep. " God give such a life to everybody/'
" You certainly are the devil's own. Even the devil
don't need to take you."
Sounds like the barking of a dog came from outside.
" Who is that? Who is there? "
"It's the Tartar crying."
"Oh! he's a queer fish."
" He'll get used to it ! " said Simeon, and at once he
fell asleep. Soon the others slept too and the door
was left open.
THE LADY WITH THE
TOY DOG
T T was reported that a new face had been seen on the
* quay ; a lady with a little dog. Dimitri Dimitrich
Gomov, who had been a fortnight at Yalta and had
got used to it, had begun to show an interest in new
faces. As he sat in the pavilion at Verne's he saw
a young lady, blond and fairly tall, and wearing a
broad-brimmed hat, pass along the quay. After her
ran a white Pomeranian.
Later he saw her in the park and in the square several
times a day. She walked by herself, always in the
same broad-brimmed hat, and with this white dog.
Nobody knew who she was, and she was spoken of as
the lady with the toy dog.
" If," thought Gomov, " if she is here without a
husband or a friend, it would be as well to make her
acquaintance."
He was not yet forty, but he had a daughter of twelve
and two boys at school. He had married young, in
his second year at the University, and now his wife
seemed half as old again as himself. She was a tall
woman, with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and
she thought herself an intellectual woman. She read
206
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 207
a great deal, called her husband not Dimitri, but
Demitri, and in his private mind he thought her
short-witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. He
was afraid of her and disliked being at home.' He had
begun to betray her with other women Jong ago, be
trayed her frequently, and probably for that reason
nearly always spoke ill of women, and when they were
discussed in his presence he would maintain that they
were an inferior race.
It seemed to him that his experience was bitter
enough to give him the right to call them any name he
liked, but he could not live a couple of days without
the " inferior race." With men he was bored and ill at
ease, cold and unable to talk, but when he was with
women, he felt easy and knew what to talk about, and
how to behave, and even when he was silent with
them he felt quite comfortable. In his appearance as
in his character, indeed in his whole nature, there
was something attractive, indefinable, which drew
women to him and charmed them ; he knew it, and he,
too, was drawn by some mysterious power to them.
His frequent, and, indeed, bitter experiences had
taught him long ago that every affair of that kind, at
first a divine diversion, a delicious smooth adventure,
is in the end a source of worry for a decent man, espe
cially for men like those at Moscow who are slow
to move, irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at
last an acute and extraordinary complicated problem
and a nuisance. But whenever he met and was inter
im A
208 THE LADY WITH THE TOT DOG
ested in a new woman, then his experience would slip
away from his memory, and ho would long- to live,
and everything would seem so simple and amusing.
And it so happened that one evening he dined in
the gardens, and the lady in the broad -brimmed hat
came up at a leisurely pace and sat at the next table.
Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told
him that she belonged to society, that she was married,
that she was paying her first visit to Yalta, that she
was alone, and that she was bored. . . . There is n
great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immoral
ity of the place. He scorned such tales, knowing that
they were for the most part concocted by people who
would be only too ready to sin if they had the chance,
but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a
yard or two away from him, his thoughts were filled
with tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains ;
and he was suddenly possessed by the alluring idea of
a quick transitory liaison, a moment's affair with an
unknown woman whom he knew not even by name.
He beckoned to the little dog, and when it came
up to him, wagged his finger at it. The dog began to
growl. Gomov again wagged his finger.
The lady glanced at him and at once cast her eyes
down.
" He won't bite," she said and blushed.
" May I give him a bone? " and when she nodded
emphatically, he asked affably : " Have you been in
Yalta long? "
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 209
" About five days."
" And I am just dragging through my second week/'
They were silent for a while.
"Time goes quickly," she said, "and it is amaz
ingly boring here."
"It is the usual thing to say that it is boring here.
People live quite happily in dull holes like Bieliev or
Zhidra, but as soon as they come here they say : f How
boring it is ! The very dregs of dulness ! ' One would
think they came from Spain."
She smiled. Then both went on eating in silence
as though they did not know each other; but after
dinner they went off together and then began an
easy, playful conversation as though they were per
fectly happy, and it was all one to them where they
went or what they talked of. They walked and talked
of how the sea was strangely luminous; the water
lilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast
a golden streak. They said how stifling it was after
the hot day. Gomov told her how he came from Mos
cow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank
by profession; and how he had once wanted to sing
in opera, but gave it up ; and how he had two houses
in Moscow. . . And from her he learned that she
came from Petersburg, was born there, but married
at S. where she had been living for the last two years;
that she would stay another month at Yalta, and per
haps her husband would come for her, because, he too,
needed a rest. She could not tell him what her hus-
210 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
band was Provincial Administration or Zemstvo
Council and she seemed to think it funny. And Go-
mov found out that her name was Anna Sergueyevna.
In his room at night, he thought of her and how they
would meet next day. They must do so. As he was
going to sleep, it struck him that she could only lately
have left school, and had been at her lessons even as
his daughter was then; he remembered how bashful
and gauche she was when she laughed and talked with
a stranger it must be, he thought, the first time she
had been alone, and in such a place with men walking
after her and looking at her and talking to her, all
with the same secret purpose which she could not
but guess. He thought of her slender white neck and
her pretty, grey eyes.
' There is something touching about her," he
thought as he began to fall asleep.
II
A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors
it was stifling, and in the streets the dust whirled
along. All day long he was plagued with thirst and
he came into the pavilion every few minutes and
offered Anna Sergueyevna an iced drink or an ice.
It was impossibly hot.
In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked
to the jetty to see the steamer come in. There was
quite a crowd all gathered to meet somebody, for they
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 211
carried bouquets. And among them were clearly
marked the peculiarities of Yalta : the elderly ladies
were youngly dressed and there were many generals.
The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and
before it turned into the jetty it had to do a great deal
of manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevna looked through
her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as
though she were looking for friends, and when she
turned to Gomov, her eyes shone. She talked much
and her questions were abrupt, and she forgot what she
had said; and then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.
The well-dressed people went away, the wind
dropped, and Gomov and Anna Sergueyevna stood as
though they were waiting for somebody to come from
the steamer. Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She
smelled her flowers and did not look at Gomov.
" The weather has got pleasanter toward evening/'
he said. " Where shall we go now? Shall we take
a carriage? n
She did not answer.
He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her
and kissed her lips, and he was kindled with the per
fume and the moisture of the flowers; at once he
started and looked round; had not some one seen? il
" Let us go to your " he murmured.
And they walked quickly away.
Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which
she had bought at the Japanese shop. Gomov looked
at her and thought : " What strange chances there are
212 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
in life! * From the past there came the memory of
earlier good-natured women, gay in their love, grate
ful to him for their happiness, short though it might
be; and of others like his wife who loved without
sincerity, and talked overmuch and affectedly, hysteri
cally, as though they were protesting that it was
not love, nor passion, but something more important;
and of the few beautiful cold women, into whose
eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression,
a stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more
than it can give; they were no longer in their- first
youth, they were capricious, unstable, domineering,
imprudent, and when Gomov became cold toward them
then their beauty roused him to hatred, and the lace
on their lingerie reminded him of the scales of fish.
But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of
inexperienced youth, a feeling of constraint; an im
pression of perplexity and wonder, as though some
one had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergue-
yevna, " the lady with the toy dog " took what had
happened somehow seriously, with a particular gravity,
as though thinking that this was her downfall and
very strange and improper. Her features seemed to
sink and wither, and on either side of her face her long
hair hung mournfully down ; she sat crestfallen and
musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin in some
old picture.
" It is not right," she said. " You are the first to
lose respect for me."
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 213
There was a melon on the table. Gomov out a slice
and began to eat it slowly. At least half an hour
passed in silence.
Anna Sergueyevna was very touching ; she irradiated
the purity of a simple, devout, inexperienced woman;
the solitary candle on the table hardly lighted her
face, but it showed her very wretched.
" Why should I cease to respect you?" asked Gomov.
" You don't know what you are saying. "
" God forgive me! " she said, and her eyes filled
with tears. "It is horrible.*'
" You seem to want to justify yourself."
" How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low
woman and I despise myself. I have no thought of
justifying myself. It is not my husband that I have
deceived, but myself. And not only now but for a
long time past. My husband may be a good honest
man, but he is a lackey. I do not know what work he
does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul.
I was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by
curiosity. I longed for something. *' Surely/ I said
to myself, ' therd is another kind of life.' I longed to
live! To live, and to live. . . . Curiosity burned
me up. . . . You do not understand it, but I swear
by God, I could no longer control myself. Something
strange was going on in me. I could not hold myself
in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here.
. . . And here I have been walking about dizzily,
like a lunatic. . . . And now I have become a low,
filthy woman whom everybody may despise."
214 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
Gomov was already bored; her simple words irri
tated him with their unexpected and inappropriate
repentance; but for the tears in her eyes he might
have thought her to be joking or playing a part.
" I do not understand," he said quietly. ' What
do you want? "
She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to
him.
" Believe, believe me, I implore you/' she said.
" I love a pure, honest life, and sin is revolting to me.
I don't know myself what I am doing. Simple people
say: ' The devil entrapped me/ and I can say of my
self: ' The Evil One tempted me.' "
" Don't, don't/' he murmured.
He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed
her, spoke quietly and tenderly, and gradually quieted
her and she was happy again, and they both began to
laugh.
Later, when they went out, there was not a soul
on the quay; the town with its cypresses looked like
a city of the dead, but the sea still roared and broke
against the shore ; a boat swung on the waves ; and in
it sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern.
They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.
" Just now in the hall," said Gomov, " I discovered
your name written on the board von Didenitz. Is
your husband a German? "
lt No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German,
but he himself is an Orthodox Russian."
At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 215
church, looked down at the sea and were silent. Yalta
was hardly visible through the morning mist. The
tops of the hills were shrouded in motionless white
clouds. The leaves of the trees never stirred, the
cicadas trilled, and the monotonous dull sound of the
sea, coming up from below, spoke of the rest, the
eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea roared when there
was neither Yalta nor Oreanda, and so it roars and will
roar, dully, indifferently when we shall be no more.
And in this continual indifference to the life and
death of each of us, lives pent up, the pledge of our
eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of
life on earth and its unceasing perfection. Sitting
side by side with a young woman, who in the dawn
seemed so beautiful, Gomov, appeased and enchanted
by the sight of the fairy scene, EEe sea, the mountains,
the clouds, the wide sky, thought how at bottom, if it
were thoroughly explored, everything on earth was
beautiful, everything, except what we ourselves think
and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and
our own human dignity.
A man came up a coast-guard gave a look at
them, then went away. He, too, semed mysterious
and enchanted. A steamer came over from Feodos-
sia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights
already put out.
" There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergueyevna
after a silence.
" Yes. It is time to go home."
216 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
They returned to the town.
Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and
lunched together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea.
She complained that she slept badly, that her heart
beat alarmingly. She would ask the same question
over and over again, and was troubled now by jealousy,
now by fear that he did not sufficiently respect her.
And often in the square or the gardens, when there
was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss
her passionately. Their complete idleness, these kisses
in the full daylight, given timidly and fearfully lest
any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and
the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed,
well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would
tell Anna Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how
tempting. He was impatiently passionate, never left
her side, and she would often brood, and even asked
him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love
her at all, and only saw in her a loose woman. Al
most every evening, rather late, they would drive out
of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall ; and these
drives were always delightful, and the impressions
won during them were always beautiful and sublime.
They expected her husband to come. But he senl
a letter in which he said that his eyes were bad an<
implored his wife to come home. Anna Sergueyevnj
began to worry.
' It is a good thing I am going away," she woul(
say to Gomov. " it is fate,"
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 21T
She went in a carriage and he accompanied her.
They drove for a whole day. When she took her
seat in the car of an express-train and when the second
bell sounded, she said :
" Let me have another look at you. . . Just one
more look. Just as you are."
She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and
her lips trembled.
" I will think of you often," she said. " Good-bye.
Good-bye. Don't think ill of me. We part for ever.
We must, because we ought not to have met at all.
Now, good-bye."
The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared,
and in a minute or two the sound of it was lost, as
though everything were agreed to put an end to this
sweet, oblivious madness. Left alone on the plat
form, looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the
trilling of the grasshoppers and the humming of the
telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had just woke
up. And he thought that it had been one more ad
venture, one more affair, and it also was finished and
had left only a memory. He was moved, sad, and filled
with a faint remorse ; surely the young woman, whom
he would never see again, had not been happy with
him ; he had been kind to her, friendly, and sincere,
but still in his attitude toward her, in his tone and
caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of rail
lery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male
aggravated by the fact that he was twice as old as she.
218 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
And all the time she had called him kind, remarkable,
noble, so that he was never really himself to her, and
had involuntarily deceived her. . . .
Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the
air, and the evening was cool.
" It is time for me to go North," thought Gomov,
as he left the platform. " It is time."
Ill
At home in Moscow, it was already like winter;
the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the
children were getting ready to go to school, and had
their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp
for a short while. The frost had already begun.
When the first snow falls, the first day of driving in
sledges, it is good to see the white earth, the white
roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one
remembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and
birches, white with hoarfrost, have a kindly expres
sion ; they are nearer to the heart than cypresses and
palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is
no need to think of mountains and the sea.
Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to
Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he donned his
fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll through
Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard th
church-bells ringing, then his recent travels and the
places he had visited lost all their charms. Little by
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 219
little be sank back into Moscow life, read eagerly three
newspapers a day, and said that he did not read
Moscow papers as a matter of principle. He was
drawn into a round of restaurants, clubs, dinner
parties, parties, and he was flattered to have his house
frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play
cards with a professor at the University club. He
could eat a whole plateful of hot sielianka.
So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he
thought, would be lost in the mists of memory and
only rarely would she visit his dreams with her touch
ing smile, just as other women had done. But more
than a month passed, full winter came, and in his
memory everything was clear, as though he had parted
from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And his
memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger.
No matter how, through the voices of his children
saying their lessons, penetrating to the evening still
ness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music
in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chim
ney, suddenly the whole thing would come to life again
in his memory : the meeting on the jetty^ the early
morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer
from Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace
up and down his room and remember it all and smile,
and then his memories would drift into dreams, and
the past was confused in his imagination with the
future. He did not dream at night of Anna Serguey
evna, but she followed him everywhere, like a shadow,
220 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
watching him. As he shut his eyes, he could see her,
vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger
than in reality; and he seemed to himself better than
he had been at Yalta. In the evenings she would look
at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the
corner ; he could hear her breathing and the soft rustle
of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women's
faces to see if there were not one like her. . . .
He was fillecl with a great longing to share his
memories with some one. But at home it was im
possible to speak of his love, and away from home
there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the
other people in the house and the men at the bank.
And talk of what? Had he loved then? Was there
anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interest
ing in his relations with Anna Sergueyeviia? And he
would speak vaguely of love, of women, and nobody
guessed what was the matter, and only his wife would
raise her dark eyebrows and say :
" Demitri, the ?6le of coxcomb does not suit you at
all."
One night, as he was coming out of the club with hi;
partner, an official, he could not help saying :
" If only I could tell what a fascinating woman
met at Yalta."
The official seated himself in his sledge and drov<
off, but suddenly called :
" Diinitri Dimitrich ! "
" Yes."
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 221
" You were right. The sturgeon was tainted."
These banal words suddenly roused Gomov's in
dignation. They seemed to him degrading and im
pure. What barbarous customs and people !
What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days !
Furious card-playing, gourmandising. drinking, end
less conversations about the same things, futile activi
ties and conversations taking up the best part of
the day and all the best of man's forces, leaving only
a stunted, wingless life, just rubbish ; and to go away
and escape was impossible one might as well b in a
lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour.
Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning
with indignation, and then all next day he had a head
ache. And the following night he slept badly, sitting
up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to
corner of his room. His children bored him, the bank
bored him, and he had no desire to go out or speak
to any one.
In December when the holidays came he prepared
to go on a journey and told "his wife he was going to
Petersburg to present a petition for a young friend of
his and went to S. Why? He did not know. He
wanted to see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and
if possible to arrange an assignation.
He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the
best room in the hotel, where the whole floor was
covered with a grey canvas, and on the table there
stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a
15
222 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
horseman on a headless horse holding a net in his
raised hand. The porter gave him the necessary in
formation : von Didenitz ; Old Goncharna Street,
his own house not far from the hotel; Jives well,
has his own horses, every one knows him.
Gomov walked slowly to Old Goncharna Street
and found the house. In front of it was a long, grey
fence spiked with nails.
" No getting over a fence like that," thought Gomov,
glancing from the windows to the fence.
He thought : " To-day is a holiday and her husband
is probably at home. Besides it would be tactless to
call and upset her. If he sent a note then it might
fall into her husband's hands and spoil everything.
It would be better to wait for an opportunity." And
he kept on walking up and down the street, and round
the fence, waiting for his opportunity. He saw a
beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him.
He heard a piano and the sounds came faintly to his
ears. - It must be Anna Sergueyevna playing. The
door suddenly opened and out of it came an old woman,
and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian.
Gomov wanted to call the dog, but bis heart suddenly
began to thump and in his agitation he could nol
remember the dog's name.
He walked on, and more and more he hated the
fence and thought with a gust of irritation that Am
Sergueyevna had already forgotten him, and
perhaps already amusing herself with some one else,
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 223
as would be only natural in a young woman forced
from morning to night to behold the accursed fence.
He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the
sofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and
afterward slept for a long while.
" How idiotic and tiresome it all is/' he thought as
he awoke and saw the dark windows ; for it was even
ing. " I've had sleep enough, and what shall I do
to-night? 11
He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap,
grey blanket, exactly like those used in a hospital, and
tormented himself.
" So much for the lady with the toy dog. ... So
much for the great adventure. . . Here you sit."
However, in the morning, at the station, his eye
had been caught by a poster with large letters : " First
Performance of ' The Geisha.' ' He remembered that
and went to the theatre.
" It is quite possible she will go to the first per
formance," he thought.
The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial
theatres, there was a thick mist above the lights,
the gallery was noisily restless; in the first row before
the opening of the performance stood the local dandies
with their hands behind their backs, and there in the
governor's box, in front, sat the governor's daughter,
and the governor himself sat modestly behind the
curtain and only his hands were visible. The cur
tain quivered ; the orchestra tuned up for a long time,
15 A
224 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
and while the audience were coming in and taking
their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.
At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her
seat in the third row, and when Gomov glanced at
her his heart ached and he knew that for him there
was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and
more important than she; she was lost in this pro
vincial rabble, the little undistinguished woman,
with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she filled
his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only
happiness, and he longed for her; and through the
noise of the bad orchestra with its tenth-rate fiddles, he
thought how dear she was to him. He thought and
dreamed.
With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young
man with short side- whiskers, very tall, stooping;
with every movement he shook and bowed continu
ally. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter
mood at Yalta she had called a lackey. And, indeed,
in his long figure, his side-whiskers, the little bald
patch on the top of his head, there was something of
the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his
buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a
lackey's number.
In the first entr'acte the husband went out to smoke,
and she was left alone. Gomov, who was also in the
pit, came up to her and said in a trembling voice with
a forced smile:
"How do you do?"
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 225
She looked up at him and wont pale. Then she
glanced at him again in terror, not believing her eyes,
clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly together, appar
ently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both
were silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her
emotion, not daring to sit down beside her. The
fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it seemed
to them as though all the people in the boxes were
looking at them. She got up and walked quickly
to the exit; he followed, and both walked absently
along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs, with
the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes;
all kinds of uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates,
and all with badges; ladies shone and shimmered be
fore them, like fur coats on moving rows of clothes-
pegs, and there was a draught howling through the
place laden with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends.
And Gomov, whose heart was thudding wildly, thought :
" Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly
orchestra? "
At that very moment he remembered how when he
had seen Anna Sergueyevna off that evening at the
station he had said to himself that everything was
over between them, and they would never meet again.
And now how far off they were from the end !
On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written :
" This Way to the Amphitheatre/' she stopped :
"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing
heavily, still pale and apparently stupefied. " Oh !
226 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Why did
you come? Why? "
" Understand me, Anna," he whispered quickly.
c< I implore you to understand. . . ."
She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love
in her eyes, gazing fixedly to gather up in her memory
every one of his features.
" I suffer so! " she went on, not listening to him.
" All the time, I thought only of you. I lived with
thoughts of you And I wanted to forget, to
forget, but why, why did you come? ''
A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys
stood and smoked and looked down at them, but
Gomov did not care. He drew her to him and began
to kiss her cheeks, her hands.
" What are you doing? What are you doing? "
she said in terror, thrusting him away. . . . " We
were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go
away at once I implore you, by everything
you hold sacred, I implore you. . . . The people are
coming "
Some one passed them on the stairs.
' You must go> away," Anna Sergueyevna went on
in a, whisper. : * Do you hear, Dimitri Dimitrich?
I'll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy.
Now I am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy,
never! Don't make me suffer even more! I swear,
I'll come to Moscow. And now let us part. My dear,
dearest darling, let us part! ' :
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 227
She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down
stairs, all the while looking back at him, and in her
eyes plainly showed that she was most unhappy.
Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was
quiet he found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in
Moscow. Once every two or three months she would
leave S., telling her husband that she was going to con
sult a specialist in women's diseases. Her husband
half believed and half disbelieved her. At Moscow
she would stay .at the " Slaviansky Bazaar " and
send a message at once to Gomov. He would come
to her, and nobody in Moscow knew.
Once as he was going to her as usual one winter
morning he had not received her message the night
before he had his daughter with him, for he was tak
ing her to school which was on the way. Great wet
flakes of snow were falling.
" Three degrees above freezing," he said, " and
still the snow is falling. But the warmth is only on
the surface of the earth. In the upper strata of the
atmosphere there is quite a different temperature."
" Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter? "
He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought
of his assignation, and that not a living soul knew of
it, or ever would know. He had two lives; one
228 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
obvious, which every one could see and know, if they
were sufficiently interested, a life full of conventional
truth and conventional fraud, exactly like the lives
of his friends and acquaintances; and another, which
moved underground. And by a strange conspiracy of
circumstance, everything that was to him important,
interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to
be sincere and denied self-deception and was the very
core of his being, must dwell hidden away from others,
and everything that made him false, a mere shape in
which he hid himself in order to conceal the truth,
as for instance his work in the bank, arguments at the
club, his favourite gibe about women, going to par
ties with his wife all this was open. And, judging
others by himself, he did not believe the things he
saw, and assumed that everybody else also had his real
vital life passing under a veil of mystery as under
the cover of the night. Every man's intimate exist
ence is kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because
of that civilised people are so nervously anxious that a
personal secret should be respected.
When he had left his daughter at- school, Gomov
went to the " Slaviansky Bazaar." He took off his
fur coat down-stairs, went up and knocked quietly
at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite
grey dress, tired by the journey, had been expecting
him to come all night. She was pale, and looked at
him without a smile, and flung herself on his breast as
soon as he entered. Their kiss was long and lingerirg
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 229
as though they had not seen each other for a couple
of years.
" Well, how are you getting on down there? " he
asked. " What is your news? "
" Wait. I'll tell you presently. ... I cannot. "
She could not speak, for she was weeping. She
turned her face from him and dried her eyes.
" Well, let her cry a bit. . . I'll wait/' he thought,
and sat down.
Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he
drank it, she stood and gazed out of the window. . . .
She was weeping in distress, in the bitter knowledge
that their life had fallen out so sadly ; only seeing each
other in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves!
Was not their life crushed ?
" Don't cry. . . Don't cry," he said.
It was clear to him that their love was yet far from
its end, which there was no seeing. Anna Sergueyevna
was more and more passionately attached to him; she
adored him and it was inconceivable that he should tell
her that their love must some day end ; she would not
believe it.
He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly
and at that moment he saw himself in the mirror.
His hair was already going grey. And it seemed
strange to him that in the last few years he should
have got so old and ugly. Her shoulders were warm
and trembled to his touch. He was suddenly filled
with pity for her life, still so warm and beautiful,
230 THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG
but probably beginning to fade and wither, like his
own. Why should she love him so much? He always
seemed to women not what he really was, and they
loved in him, not himself, but the creature of their
imagination, the thing they hankered for in life, and
when they had discovered their mistake, still they
loved him. And not one of them was happy with him.
Time passed ; he met women and was friends with them,
went further and parted, but never once did he love;
there was everything but love.
And now at last when his hair was grey he had
fallen in love real love for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like
dear kindred, like husband and wife, like devoted
friends; it seemed to them that Fate had destined
them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he
should have a wife, she a husband ; they were like two
birds of passage, a male and a female, which had been
caught and forced to live in separate cages. They
had forgiven each other all the past of which they
were ashamed ; they forgave everything in the present,
and they felt that their love had changed both of
them.
Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction,
he used to comfort himself with all kinds of arguments,
just as they happened to cross his mind, but now he
was far removed from any such ideas ; he was filled
with a profound pity, and he desired to be tender and
sincere .
THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG 231
" Don't cry, my darling," he said. " You have
cried enough. . . Now let us talk and see if we can't
find some way out."
Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover
some means of avoiding the necessity for concealment
and deception, and the torment of living in different
towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time.
How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?
" How? How? " he asked, holding his head in his
hands. "How?"
And it seemed that but a little while and the solution
would be found and there would begin a lovely new
life ; and to both of them it was clear that the end
was still very far off, and that their hardest and most
difficult period was only just beginning.
GOUSSIEV
T T was already dark and would soon be night.
Goussiev, a private on long leave, raised him
self a little in his hammock and said in a whisper:
" Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanich? A soldier at
Souchan told me that their boat ran into an enor
mous fish and knocked a hole in her bottom."
The man of condition unknown whom he addressed,
and whom everybody in the hospital-ship called Pavel
Ivanich, was silent, as if he had not heard.
And once more there was silence . . . The wind
whistled through the rigging, the screw buzzed, the
waves came washing, the hammocks squeaked, but to
all these sounds their ears were long since accustomed
and it seemed as though everything were wrapped in
sleep and silence. It was very oppressive. The three
patients two soldiers and a sailor who had played
cards all day were now asleep and tossing to and fro.
The vessel began to shake. The hammock under
Goussiev slowly heaved up and down, as though it
were breathing one, two, three .... Something
crashed on the floor and began to tinkle: the jug
must have fallen down.
GOUSSIEV 288
"The wind has broken loose ..." said Goussiev,
listening attentively.
This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irri
tably :
" You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large
fish, and now you talk of the wind breaking loose. . .
Is the wind a dog to break loose? "
" That's what people say."
" Then people are as ignorant as you . . . But what
do they not say? You should keep a head on your
shoulders and think. Silly idiot!"
Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. When the
ship rolled he would get very cross, and the least trifle
would upset him, though Goussiev could never see
anything to be cross about. What was there unusual
in his story about the fish or in his saying that the wind
had broken loose? Suppose the fish were as big as a
mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon's,
and suppose that at the end of the wood there were
huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up
to them ... If they do not break loose, why then
do they rage over the sea as though they were possessed,
and rush about like dogs? If they are not chained,
what happens to them when it is calm ?
Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as
a mountain, and of thick rusty chains; then he got
tired of that and began to think of his native place
whither he was returning after five years' service in
the Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great
234 GOUSSIEV
pond covered with snow . . . On one side of the
pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall chimney
belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side
was the village. . . From the yard of the fifth house
from the corner came his brother Alexey in a sledge;
behind him sat his little son Yanka in large felt boots,
and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. Alexey
is tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden-
she is well wrapped up.
" The children will catch cold ..." thought Gous-
siev. " God grant them," he whispered, " a pure
right mind that they may honour their parents and be
better than their father and mother . . . ."
"The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a
deep voice. " Aye, aye."
The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and
instead of the pond, suddenly without rhyme or
reason he saw a large bull's head without eyes, and
the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round
and round in a black mist. But still he was glad he
had seen his dear ones. He gasped for joy, and his
limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed.
" God suffered me to see them ! " he muttered, and
opened his eyes and looked round in the darkness for
water.
He drank, then lay down again, and once more the
sledge skimmed along, and he saw the bull's head
without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. And so on
till dawn.
GOUSSIEV 235
II
At first through the darkness there appeared only a
blue circle, the port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly
to distinguish the man in the next hammock, Pavel
Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if
he lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey ;
his nose long and sharp, and his eyes were huge, be
cause he was so thin ; his temples were sunk, his beard
scanty, the hair on his head long. . . By his face it
was impossible to tell his class : gentleman, merchant,
or peasant; judging by his appearance and long hair
he looked almost like a recluse, a lay-brother, but when
he spoke he was not at all like a monk. He was
losing strength through his cough and his illness and
the suffocating heat, and he breathed heavily and was
always moving his dry lips. Noticing that Gouesiev
was looking at him, he turned toward him and said :
" I'm beginning to understand. . . Yes. . .
Now I understand."
" What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich? "
' Yes. . . It was strange to me at first, why you
sick men, instead of being kept quiet, should be on
this steamer, where the heat is stifling, and stinking,
and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you;
but now it is all clear to me. . . . Yes. The doctors
sent you to the steamer to get rid of you. They got
tired of all the trouble you gave them, brutes like you.
236 GOUSSIEV
. . . You don't pay them; you only give a lot of
trouble, and if you die you spoil their reports. There
fore you are just cattle, and there is no difficulty in
getting rid of you. . . They only need to lack con
science and humanity, and to deceive the owners of
the steamer. We needn't worry about the first,
they are experts by nature; but the second needs a
certain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hun
dred healthy soldiers and sailors five sick men are
never noticed; so you were carried up to the steamer,
mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a
hurry that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the
steamer got away they saw fever-stricken and consump
tive men lying helpless on the deck. ..."
Goussiev could not make out what Paul Ivanich
was talking about; thinking he was being taken to
task, he said by way of excusing himself :
" I lay on the deck because when we were taken off
the barge I caught a chill."
" Shocking! " said Pavel Ivanich. " They know
quite well that you can't last out the voyage, and yet
they send you here ! You may get as far as the Indian
Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of
And that's all the return you get for faithful un
blemished service! ' :
Pavel Ivanioh looked very angry, and smote his
forehead and gasped :
" They ought to be shown up in the papers. There
would be an awful row."
GOUSSIEV 237
The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up
and had begun to play cards, the sailor propped up in
his hammock, and the soldiers squatting uncomfort
ably on the floor. One soldier had his right arm in a
sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he
had to hold the cards in his left hand or in the crook
of his elbow. The boat was rolling violently so that
it was impossible to get up or to drink tea or to take
medicine.
" You were an orderly?" Pavel Ivanich asked
Goussiev.
" That's it. An orderly."
" My God, my God! " said Pavel Ivanich sorrow
fully. " To take a man from his native place, drag
him fifteen thousand miles, drive him into consump
tion . . . and what for? I ask you. To make him
an orderly to some Captain Farthing or Midshipman
Hole! Where's the sense of it? "
' It's not a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up
in the morning, clean the boots, boil the samovar,
tidy up the room, and then there is nothing to do.
The lieutenant draws plans all day -long, and you
can pray to God if you like or read books or go
out into the streets. It's a good enough life."
'Yes. Very good! The lieutenant draws plans,
and you stay in the kitchen all day long and suffer
from homesickness. . . . Plans. . . . Plans don't
matter. It's human life that matters! Life doesn't
come again. One should be sparing of it."
16
238 GOUSSIEV
" Certainly Pavel Ivanioh. A bad man meets no
quarter, either at home, or in the army, but if you live
straight, and do as you are told, then no one will harm
you. They are educated and they understand
For five years now I've never been in the cells and
I've only been thrashed once touch wood! '
"What was that for? "
" Fighting. I have a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanich.
Four Chinamen came into our yard : they were carry
ing wood, I think, but I don't remember. Well, I was
bored. I went for them and one of them got a bloody
nose. The lieutenant saw it through the window and
gave me a thick ear."
" You poor fool," muttered Pavel Ivanich. " You
don't understand anything."
He was completely exhausted with the tossing of the
boat and shut his eyes; his head fell back and then
flopped forward onto his chest. He tried several times
to lie down, but in vain, for he could not breathe.
" And why did you go for the four Chinamen? " he
asked after a while.
" For no reason. They came into the yard and I
went for them."
Silence fell. . . . The gamblers played for a couple
of hours, absorbed and cursing, but the tossing of the
ship tired even them; they threw the cards away and
laid down. Once more Goussiev thought of the big
pond, the pottery, the village. Once more the sledges
skimmed along, once more Vanka laughed, and that
GOUSSIEV 239
fool of an Akulka opened her fur coat, and stretched
out her feet ; look, she seemed to say, look, poor people,
my felt boots are new and not like Vanka's.
" She's getting- on for six and still she has no sense I"
said Goussiev. " Instead of showing your boot off,
why don't you bring some water to your soldier-uncle?
I'll give you a present."
Then came Andrey, with his firelock on his shoulder,
carrying a hare he had shot, and he was followed by
Tsaichik the cripple, who offered him a piece of soap
for the hare; and there was the black heifer in the
yard, and Domna sewing a shirt and crying over
something, and there was the eyeless bull's head and
the black smoke. . . .
Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; the
sound of something heavy being dragged along the
deck, or something had broken. . . . More running.
Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened
and saw the two soldiers and the sailor playing cards
again; Pavel Ivanich sitting up and moving his lips.
It was very close, he could hardly breathe, he wanted
a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting. . .
The pitching of the boat was now better.
Suddenly something queer happened to one of the
soldiers. . . . He called ace of diamonds, lost his
reckoning and dropped his cards. He started and
laughed stupidly and looked round.
' In a moment, you fellows," he said and lay down
on the floor.
16 A
240 GOUSSIEV
All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he
made no reply.
'' Stiepan, are you ill? " asked the other soldier
with the bandaged hand. " Perhaps we'd better call
the priest, eh? "
" Stiepan, drink some water/' said the sailor.
" Here, mate, have a drink."
" What's the good of breaking his teeth with the
jug," shouted Goussiev angrily. " Don't you see, you
fatheads? "
" What."
" What! " cried Goussiev. " He's snuffed it, dead.
That's what! Good God, what fools! . . ."
Ill
The rolling stopped and Pavel Ivanich cheered up.
He was no longer peevish. His face had an arrogant,
impetuous, and mocking expression. He looked as if
he were on the point of saying: " I'll tell you a story
that will make you die of laughter." Their port-hole
was open and a soft wind blew in on Pavel Ivanich.
Voices could be heard and the splash of oars in the
water. . . Beneath the window some one was howl
ing in a thin, horrible voice; probably a Chinaman
singing.
" Yes. We are in harbour," said Pavel Ivanich,
smiling mockingly. " Another month and we shall be
in Russia. It's true; my gallant warriors, I shall get
GOUSSIEV 241
to Odessa and thence I shall go straight to Kharkov.
At Kharkov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall
go to him and I shall say, ' now, my friend, give up
your rotten little love-stories and descriptions of
nature, and expose the vileness of the human biped
. . . There's a subject for you/ '
He thought for a moment and then he said :
" Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them? '/
"Who, Pavel Ivanich? "
" The lot out there. . . You see there's only first
and third class on the steamer, and only peasants are
allowed to go third. If you have a decent suit, and
look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance,
then you must go first. It may break you, but you
have to lay down your five hundred roubles. ' What's
the point of such an arrangement? ' I asked. f Is it
meant to raise the prestige of Russian intellectuals? '
' Not a bit,' said they. ' We don't let you go, simply
because it is impossible for a decent man to go third.
It is so vile and disgusting.' ' Yes,' said I. ' Thanks
for taking so much trouble about decent people. Any
how, bad or no, I haven't got five hundred roubles as
I have neither robbed the treasury nor exploited for
eigners, nor dealt in contraband, nor flogged any one
to death, and, therefore, I think I have a right to go
first-class and to take rank with the intelligentsia of
Russia.' But there's no convincing them by logic.
... I had to try fraud. I put on a peasant's coat
and long boots, and a drunken, stupid expression and
242 GOUSSIEV
went to the agent and said : ' Give me a ticket, your
Honour/
" * What's your position? ' says the agent.
" 'Clerical/ said I. 'My father was an honest priest.
He always told the truth to the great ones of thie earth,
and so he suffered much.' '
Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath
failed him, but he went on :
"Yes. I always tell the truth straight out. . . I
am afraid of nobody and nothing. There's a great
difference between myself and you in that respect.
You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you
don't understand what you do see. You are told that
the wind breaks its chain, that you are brutes and
worse, and you believe ; you are thrashed and you kiss
the hand that thrashes you; a swine in a raccoon
pelisse robs you, and throws you sixpence for tea, and
you say : * Please, your Honour, let me kiss your hand.'
You are pariahs, skunks. . . I am different. I live
consciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk
sees when it hovers over the earth, and I understand
everything. I am a living protest. I see injustice
I protest ; I see bigotry and hypocrisy I protest ; I see
swine triumphant I protest, and I am unconquerable.
No Spanish inquisition can make me hold my tongue.
Aye .... Cut my tongue out. I'll protest by
gesture. . . Shut me up in a dungeon I'll shout so
loud that I shall be heard for a mile round, or I'll
starve myself, so that there shall be a still heavier
GOUSSIEV 243
weight on their black consciences. Kill me and rny
ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me :
' You are a most insufferable man, Pavel Ivanich ! '
I am proud of such a reputation. I served three years
in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enough
for a hundred years. I inveighed against it all. My
friends write from Russia: 'Do not come/ But I'm
going, to spite them. . . Yes. . . That is life.
I understand. You can call that life."
Goussiev was not listening, but lay looking out of
the port-hole; on the transparent lovely turquoise
water swung a boat all shining in the shimmering
light; a fat Chinaman was sitting in it eating rice
with chop-sticks. The water murmured softly, and
over it lazily soared white sea-gulls.
" It would be fun to give that fat fellow one on the
back of his neck. . . ." thought Goussiev, watching
the fat Chinaman and yawning.
He dozed, and it seemed to him that all the world
was slumbering. Time slipped swiftly away. The
day passed imperceptibly; imperceptibly the twilight
fell. . . The steamer was still no longer but was
moving on.
IV
Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up,
but lay full length; his eyes were closed and his nose
seemed to be sharper than ever.
244 GOUSSIEV
"Pavel Ivanich!" called Goussiev, "Pavel Ivanich."
Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.
"Aren't you Veil ?"
{f It's nothing," answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing
heavily. " It's nothing. No. I'm much better. You
see I can lie down now. I'm much better."
" Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich."
' When I compare myself with you, I am sorry
for you. . . poor devils. My lungs are all right; my
cough comes from indigestion. . I can endure this
hell, not to mention the Red Sea ! Besides, I have a
critical attitude toward my illness, as well as to my
medicine. But you. . you are ignorant. . . It's
hard lines on you, very hard."
The ship was running smoothly ; it was calm but still
stifling and hot as a Turkish bath ; it was hard not only
to speak but even to listen without an effort. Goussiev
clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and thought
of his native place. My God, in such heat it was a
pleasure to think of snow and cold ! He saw himself
driving on a sledge, and suddenly the horses were
frightened and bolted. . Heedless of roads, dikes,
ditches they rushed like mad through the village,
across the pond, past the works, through the fields. .
" Hold them in ! " cried the women and the passers-by.
"Hold them in!" But why hold them in? Let the
cold wind slap your face and cut your hands; let the
lumps of snow thrown up by the horses' hoofs fall
on your hat, down your neck and chest ; let the runners
GOUSSIEV 245
of the sledge be buckled, and tlie traces and harness
be torn and be damned to it ! What fun when the
sledge topples over and you are flung hard into a snow
drift ; with your face slap into the snow, and you get up
all white with your moustaches covered with icicles,
hatless, gloveless, with your belt undone. . . People
laugh and dogs bark. . .
Pavel Ivanioh, with one eye half open looked at
Goussiev and asked quietly :
" Goussiev, did your commander steal ?"
"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us
don't hear of it."
A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought,
dreamed, drank water; it was difficult to speak, diffi
cult to hear, and he was afraid of being spoken to.
One hour passed, a second, a third ; evening came,
then night ; but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming
of the snow.
He could hear some one coming into the ward ;
voices, but five minutes passed and all was still.
" God rest his soul !" said the soldier with the band
aged hand. "He was a restless man."
" What? " asked Goussiev. " Who? "
:c He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs."
"Oh, well," muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God
rest his soul."
" What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the band
aged soldier after some time. "Will he go to heaven ?"
"Who?"
246 GOUSSIEV
" Pavel Ivanich."
" He will. He suffered much. Besides, lie was a
priest's son, and priests have many relations. They
will pray for his soul."
The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's ham
mock and said in an undertone :
' You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll
never see Russia."
" Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked
Goussiev.
" No one told me, but I can see it. You can always
tell when a man is going to die soon. You neither eat
nor drink, and you have gone very thin and awful to
look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm not
saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought
you might like to have the last sacrament. And if
you have any money, you had better give it to the
senior officer."
" I have not written home," said Goussiev. " I
shall die and they will never know."
' They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice.
* When you die they will put you down in the log, and
at Odessa they will give a note to the military governor,
and he will send it to your parish or wherever it is. . ."
This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel un
happy and a vague desire began to take possession of
him. He drank water it was not that; he stretched
out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air
it was not that; he tried to think of his native place
GOTJSSIEV 217
and the snow it was not that ... At last he felt
that he would choke if he stayed a moment longer in
the hospital.
" I feel poorly, mates," he said. " I want to go on
deck. For Christ's sake take me on deck."
Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier's neck
and the soldier held him with his free arm and sup
ported him up the gangway. On deck there were
rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; so many
of them that it was difficult to pick a way through
them.
" Stand up," said the bandaged soldier gently.
" Walk after me slowly and hold on to my shirt. . ."
It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the
masts or over the sea. In the bows a sentry stood
motionless as a statue, but he looked as if he were
asleep. It was as though the steamer had been left
to its own sweet will, to go where it liked.
" They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the
sea," said the bandaged soldier. " They will put him
in a sack and throw him overboard."
" Yes. That's the way they do."
" But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Then
the mother can go to the grave and weep over it."
11 Surely."
There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads
hanging there were oxen standing by the bulwark
one, two, three . . eight beasts. And there was a
little horse. Goussiev put out his hand to pat it,
248 GOUSSIEV
but it shook its head, showed its teeth and tried to
bite his sleeve.
" Damn you," said Goussiev angrily.
He and the soldier slowly made their way to the
bows and stood against the bulwark and looked silently
up and down. Above them was the wide sky, bright
with stars, peace and tranquility exactly as it was
at home in his village; but below darkness and tur
bulence. Mysterious towering waves. Each wave
seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest ; and they
pressed and jostled each other and yet others came,
fierce and ugly, and hurled themselves into the fray.
There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. Had the
steamer been smaller, and not made of tough iron,
the waves would have crushed it remorselessly and all
the men in it, without distinction of good and bad.
The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The
large-nosed monster pressed forward and cut its way
through millions of waves; it was afraid neither of
darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of loneli
ness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its
people, the monster would crush them without distinc
tion of good and bad.
' Where are we now?" asked Goussiev.
" I don't know. Must be the ocean."
" There's no land in sight."
"Why, they say we shan't see land for another
seven days."
The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleam-
GOUSSIEV 249
ing with phosphorescence. Goussiev was the first
to break the silence.
" Nothing is really horrible," he said. ' You feel
uneasy, as if you were in a dark forest. Suppose a
boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a hundred
miles out to sea to fish I would go. Or suppose I saw
a soul fall into the water I would go in after him. I
wouldn't go in for a German or a Chinaman, but I'd
try to save a Russian."
" Aren't you afraid to die?"
" Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at
home. I have a brother at home, you know, and he is
not steady; he drinks, beats his wife for nothing at all,
and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin.
But my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here.
. . . . Let me go to bed."
Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his
hammock. As before, a vague desire tormented him
and he could not make out what it was. There was
a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and
his mouth was so dry that he could hardly move his
tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and, exhausted by the
heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him,
toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed
he was in barracks, and the bread had just been taken
out of the oven, and he crawled into the oven and
lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for
250 GOTJSSIEV
two days and on the third day in the afternoon two
sailors came down and carried him out of the ward.
He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier
two iron bars were sewn up with him. In the sail
cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish, broad at the
top, narrow at the bottom . . . Just before sunset
he was taken on deck and laid on a board one end of
which lay on the bulwark, the other on a box, raised
up by a stool. Round him stood the invalided soldiers.
" Blessed is our God," began the priest; " always,
now and for ever and ever."
" Amen ! " said three sailors.
The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and
looked askance at the waves. It was strange that a
man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and dropped into
the sea. Could it happen to any one?
The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed.
A hymn was sung.
The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev
slipped down it ; shot headlong, turned over in the air,
then plop! The foam covered him, for a moment it
looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the
moment passed and he disappeared beneath the
waves.
He dropped down to the bottom. "Would he reach
it? The bottom is miles down, they say. He dropped
down almost sixty or seventy feet, then began to go
slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were
thinking ; then, borne along by the current ; he moved
more sidewavs than downward.
GOUSSIEV 251
But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark
body, the fish stopped dead and sudden, all together,
turned and went back. Less than a minute later, like
arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging through
the water around him. . . .
Later came another dark body, a shark. Gravely
and leisurely, as though it had not noticed Goussiev,
it swam under him, and he rolled over on its back;
it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm,
translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with
its two rows of teeth. The pilot-fish were wildly ex
cited; they stopped to see what was going to happen.
The shark played with the body, then slowly opened
its mouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the
sail-cloth was ripped open from head to foot; one of
the bars fell out, frightening the pilot-fish and striking
the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom.
And above the surface, the clouds were huddling
up about the setting sun ; one cloud was like a triumphal
arch, another like a lion, another like a pair of scissors.
. . . From behind the clouds came a broad green ray
reaching up to the very middle of the sky; a little
later a violet ray was flung alongside this, and then
others gold and pink. . . The sky was soft and lilac,
pale and tender. At first beneath the lovely, glorious
sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took
on colour sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost
impossible to name in human language.
KNAPP, DREWETT AND SON LTD., 30, BUDGE ROW, CANNON ST., E.G. 48141 C.
010950076
