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The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
by Anton Chekhov
May, 1999 [Etext #1732]
Project Gutenberg Etext of The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
by Anton Chekhov, #1 in our series by Chekhov
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THE TALES OF CHEKHOV, VOLUME 9
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND OTHER STORIES
CONTENTS
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
MISERY
CHAMPAGNE
AFTER THE THEATRE
A LADY'S STORY
IN EXILE
THE CATTLE-DEALERS
SORROW
ON OFFICIAL DUTY
THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER
A TRAGIC ACTOR
A TRANSGRESSION
SMALL FRY
THE REQUIEM
IN THE COACH-HOUSE
PANIC FEARS
THE BET
THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORY
THE BEAUTIES
THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.
The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but
the snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter,
dark, long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of
a sudden. But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent
woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor the black flocks of
birds flying over the huge puddles that were like lakes, nor the
marvelous fathomless sky, into which it seemed one would have
gone away so joyfully, presented anything new or interesting to
Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years
she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many
times during all those years she had been to the town for her
salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn
evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always --
invariably -- longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her
journey as quickly as could be.
She felt as though she had been living in that part of the
country for ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to
her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the
town to her school. Her past was here, her present was here, and
she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to
the town and back again, and again the school and again the road.
. . .
She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she
became a schoolmistress, and had almost forgotten it. She had
once had a father and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big
flat near the Red Gate, but of all that life there was left in
her memory only something vague and fluid like a dream. Her
father had died when she was ten years old, and her mother had
died soon after. . . . She had a brother, an officer; at first
they used to write to each other, then her brother had given up
answering her letters, he had got out of the way of writing. Of
her old belongings, all that was left was a photograph of her
mother, but it had grown dim from the dampness of the school, and
now nothing could be seen but the hair and the eyebrows.
When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was
driving, turned round and said:
"They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have taken
him away. The story is that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev,
the Mayor, in Moscow."
"Who told you that?"
"They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov's tavern."
And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna
thought of her school, of the examination that was coming soon,
and of the girl and four boys she was sending up for it. And just
as she was thinking about the examination, she was overtaken by
a neighboring landowner called Hanov in a carriage with four
horses, the very man who had been examiner in her school the year
before. When he came up to her he recognized her and bowed.
"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I
suppose."
This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face
that showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was
still handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big
homestead alone, and was not in the service; and people used to
say of him that he did nothing at home but walk up and down the
room whistling, or play chess with his old footman. People said,
too, that he drank heavily. And indeed at the examination the
year before the very papers he brought with him smelt of wine
and scent. He had been dressed all in new clothes on that
occasion, and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very attractive, and
all the while she sat beside him she had felt embarrassed. She
was accustomed to see frigid and sensible examiners at the
school, while this one did not remember a single prayer, or know
what to ask questions about, and was exceedingly courteous and
delicate, giving nothing but the highest marks.
"I am going to visit Bakvist," he went on, addressing Marya
Vassilyevna, "but I am told he is not at home."
They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a
walking pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the
mud. Semyon tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the
road, at one time through a snowdrift, at another through a pool,
often jumping out of the cart and helping the horse. Marya
Vassilyevna was still thinking about the school, wondering
whether the arithmetic questions at the examination would be
difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed with the Zemstvo board at
which she had found no one the day before. How unbusiness-like!
Here she had been asking them for the last two years to dismiss
the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the
schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was hard to find
the president at the office, and when one did find him he would
say with tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the
inspector visited the school at most once in three years, and
knew nothing whatever about his work, as he had been in the
Excise Duties Department, and had received the post of school
inspector through influence. The School Council met very rarely,
and there was no knowing where it met; the school guardian was
an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a tanning business,
unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's -- and
goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints or
inquiries . . . .
"He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.
The road grew worse and worse. . . . They drove into the wood.
Here there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in,
water splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck
them in the face.
"What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed.
The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why
this queer man lived here. What could his money, his interesting
appearance, his refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in
this God-forsaken, dreary place? He got no special advantages
out of life, and here, like Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on
an appalling road and enduring the same discomforts. Why live
here if one could live in Petersburg or abroad? And one would
have thought it would be nothing for a rich man like him to make
a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring this
misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman and
Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and
wanted no better life. He was kind, soft, naive, and he did
not understand this coarse life, just as at the examination he
did not know the prayers. He subscribed nothing to the schools
but globes, and genuinely regarded himself as a useful person and
a prominent worker in the cause of popular education. And what
use were his globes here?
"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.
The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting;
something heavy rolled on to Marya Vassilyevna's feet -- it was
her parcel of purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through
the clay; here in the winding ditches rivulets were gurgling.
The water seemed to have gnawed away the road; and how could one
get along here! The horses breathed hard. Hanov got out of his
carriage and walked at the side of the road in his long overcoat.
He was hot.
"What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash
up one's carriage."
"Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather," said Semyon
surlily. "You should stay at home."
"I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't like staying at home."
Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his
walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a
being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin.
And all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya
Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to
his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her
mind that if she had been his wife or sister she would have
devoted her wh ole life to saving him from ruin. His wife! Life
was so ordered that here he was living in his great house alone,
and she was living in a God-forsaken village alone, and yet for
some reason the mere thought that he and she might be close to
one another and equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality,
life was arranged and human relations were complicated so
utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it
one felt uncanny and one's heart sank.
"And it is beyond all understanding," she thought, "why God gives
beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unlucky,
useless people -- why they are so charming."
"Here we must turn off to the right," said Hanov, getting into
his carriage. "Good-by! I wish you all things good!"
And again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the
watchman, of the School Council; and when the wind brought the
sound of the retreating carriage these thoughts were mingled with
others. She longed to think of beautiful eyes, of love, of the
happiness which would never be. . . .
His wife? It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat
the stove, the watchman disappeared; the children came in as soon
as it was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise: it
was all so inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of
one little room and the kitchen close by. Her head ached every
day after her work, and after dinner she had heart-burn. She had
to collect money from the school-children for wood and for the
watchman, and to give it to the school guardian, and then to
entreat him -- that overfed, insolent peasant -- for God's sake
to send her wood. And at night she dreamed of examinations,
peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was making her grow old and
coarse, making her ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she
were made of lead. She was always afraid, and she would get up
from her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a
member of the Zemstvo or the school guardian. And she used
formal, deferential expressions when she spoke of any one of
them. And no one thought her attractive, and life was passing
drearily, without affection, without friendly sympathy, without
interesting acquaintances. How awful it would have been in her
position if she had fallen in love!
"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"
Again a sharp ascent uphill. . . .
She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling
any vocation for it; and she had never thought of a vocation, of
serving the cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her
that what was most important in her work was not the children,
nor enlightenment, but the examinations. And what time had she
for thinking of vocation, of serving the cause of enlightenment?
Teachers, badly paid doctors, and their assistants, with their
terribly hard work, have not even the comfort of thinking
that they are serving an idea or the people, as their
heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of
wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a
hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient
cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long;
the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about
vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave up
the work.
Semyon kept picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a
meadow, then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place
the peasants would not let them pass, in another it was the
priest's land and they could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov
had bought a plot from the landowner and had dug a ditch round
it. They kept having to turn back.
They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the
dung-strewn earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood
wagons that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid.
There were a great many people in the tavern, all drivers, and
there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. There was a
loud noise of conversation and the banging of the swing-door.
Through the wall, without ceasing for a moment, came the sound of
a concertina being played in the shop. Marya Vassilyevna
sat down and drank some tea, while at the next table peasants
were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea they had
just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.
"I say, Kuzma!" voices kept shouting in confusion. "What there!"
"The Lord bless us!" "Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!"
"Look out, old man!"
A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite drunk,
was suddenly surprised by something and began using bad language.
"What are you swearing at, you there?" Semyon, who was sitting
some way off, responded angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"
"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.
"Swinish crow!"
"We meant nothing . . ." said the little man in confusion. "I beg
your pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
Good-morning!"
"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.
"And we thank you most feelingly."
Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too,
began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again
about firewood, about the watchman. . . .
"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the
schoolmistress from Vyazovye. . . . We know her; she's a good
young lady."
"She's all right!"
The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others
going out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the
same things, while the concertina went on playing and playing.
The patches of sunshine had been on the floor, then they
passed to the counter, to the wall, and disappeared altogether;
so by the sun it was past midday. The peasants at the next table
were getting ready to go. The little man, somewhat unsteadily,
went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his hand to her;
following his example, the others shook hands, too, at parting,
and went out one after another, and the swing-door squeaked and
slammed nine times.
"Vassilyevna, get ready," Semyon called to her.
They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.
"A little while back they were building a school here in their
Nizhneye Gorodistche," said Semyon, turning round. "It was a
wicked thing that was done!"
"Why, what?"
"They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the
school guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five
hundred."
"The whole school only cost a thousand. It's wrong to slander
people, grandfather. That's all nonsense."
"I don't know, . . . I only tell you what folks say."
But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress.
The peasants did not believe her. They always thought she
received too large a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five
would have been enough), and that of the money that she
collected from the children for the firewood and the watchman the
greater part she kept for herself. The guardian thought the same
as the peasants, and he himself made a profit off the firewood
and received payments from the peasants for being a guardian --
without the knowledge of the authorities.
The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat,
open ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go
now. They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and
then Vyazovye was in sight.
"Where are you driving?" Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take
the road to the right to the bridge."
"Why, we can go this way as well. It's not deep enough to
matter."
"Mind you don't drown the horse."
"What?"
"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna,
seeing the four horses far away to the right. "It is he, I
think."
"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed
fellow he is. Lord have mercy upon us! He's driven over there,
and what for? It's fully two miles nearer this way."
They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream
easily crossed by wading. It usually dried up in August, but now,
after the spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth,
rapid, muddy, and cold; on the bank and right up to the water
there were fresh tracks of wheels, so it had been crossed here.
"Go on!" shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently
at the reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings. "Go
on!"
The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but
at once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was
aware of a keen chilliness in her feet.
"Go on!" she, too, shouted, getting up. "Go on!"
They got out on the bank.
"Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!" muttered Semyon,
setting straight the harness. "It's a perfect plague with this
Zemstvo. . . ."
Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her
dress and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping: the
sugar and flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya
Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands in despair and say:
Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are really! . . ."
The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming
out of the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing
waiting till it should pass, and shivering all over with cold.
Vyazovye was in sight now, and the school with the green roof,
and the church with its crosses flashing in the evening sun: and
the station windows flashed too, and a pink smoke rose from the
engine . . . and it seemed to her that everything was trembling
with cold.
Here was the train; the windows reflected the gleaming light like
the crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them.
On the little platform between two first-class carriages a lady
was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she
passed. Her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had had just
such luxuriant hair, just such a brow and bend of the head. And
with amazing distinctness, for the first time in those thirteen
years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture of her mother,
her father, her brother, their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with
little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard the
sound of the piano, her father's voice; she felt as she had been
then, young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room
among her own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly
came over her, she pressed her hands to her temples in an
ecstacy, and called softly, beseechingly:
"Mother!"
And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant
Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she
imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and
nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her
that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on
all sides, in the windows and on the trees. Her father and mother
had never died, she had never been a schoolmistress, it was a
long, tedious, strange dream, and now she had awakened. . . .
"Vassilyevna, get in!"
And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya
Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The
carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon
followed it. The signalman took off his cap.
"And here is Vyazovye. Here we are."
A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
A MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School
of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went
one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and
suggested that he should go with them to S. Street. For a long
time Vassilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put on
his greatcoat and went with them.
He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books,
and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they
live. He knew that there are immoral women who, under the
pressure of fatal circumstances -- environment, bad education,
poverty, and so on -- are forced to sell their honor for money.
They know nothing of pure love, have no children, have no civil
rights; their mothers and sisters weep over them as though they
were dead, science treats of them as an evil, men address them
with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that, they do
not lose the semblance and image of God. They all acknowledge
their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to
salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent.
Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in
the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other
saints. When it had happened to Vassilyev in the street to
recognize a fallen woman as such, by her dress or her manners,
or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always remembered
a story he had once read: a young man, pure and self-sacrificing,
loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife; she,
considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.
Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of
Tverskoy Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two
friends it was about eleven o'clock. The first snow had not long
fallen, and all nature was under the spell of the fresh snow.
There was the smell of snow in the air, the snow crunched softly
under the feet; the earth, the roofs, the trees, the seats on the
boulevard, everything was soft, white, young, and this made the
houses look quite different from the day before; the street
lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the
carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light,
frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white,
youthful, feathery snow. "Against my will an unknown force,"
hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to
these mournful shores."
"Behold the mill . . ." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now. .
. ."
"Behold the mill . . . in ruins now," the medical student
repeated, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and
then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:
"Here in old days when I was free,
Love, free, unfettered, greeted me."
The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off
their greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before
drinking the second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his
vodka, raised the glass to his eyes, and gazed into
it for a long time, screwing up his shortsighted eyes. The
medical student did not understand his expression, and said:
"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given
us to be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow
to be walked upon. For one evening anyway live like a human
being!"
"But I haven't said anything . . ." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am
I refusing to?"
There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with
softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them.
In these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully
balanced everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in
their minds and souls! They sing, and have a passion for the
theatre, and draw, and talk a great deal, and drink, and they
don't have headaches the day after; they are both poetical and
debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be
indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are
warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as men are in no way inferior
to himself, Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and
every word he uttered, who was fastidious and cautious,
and ready to raise every trifle to the level of a problem. And
he longed for one evening to live as his friends did, to open
out, to let himself loose from his own control. If vodka had to
be drunk, he would drink it, though his head would be splitting
next morning. If he were taken to the women he would go. He would
laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances of
strangers in the street. . . .
He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends --
one in a crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of
artistic untidiness; the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor,
though he affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning. He
liked the snow, the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks
left in the first snow by the feet of the passers-by. He liked
the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive, as it were
virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the
year -- when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on
bright days and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the
river.
"Against my will an unknown force,
Has led me to these mournful shores,"
he hummed in an undertone.
And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the
way, and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time
with one another.
Vassilyev's imagination was picturing how, in another ten
minutes, he and his friends would knock at a door; how by little
dark passages and dark rooms they would steal in to the women;
how, taking advantage of the darkness, he would strike a match,
would light up and see the face of a martyr and a guilty smile.
The unknown, fair or dark, would certainly have her hair down and
be wearing a white dressing-jacket; she would be panic-stricken
by the light, would be fearfully confused, and would say: "For
God's sake, what are you doing! Put it out!" It would all be
dreadful, but interesting and new.
II
The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and
soon reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by
reputation. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted
windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos
and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and
mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were
tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was
surprised and said:
"What a lot of houses!"
"That's nothing," said the medical student. "In London there are
ten times as many. There are about a hundred thousand such women
there."
The cabmen were sitting on their boxes as calmly and
indifferently as in any other side street; the same passers-by
were walking along the pavement as in other streets. No one was
hurrying, no one was hiding his face in his coat-collar, no one
shook his head reproachfully. . . . And in this indifference to
the noisy chaos of pianos and violins, to the bright windows and
wide-open doors, there was a feeling of something very open,
insolent, reckless, and devil-may-care. Probably it was as gay
and noisy at the slave-markets in their day, and people's faces
and movements showed the same indifference.
"Let us begin from the beginning," said the artist.
The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a
reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with
an unshaven face like a flunkey's, and sleepy-looking eyes, got
up lazily from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelt like a
laundry with an odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall
led into a brightly lighted room. The medical student and the
artist stopped at this door and, craning their necks, peeped into
the room.
"Buona sera, signori, rigolleto -- hugenotti -- traviata!" began
the artist, with a theatrical bow.
"Havanna -- tarakano -- pistoleto!" said the medical student,
pressing his cap to his breast and bowing low.
Vassilyev was standing behind them. He would have liked to make a
theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled,
felt an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently
for what would happen next.
A little fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, in
a short light-blue frock with a bunch of white ribbon on her
bosom, appeared in the doorway.
"Why do you stand at the door?" she said. "Take off your coats
and come into the drawing-room."
The medical student and the artist, still talking Italian, went
into the drawing-room. Vassilyev followed them irresolutely.
"Gentlemen, take off your coats!" the flunkey said sternly; "you
can't go in like that."
In the drawing-room there was, besides the girl, another woman,
very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was
sitting near the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap.
She took no notice whatever of the visitors.
"Where are the other young ladies?" asked the medical student.
"They are having their tea," said the fair girl. "Stepan," she
called, "go and tell the young ladies some students have come!"
A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was
wearing a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was
painted thickly and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her
hair, and there was an unblinking, frightened stare in her eyes.
As she came in, she began at once singing some song in a coarse,
powerful contralto. After her a fourth appeared, and after her a
fifth. . . .
In all this Vassilyev saw nothing new or interesting. It seemed
to him that that room, the piano, the looking-glass in its cheap
gilt frame, the bunch of white ribbon, the dress with the blue
stripes, and the blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and
more than once. Of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the
guilty smile, of all that he had expected to meet here and had
dreaded, he saw no trace.
Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one
thing faintly stirred his curiosity -- the terrible, as it were
intentionally designed, bad taste which was visible in the
cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch
of ribbons. There was something characteristic and peculiar in
this bad taste.
"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is
there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man
and excite him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being
for a rouble? I understand any sin for the sake of splendor,
beauty, grace, passion, taste; but what is there here? What is
there here worth sinning for? But . . . one mustn't think!"
"Beardy, treat me to some porter!" said the fair girl, addressing
him.
Vassilyev was at once overcome with confusion.
"With pleasure," he said, bowing politely. "Only excuse me,
madam, I . . . I won't drink with you. I don't drink.
Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.
"Why did you ask for porter?" said the medical student angrily.
"What a millionaire! You have thrown away six roubles for no
reason whatever -- simply waste!"
"If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?" said
Vassilyev, justifying himself.
"You did not give pleasure to her, but to the 'Madam.' They are
told to ask the visitors to stand them treat because it is a
profit to the keeper."
"Behold the mill . . ." hummed the artist, "in ruins now. . . ."
Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and
did not go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a
figure in a black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey's, got
up from a sofa in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at
his face and his shabby black coat, Vassilyev thought: "What
must an ordinary simple Russian have gone through before fate
flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been before and
what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married? Where
was his mother, and did she know that he was a servant here?"
And Vassilyev could not help particularly noticing the flunkey in
each house. In one of the houses -- he thought it was the fourth
- there was a little spare, frail-looking flunkey with
a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and
took no notice of them when they went in. Looking at his face
Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face
might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the
face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little
flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at
the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier
overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch
this man's hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be
coarse like a dog's.
III
Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly
tipsy and grew unnaturally lively.
"Let's go to another!" he said peremptorily, waving his hands. "I
will take you to the best one."
When he had brought his fri ends to the house which in his
opinion was the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a
quadrille. The medical student grumbled something about their
having to pay the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his
_vis-a-vis_. They began dancing.
It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst. Here
there were just the same looking-glasses and pictures, the same
styles of coiffure and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of
the rooms and the costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not
lack of taste, but something that might be called the taste, and
even the style, of S. Street, which could not be found
elsewhere--something intentional in its ugliness, not accidental,
but elaborated in the course of years. After he had been in eight
houses he was no longer surprised at the color of the dresses, at
the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dresses, and the
thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to be
like this, that if a single one of the women had been dressed
like a human being, or if there had been one decent engraving on
the wall, the general tone of the whole street would have
suffered.
"How unskillfully they sell themselves!" he thought. "How can
they fail to understand that vice is only alluring when it is
beautiful and hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest
black dresses, pale faces, mournful smiles, and darkness would
be far more effective than this clumsy tawdriness. Stupid things!
If they don't understand it of themselves, their visitors might
surely have taught them. . . ."
A young lady in a Polish dress edged with white fur came up to
him and sat down beside him.
"You nice dark man, why aren't you dancing?" she asked. "Why are
you so dull?"
"Because it is dull."
"Treat me to some Lafitte. Then it won't be dull."
Vassilyev made no answer. He was silent for a little, and then
asked:
"What time do you get to sleep?"
"At six o'clock."
"And what time do you get up?"
"Sometimes at two and sometimes at three."
"And what do you do when you get up?"
"We have coffee, and at six o'clock we have dinner."
"And what do you have for dinner?"
"Usually soup, beefsteak, and dessert. Our madam keeps the girls
well. But why do you ask all this?"
"Oh, just to talk. . . ."
Vassilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things. He
felt an intense desire to find out where she came from, whether
her parents were living, and whether they knew that she was here;
how she had come into this house; whether she were cheerful and
satisfied, or sad and oppressed by gloomy thoughts; whether she
hoped some day to get out of her present position. . . . But he
could not think how to begin or in what shape to put his
questions so as not to seem impertinent. He thought
for a long time, and asked:
"How old are you?"
"Eighty," the young lady jested, looking with a laugh at the
antics of the artist as he danced.
All at once she burst out laughing at something, and uttered a
long cynical sentence loud enough to be heard by everyone.
Vassilyev was aghast, and not knowing how to look, gave a
constrained smile. He was the only one who smiled; all the
others, his friends, the musicians, the women, did not even
glance towards his neighbor, but seemed not to have heard her.
"Stand me some Lafitte," his neighbor said again.
Vassilyev felt a repulsion for her white fur and for her voice,
and walked away from her. It seemed to him hot and stifling, and
his heart began throbbing slowly but violently, like a hammer --
one! two! three!
"Let us go away!" he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve.
"Wait a little; let me finish."
While the artist and the medical student were finishing the
quadrille, to avoid looking at the women, Vassilyev scrutinized
the musicians. A respectable-looking old man in spectacles,
rather like Marshal Bazaine, was playing the piano; a young man
with a fair beard, dressed in the latest fashion, was playing the
violin. The young man had a face that did not look stupid nor
exhausted, but intelligent, youthful, and fresh. He was dressed
fancifully and with taste; he played with feeling. It was
a mystery how he and the respectable-looking old man had come
here. How was it they were not ashamed to sit here? What were
they thinking about when they looked at the women?
If the violin and the piano had been played by men in rags,
looking hungry, gloomy, drunken, with dissipated or stupid faces,
then one could have understood their presence, perhaps. As it
was, Vassilyev could not understand it at all. He recalled the
story of the fallen woman he had once read, and he thought now
that that human figure with the guilty smile had nothing in
common with what he was seeing now. It seemed to him that he was
seeing not fallen women, but some different world quite apart,
alien to him and incomprehensible; if he had seen this world
before on the stage, or read of it in a book, he would not have
believed in it. . . .
The woman with the white fur burst out laughing again and uttered
a loathsome sentence in a loud voice. A feeling of disgust took
possession of him. He flushed crimson and went out of the room.
"Wait a minute, we are coming too!" the artist shouted to him.
IV
"While we were dancing," said the medical student, as they all
three went out into the street, "I had a conversation with my
partner. We talked about her first romance. He, the hero, was an
accountant at Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was
seventeen, and she lived with her papa and mamma, who sold soap
and candles."
"How did he win her heart?" asked Vassilyev.
"By spending fifty roubles on underclothes for her. What next!"
"So he knew how to get his partner's story out of her," thought
Vassilyev about the medical student. "But I don't know how to."
"I say, I am going home!" he said.
"What for?"
"Because I don't know how to behave here. Besides, I am bored,
disgusted. What is there amusing in it? If they were human beings
- but they are savages and animals. I am going; do as you like."
"Come, Grisha, Grigory, darling. . ." said the artist in a
tearful voice, hugging Vassilyev, "come along! Let's go to one
more together and damnation take them! . . . Please do, Grisha!"
They persuaded Vassilyev and led him up a staircase. In the
carpet and the gilt banisters, in the porter who opened the door,
and in the panels that decorated the hall, the same S. Street
style was apparent, but carried to a greater perfection, more
imposing.
"I really will go home!" said Vassilyev as he was taking off his
coat.
"Come, come, dear boy," said the artist, and he kissed him on the
neck. "Don't be tiresome. . . . Gri-gri, be a good comrade! We
came together, we will go back together. What a beast you are,
really!"
"I can wait for you in the street. I think it's loathsome,
really!"
"Come, come, Grisha. . . . If it is loathsome, you can observe
it! Do you understand? You can observe!"
"One must take an objective view of things," said the medical
student gravely.
Vassilyev went into the drawing-room and sat down. There were a
number of visitors in the room besides him and his friends: two
infantry officers, a bald, gray-haired gentleman in spectacles,
two beardless youths from the institute of land-surveying, and a
very tipsy man who looked like an actor. All the young ladies
were taken up with these visitors and paid no attention to
Vassilyev.
Only one of them, dressed _a la Aida,_ glanced sideways at him,
smiled, and said, yawning: "A dark one has come. . . ."
Vassilyev's heart was throbbing and his face burned. He felt
ashamed before these visitors of his presence here, and he felt
disgusted and miserable. He was tormented by the thought that he,
a decent and loving man (such as he had hitherto considered
himself), hated these women and felt nothing but repulsion
towards them. He felt pity neither for the women nor the
musicians nor the flunkeys.
"It is because I am not trying to understand them," he thought.
"They are all more like animals than human beings, but of course
they are human beings all the same , they have souls. One must
understand them and then judge. . . ."
"Grisha, don't go, wait for us," the artist shouted to him and
disappeared.
The medical student disappeared soon after.
"Yes, one must make an effort to understand, one mustn't be like
this. . ." Vassilyev went on thinking.
And he began gazing at each of the women with strained attention,
looking for a guilty smile. But either he did not know how to
read their faces, or not one of these women felt herself to be
guilty; he read on every face nothing but a blank expression of
everyday vulgar boredom and complacency. Stupid faces, stupid
smiles, harsh, stupid voices, insolent movements, and nothing
else. Apparently each of them had in the past a romance with an
accountant based on underclothes for fifty roubles, and looked
for no other charm in the present but coffee, a dinner of three
courses, wines, quadrilles, sleeping till two in the afternoon. .
. .
Finding no guilty smile, Vassilyev began to look whether there
was not one intelligent face. And his attention was caught by one
pale, rather sleepy, exhausted-looking face. . . . It was a dark
woman, not very young, wearing a dress covered with spangles;
she was sitting in an easy-chair, looking at the floor lost in
thought. Vassilyev walked from one corner of the room to the
other, and, as though casually, sat down beside her.
"I must begin with something trivial," he thought, "and pass to
what is serious. . . ."
"What a pretty dress you have," and with his finger he touched
the gold fringe of her fichu.
"Oh, is it? . . ." said the dark woman listlessly.
"What province do you come from?"
"I? From a distance. . . . From Tchernigov."
"A fine province. It's nice there."
"Any place seems nice when one is not in it."
"It's a pity I cannot describe nature," thought Vassilyev. "I
might touch her by a description of nature in Tchernigov. No
doubt she loves the place if she has been born there."
"Are you dull here?" he asked.
"Of course I am dull."
"Why don't you go away from here if you are dull?"
"Where should I go to? Go begging or what?"
"Begging would be easier than living here."
How do you know that? Have you begged?"
"Yes, when I hadn't the money to study. Even if I hadn't anyone
could understand that. A beggar is anyway a free man, and you are
a slave."
The dark woman stretched, and watched with sleepy eyes the
footman who was bringing a trayful of glasses and seltzer water.
"Stand me a glass of porter," she said, and yawned again.
"Porter," thought Vassilyev. "And what if your brother or mother
walked in at this moment? What would you say? And what would they
say? There would be porter then, I imagine. . . ."
All at once there was the sound of weeping. From the adjoining
room, from which the footman had brought the seltzer water, a
fair man with a red face and angry eyes ran in quickly. He was
followed by the tall, stout "madam," who was shouting in a
shrill voice:
"Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have
visitors better than you, and they don't fight! Impostor!"
A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the
next room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as
though of someone insulted. And he realized that there were real
people living here who, like people everywhere else, felt
insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of
oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity
and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where
there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table
he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears, stretched out
his hands towards that face, took a step towards the table, but
at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk.
As he made his way though the noisy crowd gathered about the fair
man, his heart sank and he felt frightened like a child; and it
seemed to him that in this alien, incomprehensible world people
wanted to pursue him, to beat him, to pelt him with filthy
words. . . . He tore down his coat from the hatstand and ran
headlong downstairs.
V
Leaning against the fence, he stood near the house waiting for
his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and violins,
gay, reckless, insolent, and mournful, mingled in the air in a
sort of chaos, and this tangle of sounds seemed again like an
unseen orchestra tuning up on the roofs. If one looked upwards
into the darkness, the black background was all spangled with
white, moving spots: it was snow falling. As the snowflakes came
into the light they floated round lazily in the air like
down, and still more lazily fell to the ground. The snowflakes
whirled thickly round Vassilyev and hung upon his beard, his
eyelashes, his eyebrows. . . . The cabmen, the horses, and the
passers-by were white.
"And how can the snow fall in this street!" thought Vassilyev.
"Damnation take these houses!"
His legs seemed to be giving way from fatigue, simply from having
run down the stairs; he gasped for breath as though he had been
climbing uphill, his heart beat so loudly that he could hear it.
He was consumed by a desire to get out of the street as quickly
as possible and to go home, but even stronger was his desire to
wait for his companions and vent upon them his oppressive
feeling.
There was much he did not understand in these houses, the souls
of ruined women were a mystery to him as before; but it was clear
to him that the thing was far worse than could have been
believed. If that sinful woman who had poisoned herself was
called fallen, it was difficult to find a fitting name for all
these who were dancing now to this tangle of sound and uttering
long, loathsome sentences. They were not on the road to ruin, but
ruined.
"There is vice," he thought, "but neither consciousness of sin
nor hope of salvation. They are sold and bought, steeped in wine
and abominations, while they, like sheep, are stupid,
indifferent, and don't understand. My God! My God!"
It was clear to him, too, that everything that is called human
dignity, personal rights, the Divine image and semblance, were
defiled to their very foundations -- "to the very marrow," as
drunkards say -- and that not only the street and the stupid
women were responsible for it.
A group of students, white with snow, passed him laughing and
talking gaily; one, a tall thin fellow, stopped, glanced into
Vassilyev's face, and said in a drunken voice:
"One of us! A bit on, old man? Aha-ha! Never mind, have a good
time! Don't be down-hearted, old chap!"
He took Vassilyev by the shoulder and pressed his cold wet
mustache against his cheek, then he slipped, staggered, and,
waving both hands, cried:
"Hold on! Don't upset!"
And laughing, he ran to overtake his companions.
Through the noise came the sound of the artist's voice:
"Don't you dare to hit the women! I won't let you, damnation take
you! You scoundrels!"
The medical student appeared in the doorway. He looked from side
to side, and seeing Vassilyev, said in an agitated voice:
"You here! I tell you it's really impossible to go anywhere with
Yegor! What a fellow he is! I don't understand him! He has got up
a scene! Do you hear? Yegor!" he shouted at the door. Yegor!"
"I won't allow you to hit women!" the artist's piercing voice
sounded from above. Something heavy and lumbering rolled down the
stairs. It was the artist falling headlong. Evidently he had been
pushed downstairs.
He picked himself up from the ground, shook his hat, and, with an
angry and indignant face, brandished his fist towards the top of
the stairs and shouted:
"Scoundrels! Torturers! Bloodsuckers! I won't allow you to hit
them! To hit a weak, drunken woman! Oh, you brutes! . . ."
"Yegor! . . . Come, Yegor! . . ." the medical student began
imploring him. "I give you my word of honor I'll never come with
you again. On my word of honor I won't!"
Little by little the artist was pacified and the friends went
homewards.
"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student,
"has led me to these mournful shores."
"Behold t he mill," the artist chimed in a little later, "in
ruins now. What a lot of snow, Holy Mother! Grisha, why did you
go? You are a funk, a regular old woman."
Vassilyev walked behind his companions, looked at their backs,
and thought:
"One of two things: either we only fancy prostitution is an evil,
and we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an
evil as is generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as
much slaveowners, violators, and murderers, as the inhabitants
of Syria and Cairo, that are described in the 'Neva.' Now they
are singing, laughing, talking sense, but haven't they just been
exploiting hunger, ignorance, and stupidity? They have -- I have
been a witness of it. What is the use of their humanity, their
medicine, their painting? The science, art, and lofty sentiments
of these soul-destroyers remind me of the piece of bacon in the
story. Two brigands murdered a beggar in a forest; they began
sharing his clothes between them, and found in his wallet a piece
of bacon. 'Well found,' said one of them, 'let us have a bit.'
'What do you mean? How can you?' cried the other in horror. 'Have
you forgotten that to-day is Wednesday?' And they would not eat
it. After murdering a man, they came out of the forest in the
firm conviction that they were keeping the fast. In the same way
these men, after buying women, go their way imagining that they
are artists and men of science. . . ."
"Listen!" he said sharply and angrily. "Why do you come here? Is
it possible -- is it possible you don't understand how horrible
it is? Your medical books tell you that every one of these women
dies prematurely of consumption or something; art tells you that
morally they are dead even earlier. Every one of them dies
because she has in her time to entertain five hundred men on an
average, let us say. Each one of them is killed by five hundred
men. You are among those five hundred! If each of you in the
course of your lives visits this place or others like it two
hundred and fifty times, it follows that one woman is killed for
every two of you! Can't you understand that? Isn't it horrible to
murder, two of you, three of you, five of you, a foolish, hungry
woman! Ah! isn't it awful, my God!"
"I knew it would end like that," the artist said frowning. "We
ought not to have gone with this fool and ass! You imagine you
have grand notions in your head now, ideas, don't you? No, it's
the devil knows what, but not ideas. You are looking at me
now with hatred and repulsion, but I tell you it's better you
should set up twenty more houses like those than look like that.
There's more vice in your expression than in the whole street!
Come along, Volodya, let him go to the devil! He's a fool and an
ass, and that's all. . . ."
"We human beings do murder each other," said the medical student.
"It's immoral, of course, but philosophizing doesn't help it.
Good-by!"
At Trubnoy Square the friends said good-by and parted. When he
was left alone, Vassilyev strode rapidly along the boulevard. He
felt frightened of the darkness, of the snow which was falling in
heavy flakes on the ground, and seemed as though it would cover
up the whole world; he felt frightened of the street lamps
shining with pale light through the clouds of snow. His soul was
possessed by an unaccountable, faint-hearted terror. Passers-by
came towards him from time to time, but he timidly moved to one
side; it seemed to him that women, none but women, were coming
from all sides and staring at him. . . .
"It's beginning," he thought, "I am going to have a breakdown."
VI
At home he lay on his bed and said, shuddering all over: "They
are alive! Alive! My God, those women are alive!"
He encouraged his imagination in all sorts of ways to picture
himself the brother of a fallen woman, or her father; then a
fallen woman herself, with her painted cheeks; and it all moved
him to horror.
It seemed to him that he must settle the question at once at all
costs, and that this question was not one that did not concern
him, but was his own personal problem. He made an immense effort,
repressed his despair, and, sitting on the bed, holding his head
in his hands, began thinking how one could save all the women he
had seen that day. The method for attacking problems of all kinds
was, as he was an educated man, well known to him. And, however
excited he was, he strictly adhered to that method. He recalled
the history of the problem and its literature, and for a quarter
of an hour he paced from one end of the room to the other trying
to remember all the methods practiced at the present time for
saving women. He had very many good friends and acquaintances
who lived in lodgings in Petersburg. . . . Among them were a good
many honest and self-sacrificing men. Some of them had attempted
to save women. . . .
"All these not very numerous attempts," thought Vassilyev, "can
be divided into three groups. Some, after buying the woman out of
the brothel, took a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine,
and she became a semptress. And whether he wanted to or
not, after having bought her out he made her his mistress; then
when he had taken his degree, he went away and handed her into
the keeping of some other decent man as though she were a thing.
And the fallen woman remained a fallen woman. Others, after
buying her out, took a lodging apart for her, bought the
inevitable sewing-machine, and tried teaching her to read,
preaching at her and giving her books. The woman lived and sewed
as long as it was interesting and a novelty to her, then getting
bored, began receiving men on the sly, or ran away and went back
where she could sleep till three o'clock, drink coffee, and have
good dinners. The third class, the most ardent and
self-sacrificing, had taken a bold, resolute step. They had
married them. And when the insolent and spoilt, or stupid and
crushed animal became a wife, the head of a household, and
afterwards a mother, it turned her whole existence and attitude
to life upside down, so that it was hard to recognize the fallen
woman afterwards in the wife and the mother. Yes, marriage was
the best and perhaps the only means."
"But it is impossible!" Vassilyev said aloud, and he sank upon
his bed. "I, to begin with, could not marry one! To do that one
must be a saint and be unable to feel hatred or repulsion. But
supposing that I, the medical student, and the artist mastered
ourselves and did marry them -- suppose they were all married.
What would be the result? The result would be that while here in
Moscow they were being married, some Smolensk accountant would be
debauching another lot, and that lot would be streaming here to
fill the vacant places, together with others from Saratov,
Nizhni-Novgorod, Warsaw. . . . And what is one to do with the
hundred thousand in London? What's one to do with those in
Hamburg?"
The lamp in which the oil had burnt down began to smoke.
Vassilyev did not notice it. He began pacing to and fro again,
still thinking. Now he put the question differently: what must be
done that fallen women should not be needed? For that, it was
essential that the men who buy them and do them to death should
feel all the immorality of their share in enslaving them and
should be horrified. One must save the men.
"One won't do anything by art and science, that is clear . . ."
thought Vassilyev. "The only way out of it is missionary work."
And he began to dream how he would the next evening stand at the
corner of the street and say to every passer-by: "Where are you
going and what for? Have some fear of God!"
He would turn to the apathetic cabmen and say to them: "Why are
you staying here? Why aren't you revolted? Why aren't you
indignant? I suppose you believe in God and know that it is a
sin, that people go to hell for it? Why don't you speak? It is
true that they are strangers to you, but you know even they have
fathers, brothers like yourselves. . . ."
One of Vassilyev's friends had once said of him that he was a
talented man. There are all sorts of talents -- talent for
writing, talent for the stage, talent for art; but he had a
peculi ar talent -- a talent for _humanity_. He possessed an
extraordinarily fine delicate scent for pain in general. As a
good actor reflects in himself the movements and voice of others,
so Vassilyev could reflect in his soul the sufferings of others.
When he saw tears, he wept; beside a sick man, he felt sick
himself and moaned; if he saw an act of violence, he felt as
though he himself were the victim of it, he was frightened as a
child, and in his fright ran to help. The pain of others worked
on his nerves, excited him, roused him to a state of frenzy, and
so on.
Whether this friend were right I don't know, but what Vassilyev
experienced when he thought this question was settled was
something like inspiration. He cried and laughed, spoke aloud the
words that he should say next day, felt a fervent love for those
who would listen to him and would stand beside him at the corner
of the street to preach; he sat down to write letters, made vows
to himself. . . .
All this was like inspiration also from the fact that it did not
last long. Vassilyev was soon tired. The cases in London, in
Hamburg, in Warsaw, weighed upon him by their mass as a mountain
weighs upon the earth; he felt dispirited, bewildered, in
the face of this mass; he remembered that he had not a gift for
words, that he was cowardly and timid, that indifferent people
would not be willing to listen and understand him, a law student
in his third year, a timid and insignificant person; that
genuine missionary work included not only teaching but deeds. . .
When it was daylight and carriages were already beginning to
rumble in the street, Vassilyev was lying motionless on the sofa,
staring into space. He was no longer thinking of the women, nor
of the men, nor of missionary work. His whole attention was
turned upon the spiritual agony which was torturing him. It was a
dull, vague, undefined anguish akin to misery, to an extreme form
of terror and to despair. He could point to the place where the
pain was, in his breast under his heart; but he could not
compare it with anything. In the past he had had acute toothache,
he had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was insignificant
compared with this spiritual anguish. In the presence of that
pain life seemed loathsome. The dissertation,
the excellent work he had written already, the people he loved,
the salvation of fallen women -- everything that only the day
before he had cared about or been indifferent to, now when he
thought of them irritated him in the same way as the noise of
the carriages, the scurrying footsteps of the waiters in the
passage, the daylight. . . . If at that moment someone had
performed a great deed of mercy or had committed a revolting
outrage, he would have felt the same repulsion for both actions.
Of all the thoughts that strayed through his mind only two did
not irritate him: one was that at every moment he had the power
to kill himself, the other that this agony would not last more
than three days. This last he knew by experience.
After lying for a while he got up and, wringing his hands, walked
about the room, not as usual from corner to corner, but round the
room beside the walls. As he passed he glanced at himself in the
looking-glass. His face looked pale and sunken, his
temples looked hollow, his eyes were bigger, darker, more
staring, as though they belonged to someone else, and they had an
expression of insufferable mental agony.
At midday the artist knocked at the door.
"Grigory, are you at home?" he asked.
Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered
himself in Little Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone
to the University."
And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting
his head under the pillow, began crying with agony, and the more
freely his tears flowed the more terrible his mental anguish
became. As it began to get dark, he thought of the agonizing
night awaiting him, and was overcome by a horrible despair. He
dressed quickly, ran out of his room, and, leaving his door wide
open, for no object or reason, went out into the street. Without
asking himself where he should go, he walked quickly along
Sadovoy Street.
Snow was falling as heavily as the day before; it was thawing.
Thrusting his hands into his sleeves, shuddering and frightened
at the noises, at the trambells, and at the passers-by, Vassilyev
walked along Sadovoy Street as far as Suharev Tower; then to the
Red Gate; from there he turned off to Basmannya Street. He went
into a tavern and drank off a big glass of vodka, but that did
not make him feel better. When he reached Razgulya he turned to
the right, and strode along side streets in which he had never
been before in his life. He reached the old bridge by which the
Yauza runs gurgling, and from which one can see long rows of
lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To distract his
spiritual anguish by some new sensation or some other pain,
Vassilyev, not knowing what to do, crying and shuddering, undid
his greatcoat and jacket and exposed his bare chest to the wet
snow and the wind. But that did not lessen his suffering either.
Then he bent down over the rail of the bridge and looked down
into the black, yeasty Yauza, and he longed to plunge down head
foremost; not from loathing for life, not for the sake of
suicide, but in order to bruise himself at least, and by one pain
to ease the other. But the black water, the darkness, the
deserted banks covered with snow were terrifying. He shivered and
walked on. He walked up and down by the Red Barracks, then turned
back and went down to a copse, from the copse back to the bridge
again
"No, home, home!" he thought. "At home I believe it's better. . ."
And he went back. When he reached home he pulled off his wet coat
and cap, began pacing round the room, and went on pacing round
and round without stopping till morning.
VII
When next morning the artist and the medical student went in to
him, he was moving about the room with his shirt torn, biting his
hands and moaning with pain.
"For God's sake!" he sobbed when he saw his friends, "take me
where you please, do what you can; but for God's sake, save me
quickly! I shall kill myself!"
The artist turned pale and was helpless. The medical student,
too, almost shed tears, but considering that doctors ought to be
cool and composed in every emergency said coldly:
"It's a nervous breakdown. But it's nothing. Let us go at once to
the doctor."
"Wherever you like, only for God's sake, make haste"
"Don't excite yourself. You must try and control yourself."
The artist and the medical student with trembling hands put
Vassilyev's coat and hat on and led him out into the street.
"Mihail Sergeyitch has been wanting to make your acquaintance for
a long time," the medical student said on the way. "He is a very
nice man and thoroughly good at his work. He took his degree in
1882, and he has an immense practice already. He treats students
as though he were one himself."
"Make haste, make haste! . . ." Vassilyev urged.
Mihail Sergeyitch, a stout, fair-haired doctor, received the
friends with politeness and frigid dignity, and smiled only on
one side of his face.
"Rybnikov and Mayer have spoken to me of your illness already,"
he said. "Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, I
beg. . . ."
He made Vassilyev sit down in a big armchair near the table, and
moved a box of cigarettes towards him.
"Now then!" he began, stroking his knees. "Let us get to work. .
. . How old are you?"
He asked questions and the medical student answered them. He
asked whether Vassilyev's father had suffered from certain
special diseases, whether he drank to excess, whether he were
remarkable for cruelty or any peculiarities. He made similar
inquiries about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and brothers.
On learning that his mother had a beautiful voice and sometimes
acted on the stage, he grew more animated at once, and asked:
"Excuse me, but don't you remember, perhaps, your mother had a
passion for the stage?"
Twenty minutes passed. Vassilyev was annoyed by the way the docto
r kept stroking his knees and talking of the same thing.
"So far as I understand your questions, doctor," he said, "you
want to know whether my illness is hereditary or not. It is not."
The doctor proceeded to ask Vassilyev whether he had had any
secret vices as a boy, or had received injuries to his head;
whether he had had any aberrations, any peculiarities, or
exceptional propensities. Half the questions usually asked by
doctors of their patients can be left unanswered without the
slightest ill effect on the health, but Mihail Sergeyitch, the
medical student, and the artist all looked as though if Vassilyev
failed to answer one question all would be lost. As he received
answers, the doctor for some reason noted them down on a slip of
paper. On learning that Vassilyev had taken his degree in natural
science, and was now studying law, the doctor pondered.
"He wrote a first-rate piece of original work last year, . . ."
said the medical student.
"I beg your pardon, but don't interrupt me; you prevent me from
concentrating," said the doctor, and he smiled on one side of his
face. "Though, of course, that does enter into the diagnosis.
Intense intellectual work, nervous exhaustion. . . . Yes, yes. .
. . And do you drink vodka?" he said, addressing Vassilyev.
"Very rarely."
Another twenty minutes passed. The medical student began telling
the doctor in a low voice his opinion as to the immediate cause
of the attack, and described how the day before yesterday the
artist, Vassilyev, and he had visited S. Street.
The indifferent, reserved, and frigid tone in which his friends
and the doctor spoke of the women and that miserable street
struck Vassilyev as strange in the extreme. . . .
"Doctor, tell me one thing only," he said, controlling himself so
as not to speak rudely. "Is prostitution an evil or not?"
"My dear fellow, who disputes it?" said the doctor, with an
expression that suggested that he had settled all such questions
for himself long ago. "Who disputes it?"
"You are a mental doctor, aren't you?" Vassilyev asked curtly.
"Yes, a mental doctor."
"Perhaps all of you are right!" said Vassilyev, getting up and
beginning to walk from one end of the room to the other.
"Perhaps! But it all seems marvelous to me! That I should have
taken my degree in two faculties you look upon as a great
achievement; because I have written a work which in three years
will be thrown aside and forgotten, I am praised up to the skies;
but because I cannot speak of fallen women as unconcernedly as of
these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am called mad,
I am pitied!"
Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for
himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two
days before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank
into a chair.
His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with
the air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of
feeling himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev
and, without a word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then,
when he was calmer, undressed him and began to investigate the
degree of sensibility of the skin, the reflex action of the
knees, and so on.
And Vassilyev felt easier. When he came out from the doctor's he
was beginning to feel ashamed; the rattle of the carriages no
longer irritated him, and the load at his heart grew lighter and
lighter as though it were melting away. He had two prescriptions
in his hand: one was for bromide, one was for morphia. . . . He
had taken all these remedies before.
In the street he stood still and, saying good-by to his friends,
dragged himself languidly to the University.
MISERY
"To whom shall I tell my grief?"
THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling
lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and
lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders,
caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a
ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the
living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it
seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to
shake it off. . . . His little mare is white and motionless
too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the
stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a
halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought.
Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar
gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous
lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to
think.
It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came
out of the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But
now the shades of evening are falling on the town. The pale light
of the street lamps changes to a vivid color, and the
bustle of the street grows noisier.
"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"
Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an
officer in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.
"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To
Vyborgskaya!"
In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends
cakes of snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The
officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the
horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more
from habit than necessity brandishes his whip. The mare cranes
her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and hesitatingly sets
of. . . .
"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts
from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the
devil are you going? Keep to the r-right!"
"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the
officer angrily.
A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian
crossing the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder
looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona
fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks
his elbows, and turns his eyes about like one possessed as though
he did not know where he was or why he was there.
"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are
simply doing their best to run up against you or fall under the
horse's feet. They must be doing it on purpose."
Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips. . . . Apparently he
means to say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.
"What?" inquires the officer.
Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out
huskily: "My son . . . er . . . my son died this week, sir."
"H'm! What did he die of?"
Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:
"Who can tell! It must have been from fever. . . . He lay three
days in the hospital and then he died. . . . God's will."
"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you
gone cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"
"Drive on! drive on! . . ." says the officer. "We shan't get
there till to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"
The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and
with heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at
the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently
disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya,
Iona stops by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.
. . . Again the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour
passes, and then another. . . .
Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked,
come up, railing at each other and loudly stamping on the
pavement with their goloshes.
"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked
voice. "The three of us, . . . twenty kopecks!"
Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is
not a fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is
a rouble or whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now
so long as he has a fare. . . . The three young men, shoving
each other and using bad language, go up to the sledge, and all
three try to sit down at once. The question remains to be
settled: Which are to sit down and which one is to stand? After
a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they come to the
conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the
shortest.
"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice,
settling himself and breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What
a cap you've got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all
Petersburg. . . ."
"He-he! . . . he-he! . . ." laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast
of!"
"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to
drive like this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the
neck?"
"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs'
yesterday Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us."
"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall
one angrily. "You lie like a brute."
"Strike me dead, it's the truth! . . ."
"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."
"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"
"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly.
"Will you get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way
to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her
well."
Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice
of the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees
people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by little to
be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he
chokes over some elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is
overpowered by his cough. His tall companions begin talking of a
certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them. Waiting
till there is a brief pause, he looks round once more and says:
"This week . . . er. . . my. . . er. . . son died!"
"We shall all die, . . ." says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping
his lips after coughing. "Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I
simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us
there?"
"Well, you give him a little encouragement . . . one in the
neck!"
"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands
on ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you
hear, you old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say? "
And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.
"He-he! . . . " he laughs. "Merry gentlemen . . . . God give you
health!"
"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.
"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the
damp earth. . . . He-ho-ho!. . . .The grave that is! . . . Here
my son's dead and I am alive. . . . It's a strange thing, death
has come in at the wrong door. . . . Instead of coming for me it
went for my son. . . ."
And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that
point the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank
God! they have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks,
Iona gazes for a long while after the revelers, who disappear
into a dark entry. Again he is alone and again there is silence
for him. . . . The misery which has been for a brief space eased
comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With
a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly
among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street:
can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to
him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery. . . .
His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were
to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole
world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a
hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not
have found it with a candle by daylight. . . .
Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to
address him.
"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.
"Going on for ten. . . . Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"
Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives
himself up to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to
people. But before five minutes have passed he draws himself up,
shakes his head as though he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the
reins. . . . He can bear it no longer.
"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"
And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to
trotting. An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty
stove. On the stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people
snoring. The air is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at
the sleeping figures, scratches himself, and regrets that he has
come home so early. . . .
"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks.
"That's why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his
work, . . . who has had enough to eat, and whose horse has had
enough to eat, is always at ease. . . ."
In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat
sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.
"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.
"Seems so."
"May it do you good. . . . But my son is dead, mate. . . . Do you
hear? This week in the hospital. . . . It's a queer business. . .
."
Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees
nothing. The young man has covered his head over and is already
asleep. The old man sighs and scratches himself. . . . Just as
the young man had been thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech.
His son will soon have been dead a week, and he has not really
talked to anybody yet . . . . He wants to talk of it properly,
with deliberation. . . . He wants to tell how his son was taken
ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died.
. . . He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to the
hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter
Anisya in the country. . . . And he wants to talk about her too.
. . . Yes, he has plenty to talk about now. His
listener ought to sigh and exclaim and lament. . . . It would be
even better to talk to women. Though they are silly creatures,
they blubber at the first word.
"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There
is always time for sleep. . . . You'll have sleep enough, no
fear. . . ."
He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is
standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather. . .
. He cannot think about his son when he is alone. . . . To talk
about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and
picture him is insufferable anguish. . . .
"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes.
"There, munch away, munch away. . . . Since we have not earned
enough for oats, we will eat hay. . . . Yes, . . . I have grown
too old to drive. . . . My son ought to be driving, not I. . . .
He was a real cabman. . . . He ought to have lived. . . ."
Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:
"That's how it is, old girl. . . . Kuzma Ionitch is gone. . . .
He said good-by to me. . . . He went and died for no reason. . .
. Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother to
that little colt. . . . And all at once that same little colt
went and died. . . . You'd be sorry, wouldn't you? . . ."
The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's
hands. Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.
CHAMPAGNE
A WAYFARER'S STORY
IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little
station on one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay
or a dull life at the station you can judge from the fact that
for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation,
not one woman, not one decent tavern; and in those days I was
young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and foolish. The only
distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the
passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged
with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a
woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a
statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned
into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could
of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel
the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the
no rth, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar
cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the
monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight
from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy;
and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its
cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like
a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the
station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk,
and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in
consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he
stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together
with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children, no
cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could
only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than
once a month.
I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table,
chewed lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously
tapping on his apparatus in the next room. I had already drunk
five glasses of drugged vodka, and, propping my heavy head on my
fist, thought of my overpowering boredom from which there was no
escape, while my wife sat beside me and did not take her eyes off
me. She looked at me as no one can look but a woman who has
nothing in this world but a handsome husband. She loved me
madly, slavishly, and not merely my good looks, or my soul, but
my sins, my ill-humor and boredom, and even my cruelty when, in
drunken fury, not knowing how to vent my ill-humor, I tormented
her with reproaches.
In spite of the boredom which was consuming me, we were preparing
to see the New Year in with exceptional festiveness, and were
awaiting midnight with some impatience. The fact is, we had in
reserve two bottles of champagne, the real thing, with the label
of Veuve Clicquot; this treasure I had won the previous autumn in
a bet with the station-master of D. when I was drinking with him
at a christening. It sometimes happens during a lesson in
mathematics, when the very air is still with boredom, a
butterfly flutters into the class-room; the boys toss their heads
and begin watching its flight with interest, as though they saw
before them not a butterfly but something new and strange; in the
same way ordinary champagne, chancing to come into our dreary
station, roused us. We sat in silence looking alternately at the
clock and at the bottles.
When the hands pointed to five minutes to twelve I slowly began
uncorking a bottle. I don't know whether I was affected by the
vodka, or whether the bottle was wet, but all I remember is that
when the cork flew up to the ceiling with a bang, my bottle
slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor. Not more than a
glass of the wine was spilt, as I managed to catch the bottle and
put my thumb over the foaming neck.
"Well, may the New Year bring you happiness!" I said, filling two
glasses. "Drink!"
My wife took her glass and fixed her frightened eyes on me. Her
face was pale and wore a look of horror.
"Did you drop the bottle?" she asked.
"Yes. But what of that?"
"It's unlucky," she said, putting down her glass and turning
paler still. "It's a bad omen. It means that some misfortune will
happen to us this year."
"What a silly thing you are," I sighed. "You are a clever woman,
and yet you talk as much nonsense as an old nurse. Drink."
"God grant it is nonsense, but . . . something is sure to happen!
You'll see."
She did not even sip her glass, she moved away and sank into
thought. I uttered a few stale commonplaces about superstition,
drank half a bottle, paced up and down, and then went out of the
room.
Outside there was the still frosty night in all its cold,
inhospitable beauty. The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside
it hung just over the station, motionless as though glued to the
spot, and looked as though waiting for something. A faint
transparent light came from them and touched the white earth
softly, as though afraid of wounding her modesty, and lighted up
everything -- the snowdrifts, the embankment. . . . It was still.
I walked along the railway embankment.
"Silly woman," I thought, looking at the sky spangled with
brilliant stars. "Even if one admits that omens sometimes tell
the truth, what evil can happen to us? The misfortunes we have
endured already, and which are facing us now, are so great that
it is difficult to imagine anything worse. What further harm can
you do a fish which has been caught and fried and served up with
sauce?"
A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness
like a giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and
dejectedly, as though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood
a long while looking at it.
"My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette
end," I went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little
child; I was expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble
family, but I have received neither education nor breeding, and
I have no more knowledge than the humblest mechanic. I have no
refuge, no relations, no friends, no work I like. I am not fitted
for anything, and in the prime of my powers I am good for nothing
but to be stuffed into this little station; I have known nothing
but trouble and failure all my life. What can happen worse?"
Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving
towards me. The slumbering steppe listened to the sound of it. My
thoughts were so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking
aloud and that the moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble of
the train were expressing my thoughts.
"What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?" I wondered. "Even
that is not terrible. It's no good hiding it from my conscience:
I don't love my wife. I married her when I was only a wretched
boy; now I am young and vigorous, and she has gone off and grown
older and sillier, stuffed from her head to her heels with
conventional ideas. What charm is there in her maudlin love, in
her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up with her, but
I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being wasted, as
the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my eyes
only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never
had and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are
going to ruin. . . . Everything is being thrown away like dirt,
and all my wealth here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."
The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the
glow of its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights
of the station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After
walking a mile and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts
haunted me still. Painful as it was to me, yet I remember I tried
as it were to make my thoughts still gloomier and more
melancholy. You know people who are vain and not very clever have
moments when the consciousness that they are miserable affords
them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of
truth in what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was
absurd and conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant
in my question: "What could happen worse?"
"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have
endured everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get
reprimanded by my superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad
wolf has run into the station yard. What more is there? I have
been insulted, humiliated, . . . and I have insulted others in my
time. I have not been a criminal, it is true, but I don't think I
am capable of crime -- I am not afraid of being hauled up for
it."
The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a
little distance, looking as though they were whispering about
something which the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing
across the steppe, bringing the faint rumble of the retreating
train.
My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and
her whole face was beaming with good-humor.
"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your
room and put on your new coat; we have a visitor."
"What visitor?"
"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."
"What Natalya Petrovna?"
"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She
is a very nice, good woman."
Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered
rapidly:
"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross,
Nikolay, and don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know;
Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it
is difficult to live with him. She says she will only stay three
days with us, only till she gets a letter from her brother."
My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her
despotic uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of
young wives in particular; about its being our duty to give
shelter to all, even great sinners, and so on. Unable to make
head or tail of it, I put on my new coat and went to make
acquaintance with my "aunt."
A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My
table, the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the
tiniest grain of dust seemed to have grown younger and more
cheerful in the presence of this new, young, beautiful, and
dissolute creature, who had a most subtle perfume about her. And
that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue I could see from her
smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in which she glanced
and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in which she
talked with my wife -- a respectable woman. There was no need to
tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was
old and despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it
all in at the first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there
is a man in all Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a
woman of a certain temperament.
"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding
out her hand to me and smiling.
"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.
Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the
second bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp,
and when my wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did
not scruple to drain a full glass. I was drunk both with the
wine and with the presence of a woman. Do you remember the song?
"Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion,
Eyes burning bright and beautiful,
How I love you,
How I fear you!"
I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how
love begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it
shortly and in the words of the same silly song:
"It was an evil hour
When first I met you."
Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a
fearful, frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a
feather. It lasted a long while, and swept from the face of the
earth my wife and my aunt herself and my strength. From the
little station in the steppe it has flung me, as you see, into
this dark street.
Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
AFTER THE THEATRE
NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre
where she had seen a performance of "Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as
she reached her own room she threw off her dress, let down her
hair, and in her petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat
down to the table to write a letter like Tatyana's.
"I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love
me!"
She wrote it and laughed.
She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that
an officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her,
but now after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love.
To be unloved and unhappy -- how interesting that was. There is
something beautiful, touching, and poetical about it when one
loves and the other is indifferent. Onyegin was interesting
because he was not in love at all, and Tatyana was fascinating
because she was so much in love; but if they had been equally in
love with each other and had been happy, they would perhaps have
seemed dull.
"Leave off declaring that you love me," Nadya went on writing,
thinking of Gorny. "I cannot believe it. You are very clever,
cultivated, serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a
brilliant future awaits you, while I am an uninteresting girl of
no importance, and you know very well that I should be only a
hindrance in your life. It is true that you were attracted by me
and thought you had found your ideal in me, but that was a
mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair: 'Why did I
meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you
from owning it to yourself. . . ."
Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:
"It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should
take a nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you
would be left free and would love another. Oh, if I were dead! "
She could not make out what she had written through her tears;
little rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the
ceiling, as though she were looking through a prism. She could
not write, she sank back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking
of Gorny.
My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled
the fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came
into the officer's face when one argued about music with him, and
the effort he made to prevent his voice from betraying his
passion. In a society where cold haughtiness and indifference are
regarded as signs of good breeding and gentlemanly bearing, one
must conceal one's passions. And he did try to conceal them, but
he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well that he had a
passionate love of music. The endless discussions about music and
the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept him
always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He
played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and
if he had not been in the army he would certainly have been a
famous musician.
The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had
declared his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by
the hatstand where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all
directions.
"I am very glad that you have at last made the acquaintance of
Gruzdev, our student friend," she went on writing. "He is a very
clever man, and you will be sure to like him. He came to see us
yesterday and stayed till two o'clock. We were all delighted
with him, and I regretted that you had not come. He said a great
deal that was remarkable."
Nadya laid her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, and
her hair covered the letter. She recalled that the student, too,
loved her, and that he had as much right to a letter from her as
Gorny. Wouldn't it be better after all to write to Gruzdev?
There was a stir of joy in her bosom for no reason whatever; at
first the joy was small, and rolled in her bosom like an
india-rubber ball; then it became more massive, bigger, and
rushed like a wave. Nadya forgot Gorny and Gruzdev; her thoughts
were in a tangle and her joy grew and grew; from her bosom it
passed into her arms and legs, and it seemed as though a light,
cool breeze were breathing on her head and ruffling her hair. Her
shoulders quivered with subdued laughter, the table and the lamp
chimney shook, too, and tears from her eyes splashed on the
letter. She could not stop laughing, and to prove to herself that
she was not laughing about nothing she made haste to think of
something funny.
"What a funny poodle," she said, feeling as though she would
choke with laughter. "What a funny poodle! "
She thought how, after tea the evening before, Gruzdev had played
with Maxim the poodle, and afterwards had told them about a very
intelligent poodle who had run after a crow in the yard, and the
crow had looked round at him and said: "Oh, you scamp! "
The poodle, not knowing he had to do with a learned crow, was
fearfully confused and retreated in perplexity, then began
barking. . . .
"No, I had better love Gruzdev," Nadya decided, and she tore up
the letter to Gorny.
She fell to thinking of the student, of his love, of her love;
but the thoughts in her head insisted on flowing in all
directions, and she thought about everything -- about her mother,
about the street, about the pencil, about the piano. . . . She
thought of them joyfully, and felt that everything was good,
splendid, and her joy told her that this was not all, that in a
little while it would be better still. Soon it would be spring,
summer, going with her mother to Gorbiki. Gorny would come for
his furlough, would walk about the garden with her and make love
to her. Gruzdev would come too. He would play croquet and
skittles with her, and would tell her wonderful things. She had a
passionate longing for the garden, the darkness, the pure sky,
the stars. Again her shoulders shook with laughter, and it seemed
to her that there was a scent of wormwood in the room and that a
twig was tapping at the window.
She went to her bed, sat down, and not knowing what to do with
the immense joy which filled her with yearning, she looked at the
holy image hanging at the back of her bed, and said:
"Oh, Lord God! Oh, Lord God!"
A LADY'S STORY
NINE years ago Pyotr Sergeyitch, the deputy prosecutor, and I
were riding towards evening in hay-making time to fetch the
letters from the station.
The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal
of thunder, and saw an angry black storm-cloud which was coming
straight towards us. The storm-cloud was approaching us and we
were approaching it.
Against the background of it our house and church looked white
and the tall poplars shone like silver. There was a scent of rain
and mown hay. My companion was in high spirits. He kept laughing
and talking all sorts of nonsense. He said it would be
nice if we could suddenly come upon a medieval castle with
turreted towers, with moss on it and owls, in which we could take
shelter from the rain and in the end be killed by a thunderbolt.
. . .
Then the first wave raced through the rye and a field of oats,
there was a gust of wind, and the dust flew round and round in
the air. Pyotr Sergeyitch laughed and spurred on his horse.
"It's fine!" he cried, "it's splendid!"
Infected by his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that
in a minute I should be drenched to the skin and might be struck
by lightning.
Riding swiftly in a hurricane when one is breathless with the
wind, and feels like a bird, thrills one and puts one's heart in
a flutter. By the time we rode into our courtyard the wind had
gone down, and big drops of rain were pattering on the grass and
on the roofs. There was not a soul near the stable.
Pyotr Sergeyitch himself took the bridles off, and led the horses
to their stalls. I stood in the doorway waiting for him to
finish, and watching the slanting streaks of rain; the sweetish,
exciting scent of hay was even stronger here than in the fields;
the storm-clouds and the rain made it almost twilight.
"What a crash!" said Pyotr Sergeyitch, coming up to me after a
very loud rolling peal of thunder when it seemed as though the
sky were split in two. "What do you say to that?"
He stood beside me in the doorway and, still breathless from his
rapid ride, looked at me. I could see that he was admiring me.
"Natalya Vladimirovna," he said, "I would give anything only to
stay here a little longer and look at you. You are lovely
to-day."
His eyes looked at me with delight and supplication, his face was
pale. On his beard and mustache were glittering raindrops, and
they, too, seemed to be looking at me with love.
"I love you," he said. "I love you, and I am happy at seeing you.
I know you cannot be my wife, but I want nothing, I ask nothing;
only know that I love you. Be silent, do not answer me, take no
notice of it, but only know that you are dear to me and let me
look at you."
His rapture affected me too; I looked at his enthusiastic face,
listened to his voice which mingled with the patter of the rain,
and stood as though spellbound, unable to stir.
I longed to go on endlessly looking at his shining eyes and
listening.
"You say nothing, and that is splendid," said Pyotr Sergeyitch.
"Go on being silent."
I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the
drenching rain to the house; he laughed too, and, leaping as he
went, ran after me.
Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like
children, we dashed into the room. My father and brother, who
were not used to seeing me laughing and light-hearted, looked at
me in surprise and began laughing too.
The storm-clouds had passed over and the thunder had ceased, but
the raindrops still glittered on Pyotr Sergeyitch's beard. The
whole evening till supper-time he was singing, whistling, playing
noisily with the dog and racing about the room after it, so that
he nearly upset the servant with the samovar. And at supper he
ate a great deal, talked nonsense, and maintained that when one
eats fresh cucumbers in winter there is the fragrance of spring
in one's mouth.
When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide
open, and an undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I
remembered that I was free and healthy, that I had rank and
wealth, that I was beloved; above all, that I had rank and
wealth, rank and wealth, my God! how nice that was! . . . Then,
huddling up in bed at a touch of cold which reached me from the
garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr
Sergeyitch or not, . . . and fell asleep unable to reach any
conclusion.
And when in the morning I saw quivering patches of sunlight and
the shadows of the lime trees on my bed, what had happened
yesterday rose vividly in my memory. Life seemed to me rich,
varied, full of charm. Humming, I dressed quickly and went out
into the garden. . . .
And what happened afterwards? Why -- nothing. In the winter when
we lived in town Pyotr Sergeyitch came to see us from time to
time. Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and
in summer; in the town and in winter they lose their charm. When
you pour out tea for them in the town it seems as though they are
wearing other people's coats, and as though they stirred their
tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr Sergeyitch spoke sometimes
of love, but the effect was not at all the same as in the
country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of the wall
that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was poor,
and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and
a deputy public prosecutor; we both of us -- I through my youth
and he for some unknown reason -- thought of that wall as very
high and thick, and when he was with us in the town he would
criticize arist