The Same Old Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “Blush at the thought of such a pure, sacred memory! That would mean there’s no room for poetry…”

  “What’s poetry got to do with such foolishness? Like that poetry, for example, in your aunt’s letter! The yellow flower, the lake, some secret or other… I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it made me feel; I was close to blushing, and I certainly should have got over blushing by now!”

  “That’s awful, awful, Uncle! So you mean you’ve never been in love?”

  “I could never stand keepsakes.”

  “But that’s living as if you were made of wood!” Alexander was beside himself. “That’s vegetating, not living! Vegetating without inspiration, without life, without love…”

  “And without hair!” his uncle added.

  “Uncle, how can you so cold-bloodedly ridicule what is best in this world? That’s a crime… love is the most sacred of emotions!”

  “I’m well acquainted with that sacred love of yours: at your age, all you see is a lock of hair, a dainty slipper, a garter, a touch of the hand, and this exalted love of yours runs like a shudder through your whole body – but once you give way to it, then you’re in trouble… Your love, unfortunately, lies ahead of you, and there’s no getting away from that – but finding a career will get away from you, if you don’t get down to business.”

  “But isn’t love just as serious a matter?”

  “No, it’s a pleasant distraction, but you shouldn’t take it too seriously, otherwise it will let you down. And that is precisely what I fear for you.”

  His uncle shook his head and said, “I’ve almost found you a position; you do want one, I suppose?”

  “Oh, Uncle, I’m so pleased!”

  Alexander rushed to kiss his uncle on the cheek.

  “You were quick to seize the opportunity!” said his uncle, wiping his cheek. “Why did I let myself be taken by surprise! Now listen; I want you to tell me what you know: what line of work do you feel equipped for?”

  “I know divinity, civil, criminal, natural and customary law, diplomacy, political economics, national law, philosophy, aesthetics, archaeology…”

  “Slow down! What I want to know is whether you can write decent Russian. Right now, that’s the most important thing.”

  “What a question, Uncle – can I write Russian!” said Alexander, and hurried over to the chest of drawers and started to take out various papers, while his uncle picked some letter which was lying on the table and started to read it.

  Alexander brought the papers to the table and saw his uncle reading the letter. The papers fell from his hands.

  “What is that you’re reading, Uncle?” he said apprehensively.

  “There was this letter lying on the table – to one of your friends, no doubt. I’m sorry, I just wanted to see how you wrote.”

  “And you’ve read it?”

  “Almost – everything except the last two lines – I’m just finishing it. What’s the matter? There can’t be any secrets in it, otherwise it wouldn’t just be lying around…”

  “So now what do you think of me?”

  “I think that you write quite well – correctly and fluently…”

  “Then you didn’t read what I wrote?” Alexander asked eagerly.

  “No, I think I read it all,” said Pyotr Ivanych, looking at both pages. “First you describe St Petersburg and your impressions, and then you write about me.”

  “My God!” Alexander exclaimed, and covered his face with his hands.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Well, you don’t seem at all bothered! Aren’t you angry? Don’t you hate me?”

  “Not at all! Why should I lose my temper?”

  “Repeat that, and set my mind at rest.”

  “The answer is no, no, no!”

  “I still can’t believe you – prove it to me, Uncle…”

  “How?”

  “Embrace me!”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a meaningless gesture: it makes no sense, no – or, to use the words of your professor, my intelligence won’t let me; now if you were a woman – that would be a different matter: then it wouldn’t have to make any sense – it would be prompted by quite a different feeling.”

  “You mean your feelings would get the better of you, your emotions would have to find an outlet…”

  “My feelings don’t get the better of me – and if they did, I would control myself – and I advise you to do the same.”

  “But why?”

  “Because afterwards, when you’ve taken a closer look at the person you’ve embraced, you won’t have to blush at the thought.”

  “Hasn’t it ever happened, Uncle, that you have rebuffed someone and then regretted it?”

  “Yes, it happens, and that’s why I never rebuff anyone!”

  “Then you won’t rebuff me either for my gesture, and call me a monster?”

  “Where you come from, then, anyone who writes rubbish is a monster, so there must be thousands of them around.”

  “But to read such bitter truths about yourself – and written by your own nephew!”

  “Oh, you think you were writing the truth?…”

  “Oh Uncle, of course I was mistaken… I’ll correct it… I’m sorry…”

  “You want me to dictate the truth?”

  “Please do!”

  “Well, sit down and write!”

  “Alexander took out a sheet of paper and picked up a pen, and Pyotr Ivanych, looking at the letter he had read, began to dictate:

  “My dear friend – have you got that down?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t describe to you my impressions of St Petersburg.”

  “I won’t,” repeated Alexander as he wrote the words down.

  “St Petersburg has already been described long ago, and what hasn’t been described you should come and see for yourself; my impressions are of no use to you, so why waste the time and the paper? I would do better to describe my uncle, because that affects me personally.”

  “My uncle,” Alexander repeated.

  “Now you write that I’m nice and intelligent – it may or may not be true, so let’s split the difference and write:

  “My uncle is not stupid and not ill natured, and wishes me well…”

  “Dear Uncle, I can appreciate that, and I feel…” said Alexander, reaching out to kiss him.

  “…although he doesn’t hover over me…” Pyotr Ivanych continued dictating. Alexander, failing in his attempt, sat down quickly in his seat. “…but wishes me well because he has no reason or motive for wishing me ill, and because my mother asked this of him, and in the past she had been good to him. He says he does not love me – and quite rightly, because it’s impossible to come to love someone in two weeks, and I don’t yet love him, although I actually assure him of the contrary.”

  “How can you say that?” Alexander exclaimed.

  “Keep on writing… But we are beginning to get used to each other. He even claims that one can do without love altogether. He doesn’t sit down and hug me from morning to night, because there’s absolutely no need for that, and in any case he doesn’t have the time… But dead against any demonstration of true feelings… You can leave that in, it’s good. Have you got it?

  “Now let’s see what else you have put… No room for poetry in his soul, a demon… Go on writing!”

  While Alexander was writing, Pyotr Ivanych picked up a piece of paper from the table, twisted it into a taper, set light to it and lit a cigar. He threw down the paper and stamped it out.

  He went on dictating: “My uncle is neither a demon nor an angel, but just like anyone else, although not exactly like you and me. His thoughts and his feelings are earth-bound, and he thinks that if
we live on the earth, then we shouldn’t leave it to fly up to the heavens – which so far no one has asked us to do – and should spend our time dealing with the human business which we have been assigned to. Accordingly, he takes all earthly matters, and indeed life itself, for what they are, and not for what we would like them to be. He believes in good, and at the same time in evil, in the beautiful and in the ugly. He also believes in love and friendship, but not that they fell from heaven into the dirt, and believes that they were created along with people and for people, and therefore that is how they should be understood, and furthermore that everything should be very closely and realistically examined, and that we should not allow ourselves to be carried away in God knows what directions. He concedes the possibility of affability which, after a period of casual acquaintanceship and habituation, may turn into friendship. But he also believes that when people are apart, habit loses its force, and they forget each other, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So he assures me that I will forget you, and you will forget me. To me – and no doubt to you – that seems perverse, but his advice is to get used to the idea, so that neither of us will make fools of ourselves. With slight qualifications, he feels the same way about love: he doesn’t believe in enduring and eternal love any more than he does in fairies, and he advises us to follow his example in this. As a matter of fact, he advises me to think about all that as little as possible, and I offer you the same advice. It is something which he says comes of its own accord – it doesn’t have to be sought; he says that there’s more to life than just that, and that like everything else in life it comes when the time is right, and spending your life dreaming about that is stupid. Those who seek it, and can’t stand a moment without it, are fixated on their hearts, and what is worse, doing so at the expense of their heads. Uncle likes to spend his time on business, and he advises you and me to do the same. We are members of society, he says, and society needs us; while he is working he’s not forgetting himself: work brings in money, and money brings comforts, which he is very fond of. Also, it’s possible that he has intentions, as a consequence of which it is likely that it won’t be me who will be his heir. Uncle is not always thinking of his work and the factory: he knows some literature by heart – and not only Pushkin…”

  “You, Uncle?” Alexander said in surprise.

  “Yes, as you will discover some day. Go on writing!”

  “He reads in two languages everything that is noteworthy in all areas of human knowledge; he likes art and has a fine collection of paintings of the Flemish school – that’s his taste – and goes frequently to the theatre, but doesn’t make a fuss about it or make a big show of it; he doesn’t go into ecstasies over it – he thinks that’s childish, and that one should restrain oneself. He doesn’t impose his impressions on others, because he thinks no one needs them. He doesn’t let his tongue run away with him, and advises us to follow his example. Goodbye, write to me a little less often – it’s not worth your time. Your friend, etc. And of course the month and date.”

  “How can I send a letter like this?” said Alexander. “‘Write to me a little less often’? How could I say something like this to someone who went out of his way to travel 150 versts just to say a last farewell to me! And giving him all this advice… I’m no cleverer than him; he graduated second in his class.”

  “It doesn’t matter, send it to him anyway, maybe he’ll be the wiser for it, and it will help him think about things differently. As for you, you may have completed your studies, but your true education is only beginning.”

  “Uncle, I don’t think I can bring myself…”

  “I never interfere in other people’s business, but you yourself asked for my help; and here am I trying to give you a push in the right direction, and making your first step easier, while you are resisting. Well, do as you wish, I’m just giving you my opinion, and I won’t put any pressure on you – I’m not your nanny.”

  “Sorry, Uncle, I’m ready to take your advice,” said Alexander, sealing the letter as he spoke.

  Having sealed the first letter, he started looking for the other one to Sofia. He looked on the table – no, not there. He looked under the table, not there either – nor any sign of it in the drawer.

  “What are you looking for?” said his uncle.

  “I’m looking for the other letter – the one to Sofia.”

  His uncle started looking too.

  “Where can it be?” said Pyotr Ivanych. “I couldn’t have thrown it out of the window…”

  “Uncle, what have you gone and done? You used it to light your cigar!” Alexander said dejectedly, and picked up the charred remains of the letter.

  “Did I really?” exclaimed his uncle. “But how could I have done? I just didn’t notice; and now I seem to have burnt something precious… but come to think of it… you know what, maybe it’s not such a bad thing from one point of view…”

  “But, Uncle, I swear to God, it’s not good from any point of view,” Alexander said in despair.

  “No, it really is a good thing. You won’t have time to rewrite it in time for the next post – and later on, you’ll have thought better of it, and you’ll be busy with your work and you won’t have time, and that way you will have done one less foolish thing.”

  “But what is she going to think of me?”

  “Whatever she chooses to. As a matter of fact, it will even be useful to her. I mean, you’re not going to marry her, are you? She’s going to think that you’ve forgotten her, and she’ll end up forgetting you too, and will have one less reason to blush when she’s with her future fiancé, and is telling him that she has never loved anyone else but him.”

  “You are an extraordinary man, Uncle! For you there’s no such thing as constancy, no such thing as a sacred promise… Life is great, blissful, unending delights… it’s like a smooth, placid and beautiful lake…”

  “And don’t forget those yellow flowers growing in it, of course!” his uncle interrupted him to say.

  “…like a lake,” continued Alexander, “full of mystery and allure, with so much hidden inside it.”

  “Like slime, my dear fellow.”

  “Why throw in slime, Uncle? Why are you so anxious to destroy and stamp out all joy, hope and everything that’s good – and always looking on the dark side?”

  “Actually, I look on the realistic side – and I urge you to do the same; that way you won’t end up feeling a fool. With your outlook, life is good where you come from in the provinces, where people don’t know what life is like – although they’re not really people: more like angels. Take Zayezzhalov, the holy man, your auntie – such an exalted, sensitive soul – and Sofia, I imagine, is just as big a fool as the aunt, not to mention…”

  “Please stop, Uncle!” Alexander was enraged.

  “…not to mention dreamers like yourself always sniffing the wind for a whiff of eternal love and friendship whichever direction it may be coming from… I’m telling you for the hundredth time – you should never have come!”

  “Will she really be telling her intended that she never loved anyone else!” said Alexander almost to himself.

  “There you go again!”

  “No, I’m sure that she will simply and with high-minded honesty hand over my letters to him and…”

  “And the keepsakes,” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “Yes, and the tokens of our relationship… and she will say, ‘So this is the one who first stirred my heartstrings, and this is the name they responded to for the first time.’”

  His uncle started to raise his eyebrows and widen his eyes. Alexander said nothing.

  “So are you telling me that you’ve stopped playing on your own heartstrings? Well, my dear boy, that Sofia of yours is really stupid if she would do something like that. I can only hope that she has a mother or someone else who would be able to stop her.”

  “Uncl
e, if you can bring yourself to describe as stupidity such a profoundly moral impulse, such a spontaneous and noble gesture, what are we to think of you?”

  “Suit yourself. God knows what she would make her fiancé suspect; the wedding might even be called off, and why? Because back then you once picked yellow flowers together… No, no, that’s not the way things are done. Anyway, since you can write Russian, tomorrow we’ll go to the ministry; I’ve already mentioned you to a department head, an old colleague of mine. He told me that there’s a vacancy, so there’s no time to be wasted… what’s that folder you’ve produced?”

  “It’s my university notes. Here, you might like to read a few pages of Ivan Semyonych’s lectures on Greek art.”

  So saying, he was already beginning to leaf rapidly through his notes.

  “Oh no! Do me a favour and spare me that!” Pyotr Ivanych responded with a frown. “And what’s that?”

  “These are the papers I have written which I would like to show to my supervisor. There’s one in particular, the draft of a project I’ve worked on…”

  “Yes, one of those projects which were completed a thousand years ago, or which cannot be completed and nobody needs.”

  “How can you say that, Uncle? It’s a proposal that has already been presented to an important person, a supporter of enlightenment, and on the strength of it he invited me to dine with the rector. Here is the beginning of another project.”

  “Come and have dinner with me twice, only don’t finish that other project.”

  “But, why not?”

  “Because you won’t be writing anything worthwhile now, and time is passing.”

  “What do you mean?… After all those lectures I attended…”

  “They may serve some purpose in time, but for now the thing is to observe, learn and do what they tell you to do.”

  “But how will my supervisor know what my abilities are?”