The Same Old Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “You mean they serve them like that on purpose?”

  “God knows! I did ask – all the fellows just laughed. They said, ‘They’re born like that, get it?’ First came a hot course, quite normal, served with pies – but about the size of a thimble; you pop half a dozen of them in your mouth, start chewing, only to find you’ve already swallowed them without knowing it – they dissolved… Straight after the first course, they suddenly serve a sweet course, then beef, then ice cream, then some kind of greens, and finally a roast… couldn’t eat that stuff!”

  “So your stove was never lit? Of course, anyone would lose weight on that diet!” said Anton Ivanych, getting up from the table. “We offer thanks to thee, O God,” he began aloud with a deep sigh, “who filled the earth with heavenly blessings… What am I saying? My tongue ran away with me; I mean ‘earthly blessings’ – and do not deprive me of your heavenly kingdom.

  “Clear the table! The mistress and the young master will not be eating. This evening prepare another suckling pig… or do you have a turkey? Alexander Fyodorych likes turkey, and he must be getting hungry. And now bring some fresh hay to the attic for me; I’m going to take a nap for an hour or so, but wake me up in time for tea. If Alexander Fyodorych stirs… well, you know, wake me up.”

  After his nap, he went to Anna Pavlovna.

  “So, Anton Ivanych, what do you have to tell me?”

  “Nothing, dear lady, I just want to thank you so much for your hospitality… and I had such a nice nap – the hay was so fresh and smelt so good…”

  “You’re most welcome, Anton Ivanych! So, what does Yevsei say? Did you ask him?”

  “Of course I did! I found out everything – nothing to it! The problem will soon be solved. It’s all because, let me tell you, the food was so bad there.”

  “The food?”

  “Yes, judge for yourself. Cucumbers, ten for forty copecks. Suckling pig, two roubles. The food all comes from the confectioner’s – never enough to fill your stomach. Of course people are going to get thin! Don’t worry, dear lady, we’ll put him back on his feet now that he’s here, and get him healthy. Just give the order to prepare a little more birch liquor. I’ll give you the recipe – I got it from Prokof Astafich. Give him a glass or two in the morning and in the evening – and before dinner too. You can use holy water… do you have any?”

  “Yes, I do; you brought some yourself.”

  “Oh yes, so I did. And make sure the food is fattening. I ordered suckling pig or turkey for supper.”

  “Thank you, Anton Ivanych.”

  “Not at all, dear lady! Perhaps you would care to order some chickens with white sauce?”

  “Yes, I will…”

  “No need to trouble yourself. What am I here for? I’ll take care of it. Let me…”

  “Yes, please do, you’re such a help, like a father to this family.”

  He left the room, but she started thinking.

  Her woman’s instinct and her mother’s heart told her that it was not food which was the real reason for Alexander’s despondent mood. She tried to draw it out of him indirectly by dropping hints and in a roundabout way, but Alexander didn’t take the hints and remained silent. Two weeks went by in this fashion. A lot of suckling pigs, chickens and turkeys came Anton Ivanych’s way, but Alexander remained just as glum and thin as ever, and his hair didn’t grow back.

  Finally, Anna Pavlovna made up her mind to have it out with him.

  “Listen, my dear Sashenka,” she said to him when the opportunity presented itself. “You’ve been living here for a month now, and I haven’t seen you smile once. You move around like a storm cloud, looking down at the floor. Is it that you don’t find any satisfaction on your home ground? It looks as if life was better for you when you were away, and now you’re pining for that life? It’s breaking my heart to see you like this. What happened to you? Tell me what it is you’re missing – whatever it is, I’ll make sure you get it. Has someone upset you? I’ll see that they’ll pay for it!”

  “Don’t worry, Mummy,” said Alexander, “it’s nothing really! It’s just that I’ve grown up, matured and am thinking about things more: that’s why I’m a little glum…”

  “And what about being so thin and losing your hair?”

  “I can’t explain why, there’s no way I can tell you everything that happened in eight years. Quite possibly my health has suffered a little…”

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “Here and here,” he said pointing to his head and his heart.

  Anna Pavlovna felt his forehead with her hand.

  “No fever,” she said. “What could it be? A shooting pain in the head?”

  “No… it’s just…”

  “Sashenka, let’s send for Ivan Andreich.”

  “Who is Ivan Andreich?”

  “The new doctor; he came about two years ago – a real expert. He never prescribes any medicine. He gives tiny grains that he makes himself – and they help. Our Foma had some stomach trouble: he was screaming with pain for three days. The doctor gave him three grains – the pain disappeared like magic! Let’s get you some treatment, my darling!”

  “No, Mummy, that won’t help; it will go away by itself.”

  “So why are you moping like this? You must have had some bad experience – what was it?”

  “It was just…”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I don’t know myself – I’m just miserable.”

  “Heavens above! It’s a total mystery!” said Anna Pavlovna. “You say you like the food, you have every comfort, a good position. Could it be – I wonder? And you’re listless! Sashenka,” she said quietly after a pause, “isn’t it time you… got married?”

  “What do you mean?! No, I’m not getting married.”

  “I have my eye on a girl – a little doll, rosy-cheeked, and so delicate, absolutely gorgeous, a real beauty! And such a beautifully slim waist and a slim figure. She was at boarding school in the city. She owns seventy-five serfs and is worth 25,000 roubles and comes with a splendid dowry. Her people were in business in Moscow, and she comes from a good family… So, Sashenka, what about it? I’ve already had coffee with her mother, and just casually dropped a hint. She showed every sign of being delighted…”

  “I’m not getting married,” Alexander repeated.

  “You mean never?”

  “Never.”

  “Merciful God! Where will this all end? People are people, everyone except you – God knows what you are! And what joy it would bring me if God would grant me grandchildren to make a fuss of. Believe me: marry her and you will grow to love her…”

  “I will not grow to love her, Mummy, I’ve done with love.”

  “How could you have? You haven’t even been married. Who were you in love with there?”

  “A girl.”

  “How come you didn’t get married?”

  “She betrayed me.”

  “How do you mean, ‘betrayed’? You weren’t married to her?”

  Alexander said nothing.

  “What kind of young women can they be in St Petersburg, if they fall in love before marriage? Betray! How disgraceful! She had happiness within her grasp and couldn’t appreciate it! Despicable! If I ever met her, I would spit in her face. Is that how your uncle was looking after you? Who could she have preferred to you? If only I had been there! Anyway, she’s not the only girl in the world: you’ll find someone to love another time.”

  “I did fall in love with someone another time.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A widow.”

  “So how come you didn’t marry her?”

  “I was the one who betrayed her.”

  Anna Pavlovna looked at him and didn’t know what to say.

  “Betrayed her!…” she repeated. “Obviously a sham
eless hussy!” she added. “A real den of debauchery, God forgive us! Love before marriage, without the sacraments of the Church, unfaithfulness. When I think of all the terrible things that go on in this world, the end of the world must be at hand! But tell me, isn’t there anything I can do for you? Perhaps the food isn’t to your liking – I can send for a cook from the town…”

  “No, thank you, everything is fine.”

  “Perhaps it’s dull just being by yourself; I could ask some neighbours to call.”

  “No, no, please don’t bother, Mummy. It’s nice and quiet here: it’s fine, it will soon pass… I still haven’t got my bearings.”

  And that was all that Anna Pavlovna could get out of him.

  “No,” she thought to herself, “without God, there’s no way forward.” She asked Alexander if he would go to Mass with her in the next village, but he overslept twice, and she couldn’t bring herself to wake him. Finally she asked him to go one evening to the night service. “I suppose so,” he said, and they went. His mother entered the church quickly and stood right next to the choir. Alexander stationed himself near the door.

  The sun was setting, and its slanting rays played on the golden frames of the icons or lit up the dark, severe images of the saints and blotted out with their brilliance the weak and tremulous flickering of the candles. The church was almost empty; the peasants were at work in the fields. But in a corner near the exit, a few old women were huddled together wearing white headscarves. Some others, looking forlorn with their cheeks resting on their hands, were sitting on the stone step of a side altar, from time to time emitting loud sighs of distress – whether for their sins or for their domestic problems, God alone knows. Others again fell to the ground and prostrated themselves, and lay there for hours praying.

  A fresh breeze blew in through the iron grating into the window, lifting the cloth on the altar and rustling the grey hairs of the priest, turning the page of a book here and there and snuffing out a candle. The footsteps of the priest and the sexton rang out on the stone floor of the empty church. The sound of their voices echoed cheerlessly among the columns. Up in the dome, jackdaws cawed and sparrows chirped, flying back and forth from one window to another, the flapping of their wings and the tolling of the bells sometimes drowning out the service…

  “As long as a man’s life forces are hard at work,” Alexander was thinking, “as long as his desires and passions are driving him, his feelings are fully engaged, and he shuns the calming, important, solemn process of contemplation to which religion leads, and he seeks consolation in it only when his forces are spent and exhausted, his hopes are crushed, and he is burdened with age…”

  Little by little, the sight of these familiar objects began to evoke memories within him. In his mind, he revisited his childhood and youth – the time before he left for St Petersburg. He remembered how, when he was a child, he repeated the prayers after his mother. How she taught him about the guardian angel who guards the human soul and wages a constant struggle with the Evil One; he remembered how, pointing at the stars, she explained that they were God’s angels, who watch the world and keep count of the good and evil deeds of people, and how these divine beings weep when a person’s evil deeds outweigh his good deeds, and how they rejoice when the good outweighs the evil. She would point to the distant blue of the horizon and tell him that that was Zion… Alexander sighed as he awoke from these memories.

  “Oh, if only I could believe all this once again!” he thought. “The beliefs of my childhood are lost, but what have I learnt since that is new and certain? Nothing. What I have found is doubt, mere talk, theories… I have ended up further from the truth than ever. Why all this clash of opinions, all this hair-splitting? My God! When the heart is no longer warmed by the heat of faith, how can one hope to be happy? Am I any happier now?”

  The service ended. Alexander returned home even more despondent than he had set out. Anna Pavlovna had no idea what to do. Once he woke up earlier than usual, and heard a rustling at his bedside. He looked round: an old woman was standing over him and whispering. She disappeared as soon as she saw that she had been noticed. Under his pillow Alexander found a herb of some kind, and an amulet had been hung around his neck.

  “What does this mean?” Alexander asked his mother. “Who was that old woman who came into my room?”

  Anna Pavlovna was embarrassed.

  “That… was Nikitishna,” she said.

  “Who is this Nikitishna?”

  “Well, my dear, you see… I don’t want you to be angry…”

  “What is this all about? Tell me!”

  “She helps a lot of people, they say. She just whispers over water and breathes on someone sleeping – and it all goes away.”

  “Two years ago,” said Agrafena, “a fiery serpent used to fly down the widow Sidorikha’s chimney at night…”

  At this point Anna Pavlovna spat.

  “Nikitishna,” Agrafena continued, “cast a spell on the serpent, and it stopped coming.”

  “So what happened to the widow Sidorikha?” asked Alexander.

  “She gave birth, but the child was all black and skinny, and it died after two days.”

  Alexander burst out laughing, perhaps for the first time since his arrival.

  “Where did you find her?” he asked.

  “Anton Ivanych brought her,” Anna Pavlovna replied.

  “Why are you so willing to listen to that fool?”

  “A fool! Oh, Sashenka, how can you? It’s a sin! Anton Ivanych a fool! How can you say such a thing? Anton Ivanych is our benefactor, our friend!”

  “Then take this amulet and give it to our ‘friend and benefactor’ – let him wear it round his neck.”

  From then on, he always locked the door when he went to bed at night.

  Two or three months went by. Little by little, the seclusion, the quiet, the domestic life and all the comforts that went with it helped Alexander to put some flesh back on his bones. Idleness, freedom from care and the absence of any moral disturbances gave him the peace of mind that he had sought in vain in St Petersburg. While he was there, in flight from the world of ideas and the arts, confined within stone walls, he wanted only to sleep like a mole, but he was constantly troubled by surges of envy and frustration. Everything that happened in the worlds of science and art, the emergence of every new celebrity, confronted him with the question: “Why not me, why is it never me?” In St Petersburg, at every turn he would be forced to make invidious comparisons by the people he met. There – he was so often found wanting; there, it was as if he was facing a mirror in which he saw all his weaknesses reflected, and there… was the inexorable figure of his uncle constantly deriding his way of thinking, his idleness and his totally unwarranted dreams of glory. There – was a world of sophistication and refinement and an abundance of talent, in which he played no part. And finally, there – people tried to subject life to certain conditions, to bring its dark and enigmatic side into the light, leaving no room for feeling, passion or dreams, and robbing life of its poetic enchantment, wanting only to stamp it out – a dry, dull, uniform and oppressive pattern…

  But here – what freedom! Here – he was better, cleverer than the rest! Here – he was idolized by everyone for versts around. Furthermore, here – confronted by nature at every step, his soul was nourished by peaceful and restful impressions. The babbling of the brooks, the whisper of the leaves, the chill and at times the very silence of nature inspired thought and aroused feeling. In the garden, in the fields and in the house, he was visited by memories of his childhood and youth. Anna Pavlovna, sitting by his side, would sometimes seem to divine his thoughts. She helped him to revive his memory of certain trifling details of life which were dear to him, or simply spoke of things which he had forgotten.

  “Look at those lime trees,” she said, pointing to the garden, “they were planted by your father. I was preg
nant with you. I would sit here on the balcony and watch him. He would work and work away and look at me, with sweat pouring from him in torrents. ‘Ah! You’re here?’ he would say. ‘That’s what makes it such a pleasure to work!’ And then he would go back to work. And there is the meadow where you used to play with the other children. You always got so angry – any little thing that rubbed you the wrong way, and you would cry blue murder. Once, Agashka – the one who’s married to Kuzma now; his is the third cabin from the village fence – happened to shove you – your nose was all bloody and bruised. Your father gave her such a thrashing – I had a hard time getting him to stop.”

  Alexander mentally supplemented these memories with others: “It was on that bench over there under the tree,” he thought, “that I used to sit with Sofia – I was so happy then. And over there between the two lilac bushes, she gave me my first kiss.” And all that he could see so clearly. He would smile at these recollections and spend hours sitting on the balcony, watching the sun rise or set, listening to the bird chorus, the lapping of waves on the lake and the humming of the unseen insects.

  “My God! How good it is here!” he said under the influence of these tender impressions. “Far from the hurly-burly, from that petty existence, from that anthill where people

  “In droves behind the fence,

  Breathe not the early morning chill,

  Nor the vernal fragrance of the meadow.*

  “How tired you get of living there, and how your soul reposes here, in this simple, uncomplicated, unpretentious life! Your heart is reborn, your breast breathes more freely, and your mind is not tormented by painful thoughts, and its endless battle with the heart: here they are in perfect harmony. There’s nothing your mind needs to dwell on. Free from care, without troubling thoughts, your heart and mind at rest, and with only the mildest quickening of the pulse, does your gaze flit from the wood to the ploughed field, and from the field to the hill, finally losing itself in the endless blue of the sky.”

  Sometimes he crossed over to the window which gave onto the courtyard, the street and the village. A different picture altogether – like a painting by Teniers, full of bustling family life.* Barbos sheltering in the shade of his kennel, stretched out with his head resting on his paws. The hens in their dozens greeting the morning, and clucking as they chase each other around, while the cocks fight. A flock of sheep is being driven to the field along the village street. Sometimes, the forlorn sound can be heard of the mooing of a stranded cow which has been left behind by the herd, standing in the middle of the street and looking in all directions.