But poor Andrei Ivanovich did not manage to taste this learning. He had just been deemed worthy of moving on to this higher course as one of the very best, and suddenly—disaster; the extraordinary mentor, from whom one word of approval sent him into sweet tremors, unexpectedly died. Everything changed at the school: to replace Alexander Petrovich there came a certain Fyodor Ivanovich, a man both kind and diligent, but with a totally different view of things. He imagined something unbridled in the free casualness of the children in the first course. He began to introduce certain external rules among them, demanded that the young men remain somehow mutely silent, that they never walk otherwise than in pairs. He himself even began to measure the distance between pairs with a yardstick. At table, to improve appearances, he seated them all by height rather than by intelligence, so that the asses got the best portions, and the clever got only scraps. All this caused murmuring, especially when the new head, as if in defiance of his predecessor, announced that intelligence and success in studies meant nothing to him, that he looked only at conduct, that even if a person was a poor student, if his conduct was good, he would prefer him to a clever one. But Fyodor Ivanovich did not get exactly what he wanted. Secret pranks started, which, as everyone knows, are worse than open ones. Everything was tip-top during the day, but at night—a spree.
In his manner of teaching subjects he turned everything upside down. With the best intentions, he introduced all sorts of novelties—all of them inappropriate. He brought in new teachers with new opinions and new points of view. They taught learnedly, showered their listeners with a host of new words and terms. One could see the logical connection and the conformity with new discoveries, but, alas! there was simply no life in the subject itself. It all seemed like carrion in the eyes of listeners who had already begun to have some understanding. Everything was inside out. But the worst thing was the loss of respect for their superiors and for authority: they began to mock both mentors and teachers; the director came to be called Fedka, Breadroll, and various other names; such things got started that many boys had to be expelled and thrown out.
Andrei Ivanovich was of a quiet disposition. He did not participate in the nighttime orgies of his comrades, who, despite the strictest supervision, had got themselves a mistress on the side— one for eight of them—nor in other pranks that went as far as blasphemy and the mockery of religion itself, only because the director demanded frequent attendance at church and the priest happened to be a bad one. But he was downcast. Ambition had been strongly awakened in him, but there was no activity or career before him. It would have been better for him not to be awakened! He listened to the professors getting excited at the podium, and remembered his former mentor, who had known how to speak clearly without getting excited. He heard lectures in chemistry and the philosophy of law, and profound professorial analyses of all the subtleties of political science, and the universal history of mankind on such an enormous scale that in three years the professor managed only to give an introduction and to speak on the development of communes in some German cities; but all this remained as some sort of misshapen scraps in his head. Thanks to his natural intelligence, he simply felt that that was not how to teach, but how to teach—he did not know. And he often remembered Alexander Petrovich, and it made him so sad that he did not know where to turn for sorrow.
But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: "This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life: real life is in the service. The great deeds are there." And without even a glance at the beautiful corner that so struck every visiting guest, without paying respects to his parents' remains, following the pattern of all ambitious men, he raced off to Petersburg, where, as is well known, our ardent youth flock from all ends of Russia—to serve, to shine, to make careers, or simply to skim the surface of our colorless, ice-cold, delusive higher education. Andrei Ivanovich's ambition was, however, brought up short from the very beginning by his uncle, the actual state councillor Onufry Ivanovich. He announced that the chief thing is good handwriting, that and nothing else, and without it one can become neither a minister nor a state councillor, whereas Tentetnikov's handwriting was the sort of which people say: "A magpie wrote it with her claw, and not a man."
With great difficulty, and with the help of his uncle's connections, after spending two months studying calligraphy, he finally found a position as a copying clerk in some department. When he entered the big, bright room, all filled with writing gentlemen, sitting at lacquered desks, scratching with their quills, and tilting their heads to one side, and when he himself was seated and straightaway handed some document to copy—an extraordinarily strange feeling came over him. For a moment it seemed to him that he was at some primary school, starting to learn his ABCs over again, as if on account of some delinquency he had been transferred from the upper grade to the lowest. The gentlemen sitting around him seemed to him so like pupils. Some of them were reading novels, holding them between the big pages of the case in hand, pretending to be busy with it and at the same time giving a start each time a superior appeared. His schooldays suddenly stood before him as an irretrievably lost paradise. So lofty did his studies suddenly become compared with this petty writing occupation. How much higher that school preparation for the service now seemed to him than the service itself. And suddenly in his thoughts Alexander Petrovich stood before him as if alive—his wonderful mentor, incomparable with anyone else, irreplaceable by anyone else—and tears suddenly poured in streams from his eyes. The room spun, the desks moved, the officials all mixed together, and he almost fell down in a momentary blackout. "No," he said to himself, recovering, "I'll set to work, however petty it seems at the start!" Harnessing his heart and spirit, he resolved to serve on the example of the others.
Where will one not find pleasures? They also live in Petersburg, despite its stern, somber appearance. A biting twenty below zero outside, a witch-blizzard shrieking like a desperate demon, pulling the collars of fur coats and greatcoats over heads, powdering men's mustaches and animals' muzzles, but friendly is the light in a window somewhere high up, perhaps even on the fourth floor; in a cozy room, by the light of modest stearin candles, to the hum of the samovar, a heart- and soul-warming conversation goes on, a bright page from an inspired Russian poet, such as God has bestowed upon His Russia, is being read, and a youth's young heart flutters so ardently and loftily, as never happens in any other lands, even under splendid southern skies.
Tentetnikov soon got accustomed to the service, only it became not the first thing or aim, as he had thought at the start, but something secondary. It served to organize his time, making him better cherish the remaining minutes. The uncle, the actual state councillor, was already beginning to think that something good would come of his nephew, when the nephew suddenly mucked things up. It must be said that among Andrei Ivanovich's friends there were two of what are known as disgruntled men. They were the sort of troublesomely strange characters who are unable to bear with equanimity not only injustice, but even anything that in their eyes looks like injustice. Basically kind, but disorderly in their actions, they were full of intolerance towards others. Their ardent talk and loftily indignant manner influenced him greatly. Arousing the nerves and the spirit of vexation in him, they made him notice all the trifles he had never even thought of paying attention to before. He suddenly took a dislike to Fyodor Fyodorovich Lenitsyn, the head of the department he worked in, a man of most agreeable appearance. He began to find myriads of faults in him, and came to hate him for having such a sugary expression when talking to a superior, and straightaway becoming all vinegar when addressing a subordinate. "I could forgive him," said Tentetnikov, "if the change in his face did not occur so quickly; but it's right there in front of my eyes, both sugar and vinegar at once!" After that he started noticing every step. It seemed to him that Fyodor Fyodorovich gave himself far too many airs, that he had all the ways of a minor official, to wit: making note of all tho
se who did not come to congratulate him on festive occasions, even taking revenge on all those whose names were not found on the doorkeeper's list, and a host of other sinful accessories which neither a good nor a wicked man can do without. He felt a nervous loathing for him. Some evil spirit prompted him to do something unpleasant to Fyodor Fyodorovich. He sought it out with some special enjoyment, and he succeeded. Once he exchanged such words with him that the authorities declared he must either apologize or retire. He sent in his resignation. His uncle, the actual state councillor, came to him all frightened and beseeching.
"For Christ's sake! have mercy, Andrei Ivanovich, what are you doing? Leaving a career that has begun so profitably, only because the superior happens to be not so . . . What is this? If one looked at such things, there would be no one left in the service. Be reasonable, be reasonable! There's still time! Renounce your pride and your amour propre, go and talk with him!"
"That's not the point, dear uncle," said the nephew. "It's not hard for me to apologize, the more so as I am indeed to blame. He is my superior, and I should never have spoken to him in that way. But the point is this: you forget that I have a different service; I have three hundred peasant souls, my estate is in disorder, and the steward is a fool. It will be no great loss to the state if someone else sits in the office copying papers instead of me, but it will be a great loss if three hundred men don't pay their taxes. I am a landowner: the title is not a worthless one. If I take care to preserve, protect, and improve the lot of the people entrusted to me, and present the state with three hundred fit, sober, and industrious subjects—will my service be in any way worse than the service of some department chief Lenitsyn?"
The actual state councillor stood gaping in astonishment. He had not expected such a torrent of words. After a moment's thought, he began in the following vein:
"But all the same ... all the same . . . why go perish yourself in the country? What sort of society is there among muzhiks? Here, after all, you can come across a general or a prince in the street. If you wish, you can walk past some handsome public buildings, or else go and look at the Neva, but there whatever comes along is either a muzhik or a wench. Why condemn yourself to ignorance for the rest of your life?"
So spoke his uncle, the actual state councillor. He himself had never once in his life walked any other street than the one that led to his place of service, where there were no handsome public buildings; he never noticed anyone he met, either general or prince; he had not the foggiest notion of the fancies that are the attraction of a capital for people greedy for license, and had never once in his life even been in a theater. He said all this solely in order to stir up the young man's ambition and work on his imagination. In this, however, he did not succeed: Tentetnikov stubbornly held his own. He had begun to weary of the departments and the capital. The countryside had begun to appear as a sort of haven of freedom, a nourisher of thoughts and intentions, the only path for useful activity. Some two weeks after this conversation, he was already in the vicinity of the places where his childhood had flown by. How it all started coming back to him, how his heart began to beat when he felt he was nearing his father's estate! He had already completely forgotten many places and gazed curiously, like a newcomer, at the beautiful views. When the road raced through a narrow ravine into the thick of a vast, overgrown forest, and he saw above, below, over, and under himself three-century-old oaks of enormous girth, mixed with silver firs, elms, and black poplars that overtopped the white, and when, to the question, "Whose forest?" he was told, "Tentetnikov's"; when, emerging from the forest, the road raced across meadows, past aspen groves, willows, and vines young and old, with a view of the distant mountains, and flew over bridges which in various places crossed one and the same river, leaving it now to the right, now to the left of him, and when, to the question, "Whose fields and water meadows?" he was answered, "Tentetnikov's"; when, after that, the road went uphill and over a level elevation past unharvested fields of wheat, rye, and oats on one side, and on the other past all the places he had just driven by, which all suddenly appeared in the picturesque distance, and when, gradually darkening, the road started to enter and then did enter under the shade of wide-spreading trees, scattered over a green carpet right up to the estate, and before him peasant cottages and red-roofed manor buildings began to flash; when the ardently pounding heart knew even without asking where it had come to—the constantly accumulating feelings finally burst out in almost these words: "Well, haven't I been a fool all this while? Destiny appointed me the owner of an earthly paradise, a prince, and I got myself enslaved as a scrivener in an office! After studying, being educated, enlightened, laying up quite a large store of information necessary precisely in order to direct people, to improve the whole region, to fulfill the manifold duties of a landowner as judge, manager, keeper of order, I entrusted this place to an ignorant steward! And instead of that chose what?—copying papers, which a cantonist who never went to any school can do incomparably better!" And once again Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov called himself a fool.
And meanwhile another spectacle awaited him. Having learned of the master's arrival, the population of the entire village gathered by the porch. Gay-colored kerchiefs, headbands, scarfs, homespun coats, beards of all sorts—spade, shovel, wedge-shaped, red, blond, and white as silver—covered the whole square. The muzhiks boomed out: "Our provider, we've waited so long!" The women wailed: "Gold, the heart's silver!" Those who stood further away even fought in their zeal to press forward. A wobbly crone who looked like a dried pear crept between the others' legs, accosted him, clasped her hands, and shrieked: "Our little runny-nose, what a weakling you are! the cursed Germans have starved you out!" "Away with you, granny!" the spade, shovel, and wedge-shaped beards all shouted at her. "Watch where you're shoving, you old scraggy one!" Someone tacked on a little word, at which only a Russian peasant could keep from laughing. The master could not help himself and laughed, but nevertheless he was deeply touched in his soul. "So much love! and what for?" he thought to himself. "For never having seen them, for never concerning myself with them! I give my word that henceforth I will share all your labors and concerns with you! I'll do everything to help you become what you ought to be, what the good nature that is in you meant you to be, so that your love for me will not be in vain, so that I will indeed be your provider!"
And in fact Tentetnikov began managing and giving orders in earnest. He saw on the spot that the steward was an old woman and a fool, with all the qualities of a rotten steward—that is, he kept a careful account of the hens and the eggs, of the yarn and linen the women brought, but did not know a blessed thing about harvesting and sowing, and on top of that suspected the peasants of making attempts on his life. He threw out the fool steward and chose another to replace him, a perky one. He disregarded trifles and paid attention to the main things, reduced the corvée, decreased the number of days the muzhiks had to work for him, added more time for them to work for themselves, and thought that things would now go most excellently. He began to enter into everything himself, to appear in the fields, on the threshing floor, in the barns, at the mills, on the wharf where barges and flatboats were loaded and sent off.
"He's a quick-stepper, that he is!" the muzhiks started saying, and even scratched their heads, because from long-standing womanish management they had turned into a rather lazy lot. But this did not last long. The Russian muzhik is clever and intelligent: they soon understood that though the master was quick and wanted to take many things in hand, yet precisely how, in what way to take them in hand—of this he still knew nothing, he spoke somehow too literately and fancifully, puzzling for a muzhik and beyond his ability. As a result, while there was not really a total lack of comprehension between master and muzhik, they simply sang to different tunes, never able to produce the same note. Tentetnikov began to notice that everything turned out somehow worse on the master's land than on the muzhik's: the sowing came earlier, the sprouting later. Yet it seemed they worked well
: he himself was there and even ordered a reward of a noggin of vodka for diligent work. The muzhiks had long had rye in the ear, oats swelling, millet bushing out, while his grain was still in the shoot and the ears had not yet begun to form. In short, the master began to notice that the muzhiks were simply cheating him, despite all his good turns. He made an attempt to reproach them, but received the following answer: "How can it be, your honor, that we haven't been zealous for the master's profit? You yourself were pleased to see how diligently we ploughed and sowed: you ordered us given a noggin of vodka each." What objection could he make to that? "But why has it turned out so badly now?" the master persisted. "Who knows! Must be worms gnawed it from below, and just look at this summer: no rain at all." But the master could see that worms had not gnawed the muzhiks' crops from below, and it rained somehow oddly, in strips: the muzhiks got it, while the master's fields did not get so much as a single drop. It was harder still for him to get along with the women. They asked so often to be excused from work, complaining about the heaviness of the corvée. How strange! He had abolished outright all bringing in of linen, berries, mushrooms, and nuts, and reduced the other tasks by half, thinking that the women would spend this time on housework, sewing, making clothes for their husbands, improving their kitchen gardens. Not a bit of it! Such idleness, fights, gossip, and all sorts of quarrels set in among the fair sex that the husbands kept coming to him with such words as: "Master, quiet down this demon of a woman! Just like some devil! she won't let me live!" Several times, with heavy heart, he wanted to introduce severity. But how could he be severe? The woman would come as such a woman, get into such shrieking, was so sick, so ailing, would wrap herself up in such poor, vile rags—God only knows where she got them. "Go, just leave my sight, God be with you!" poor Tentetnikov would say, after which he would have the pleasure of seeing how the sick woman, coming out, would start squabbling with a neighbor over some turnip and give her such a drubbing as even a healthy man would not be capable of. He decided to try and start some sort of school among them, but such nonsense came out of it that he even hung his head—it would be better not to think about it! All this significantly chilled his enthusiasm both for management and for acting as judge, and generally for all activity. He was present at the field work almost without noticing it: his thoughts were far away, his eyes searched for extraneous objects. During the mowing he did not watch the quick raising of sixty scythes at once, followed by the measured fall, with a faint sound, of rows of tall grass; instead he looked off to the side at some bend of the river, on the bank of which walked some red-nosed, red-legged stalker—a stork, of course, not a man; he watched the stork catch a fish and hold it crosswise in its beak, as if considering whether to swallow it or not, and at the same time looking intently up the river, where, some distance away, another stork could be seen who had not yet caught a fish, but was looking intently at the one who already had. During the harvest, he did not look at how the sheaves were piled in shocks, in crosses, or sometimes simply in heaps. He hardly cared whether the piling and stacking was done lazily or briskly. Eyes closed, face lifted up to the spacious sky, he allowed his nose to imbibe the scent of the fields and his ears to be struck by the voices of the songful populace of the air, when it comes from everywhere, heaven and earth, to join in one harmonious chorus with no discord among themselves. The quail throbs, the corncrake crakes in the grass, linnets warble and twitter as they fly from place to place, the trilling of the lark spills down an invisible stairway of air, and the whooping of cranes rushing in a line off to one side—just like the sounding of silver trumpets—comes from the emptiness of the resoundingly vibrant airy desert. If the field work was close to him, he was far away from it; if it was far away, his eyes sought out things that were close. And he was like the distracted schoolboy who, while looking into his book, sees only the snook his comrade is cocking at him at the same time. In the end he stopped going out to the field work altogether, dropped entirely all administering of justice and punishments, firmly ensconced himself inside, and even stopped receiving the steward with his reports.
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