“Yes, so what’s the matter?–you have such a festive look! Have they promoted you to assessor perhaps, or awarded you a medal?”
Alexander shook his head.
“So, money?”
“No.”
“Then why do you have the look of a commanding general? If it isn’t money, don’t bother me. Here, better sit down and write a letter to the business man Dubasov in Moscow, and tell him to send me the rest of the money at once. Read his letter : Where is it? Here.”
Both fell silent and began to write.
“I’ve finished,” said Alexander in a few minutes.
“Well done; you’re wonderful! Let me see. What’s this? You’ve written it to me. ‘Honored Sir, Pyotr Ivanych.’ His name’s Timofei Nikonych. What do you mean five hundred twenty rubles!–five thousand two hundred! What’s the matter with you, Alexander?”
Pyotr Ivanych put down his pen and looked at his nephew. The latter blushed.
“Don’t you notice anything in my face?” he asked.
“A kind of silly look… Wait… You’re in love?” said Pyotr Ivanych.
Alexander was silent.
“You are, aren’t you? I guessed it?”
With a solemn smile and a beaming glance Alexander nodded his head yes.
“So that’s it! Why didn’t I guess it right off? So that’s why you’ve gone lazy and are nowhere to be found. The Zaraiskys and Scacinis keep asking me, ‘Why, where in Heaven is Alexander Fyodorych?’ and that’s where he is–in seventh Heaven!”
Pyotr Ivanych resumed writing.
“In love with Nadenka Lyubetskaya!” Alexander said.
“I didn’t ask,” his uncle answered. “Whoever it is, they’re all the same kind of silly fool. Which Lyubetskaya? The one with the wart?”
“Oh, Uncle!” interrupted Alexander with irritation. “What wart?”
“Right by the nose. You still haven’t seen it?”
“You’re still confusing things. It’s the mother, you mean, who has a wart near her nose.”
“Well, no matter.”
“No matter! Nadenka! That angel! You really didn’t notice her? To see her once–and not notice!”
“Well, what’s so special about her? What’s there to notice? She doesn’t have a wart, you say?…”
“Haven’t you talked enough about that wart! Tell the truth, Uncle: How can you say that she resembles those wooden affected debutantes? Look carefully at her face: what quiet, deep thoughts repose there! This is a young woman who not only feels, but also thinks, a character of depth…”
His uncle started scratching away with his pen on a document, but Alexander continued: “You won’t hear any vulgar commonplaces in her conversation. What a bright mind illumines her judgments! What fire in her feelings! With what depth she understands life! You poison life with your views, but Nadenka reconciles me to it with hers.”
Alexander was silent for a moment and immersed himself altogether for a while in his dream of Nadenka. Then he began again: “And when she raises her eyes, you see at once what a fiery and tender heart shines in them! And her voice, her voice! What a melody, what languor in it! But when this voice sounds in confession… There is no higher bliss on earth! Uncle, how beautiful life is! How happy I am!”
Tears came to his eyes. He threw himself forward and vigorously embraced his uncle.
“Alexander!” Pyotr Ivanych cried out, jumping up from his chair, “close the valve at once–you’ve let all the steam escape! You’re mad! Look what you’ve done! In one second two stupid things: messed up my hair and spotted the letter with ink. I thought you’d given up your old habits. You haven’t been like this for a long time. Look, look at yourself in the mirror for God’s sake. Well, can there be a stupider face? And you’re not stupid.”
“Ha, ha, ha! I’m happy, Uncle!”
“That’s obvious!”
“Isn’t it? Pride gleams, I know, in my gaze. I look at the crowd as only a hero, a poet and a man in love–happy that his love is returned–can look…”
“The way madmen look, or still worse… So what shall I do now with my letter?”
“Allow me, I’ll scrape off the spots–and it won’t be noticeable,” said Alexander. He threw himself at the desk with the same tense agitation, began to scrape, clean up, rub and rubbed through, leaving a hole in the letter. The desk began to wobble from the rubbing and pushed against the étagère. A little bust of Italian alabaster stood on the étagère–Sophocles or Aeschylus. The venerated tragic author first wobbled three times from the blow, then was overthrown from his high place and fell, shattered in fragments.
“Third stupidity, Alexander!” said Pyotr Ivanych, picking up the pieces, “and this is worth fifty rubles.”
“I’ll pay for it, Uncle, I’ll pay. But don’t curse my impulse; it is pure and noble. I am happy, happy! Heavens! How good life is!”
His uncle frowned and shook his head. “When will you get smarter, Alexander? God knows what he’s saying!”
Meanwhile his uncle, crushed, looked at the broken bust. “‘I’ll pay,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay.’ That would be the fourth stupidity. I see you want to tell about your happiness. Well, it can’t be helped. If, after all, uncles are condemned to sympathize with every foolishness of their nephews, so be it. I’ll give you a quarter of an hour. Sit quietly, don’t commit some fifth stupidity, and tell your story. And then, after this further stupidity, leave–I have no time. So… you’re happy… what about it… tell me as quickly as possible.”
“If that’s the way it is, Uncle, then these things can’t be told,” Alexander noted with a modest smile.
“I was just preparing you, but I see you want nevertheless to begin with the usual preludes. That means the telling will go on for a whole hour. I have no time; the mail won’t wait. Stop, it’ll be better if I tell it myself.”
“You? Now that’s amusing!”
“Well, listen, it’s very amusing! Yesterday you had some time alone with your beauty…”
“And how do you know?” Alexander began heatedly. “Did you have me followed?”
“What’s this–you think I keep spies in my pay to watch for you. Where did you get the idea I worry that much about you? What’s it to me?” These words were accompanied by an icy look.
“So how do you know?” asked Alexander stepping closer to his uncle.
“Sit down, sit down, for God’s sake, and don’t come near my desk–you’ll break something. Everything’s written on your face. I’ll read from that. So, you made a declaration of your love,” he said.
Alexander was silent. Obviously his uncle had again guessed right.
“You both were very silly, as is the custom,” said Pyotr Ivanych.
His nephew made an impatient gesture.
“It began from some little thing when you were left alone, from some embroidery border,” the uncle continued. “You asked for whom she was embroidering. She answered, ‘For dear Mama or Auntie,’ or something like that, and for your part you trembled as if you had a fever…”
“This time no, Uncle; you didn’t guess right. Not with embroidery. We were in the garden…” Alexander blurted out and stopped.
“Well, with a flower then,” said Pyotr Ivanych, “maybe a yellow one, it doesn’t matter. Anything that meets the eye, only so as to start the conversation. Otherwise the words won’t come. You asked whether she liked this flower; she answered yes. Probably you asked why. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and you were both silent because you wanted to say something quite different and the conversation didn’t get going. Then you looked at each other, smiled and blushed.”
“Oh, Uncle, Uncle, how can you!…” said Alexander, with great embarrassment.
“Then,” continued his relentless uncle, “you began to talk indirectly about how, well, a new world had opened up before you. She suddenly looked at you as if she’d heard unexpected news. You, I imagine, stopped dead, became confused, then spoke again, hardly audible, saying
that not until now had you realized the value of life, that even before you had seen her… What’s her name? Mary, is it?”
“Nadenka.”
“You saw as if in a dream, that is, had a presentiment of meeting her, that your feeling had brought you together and probably you said that now you would dedicate to her alone your poetry and prose… And how you were waving your arms! You probably knocked something over or broke something.”
“Uncle! You were spying on us!” cried Alexander beside himself.
“Yes, I was sitting behind a bush there. You see, I have nothing else to do but run after you and eavesdrop on all kinds of nonsense.”
“How do you know everything?” asked Alexander in amazement.
“Simple! Since Adam and Eve it’s been the same old story for everyone, with slight variations. Know the character of the actors, and you’ll know the variants. This astonishes you, yet you’re a writer! So now you’ll jump and gallop for three days like a madman, hang onto everyone’s neck–only, for God’s sake, not to mine. I would advise you to lock yourself in your room for this period, let off all that steam and go through all your tricks with Evsei so no one sees you. Then you’ll come to your senses a little and you’ll achieve something more, a kiss, for example…”
“Nadenka’s kiss! Oh, what a high, heavenly reward!” almost howled Alexander.
“Heavenly!”
“What do you mean–is it an earthly, material reward in your opinion?”
“No doubt about it, the effect of electricity. Lovers are the equivalent of two Leyden jars. Both are highly charged; the electricity is released by kisses and when it has been completely discharged–goodbye, love; cooling follows…”
“Uncle…”
“Yes! And what did you think?”
“What a notion! What ideas!”
“Oh, I forgot. ‘Material tokens’ will come into play again for you. Once more you’ll dredge up all kinds of junk and you’ll ponder and analyze, and put work aside.”
Alexander suddenly felt for his pocket.
“What, it’s already happened? You’ll do all the things people have been doing since the creation of the world.”
“Therefore, the same things you too did, Uncle?”
“Yes, only more stupidly.”
“More stupidly! Aren’t you calling it stupid that I shall love more deeply, more powerfully than you, not lash out at feeling, not coldly joke and play with it like you… and not draw away the veil from sacred mysteries…”
“You will love like others do, neither more deeply nor more powerfully; you will even draw the veil from mysteries… Only you’ll believe in the eternity and immutability of love, indeed think only of that, and that’s precisely what is stupid. You’ll make more grief for yourself than there ought to be.”
“Oh, that’s awful, awful, Uncle, what you’re saying! How many times have I vowed to myself to keep what goes on in my heart a secret from you.”
“Why didn’t you keep your vow? Here you’ve come and bothered me…”
“But you’re the only one I have, Uncle, who is close to me. With whom can I share this overflow of feelings? And you mercilessly plunge your dissecting knife into the most secret corners of my heart.”
“I don’t do it for my pleasure. You asked my advice. How many stupidities I’ve saved you from!…”
“No, Uncle, let me be forever stupid in your eyes, but I cannot live with your notions of life and people. That hurts and depresses me! If they’re true, I don’t want to live. I don’t want to live under such conditions–do you hear? I don’t want it.”
“I’m listening, but what am I to do? After all, I can’t deprive you of life.”
“No,” said Alexander, “despite your predictions I shall be happy, shall love once and forever.”
“Oh dear! I have the feeling you’ll still break a lot more of my things. But it really doesn’t matter: Love is love; no one’s keeping you from it. It’s not our custom that at your age one should be so preoccupied with love, still, it shouldn’t be done to such a degree that you abandon work. Love is one thing, work another…”
“Yes, I’m working at abstracts from the German…”
“Enough said, you’re not working on abstracts, you’re giving yourself only to sweet languor, and the editor will refuse you…”
“Let him! I’m not in need. How can I think now about contemptible usefulness when…”
“About contemptible usefulness! Contemptible! You’d better build a shack in the mountains and live on bread and water:
My poor hut
Will be your paradise…
But when you run out of ‘contemptible metal’ don’t ask me for it–I won’t give it to you…”
“I don’t think I’ve bothered you for it often.”
“Till now, thank God, no, but it can happen if you quit work. Love also takes money–for extra elegance and various other expenses… Oh my, what I think of love at age twenty! That’s when it’s contemptible, so contemptible it gets you nothing!”
“What love, then, is good for something, Uncle? Love at forty?”
“I don’t know how love is at forty, but at thirty-nine…”
“Like yours?”
“If you will, like mine.”
“That is, no love.
“How do you know?”
“As if you could love?”
“Why not? Do you think I’m not human, or I’m eighty years old? Only if I love, then it’s with reason. I keep my head, don’t hit or knock anything over.”
“Reasonable love! That’s a fine love that keeps its head!” said Alexander with ridicule, “which never forgets itself for a moment…”
“Wild animal love,” interrupted Pyotr Ivanych, “loses its head, but a reasonable love must keep it; otherwise it isn’t love…”
“What is it then?”
“Then it’s something vile, as you say.”
“You… love!” said Alexander, as he looked, unbelievingly, at his uncle, “ha, ha, ha!”
Pyotr Ivanych wrote in silence,
“Whom, Uncle?” asked Alexander.
“You’d like to know?”
“I would,”
“My fiancée,”
“Not… your fiancée!” Alexander hardly got the words out as he jumped up and went toward his uncle.
“Not too close, not too close, Alexander, close the valve!” Pyotr Ivanych began, seeing what big eyes his nephew had, and he quickly surrounded himself with various small objects, little busts, figures, a clock and the inkwell.
“That means you’re getting married?” asked Alexander with the same astonishment.
“So I am.”
“And you’re so calm! You write letters to Moscow, chat about unrelated matters, go to the factory and still reason about love with such hellish coldness!”
“‘Hellish coldness’–that’s new! People say it’s hot in hell. Well, why are you looking at me so wildly?”
“You’re–getting married!”
“What’s so astonishing about that?” asked Pyotr Ivanych, putting down his pen.
“What do you mean? You’re getting married–and didn’t say a word to me!”
“Pardon me, I forgot to ask your permission.”
“You didn’t have to ask permission, Uncle, but I should know. My own uncle is getting married, and I know nothing about it; nobody tells me!…”
“Well, now I’ve told you.”
“You told me because it happened to come up.”
“I try whenever possible to do everything as it comes up.”
“No, you should have told me first of your joy. You know how I love you and how I share…”
“I avoid sharing in general and in marriage all the more.”
“Do you know what, Uncle,” said Alexander animatedly, “perhaps… No, I can’t keep a secret from you… I’m not that sort, I tell everything…”
“Oh dear, Alexander, I have no time, If this is a new story, ca
n’t you tell me tomorrow?”
“I only want to say that perhaps… I’m close to the same happiness…”
“What?” asked Pyotr Ivanych, pricking up his ears a bit, “this is something curious.”
“Ah! Curious? So I’ll torment you a while: I won’t say.”
Pyotr Ivanych picked up the letter packet with indifference, put in his letter and began to seal it.
“I, too, perhaps am getting married!” said Alexander in his uncle’s ear.
Pyotr Ivanych did not finish sealing the letter and looked at him very seriously.
“Close the valve, Alexander,” he said.
“Go on joking, go on joking, Uncle, but I’m not joking. I shall ask permission of Mama.”
“Ought you to be marrying?”
“What do you mean?”
“At your age!”
“I’m twenty-three years old.”
“A fine time! At that age only peasants marry when they need a woman to work in the house.”
“But if I’m in love with a girl and there’s a possibility of getting married, then you think I shouldn’t…”
“By no means do I advise you to marry a woman you’re in love with.”
“What do you mean, Uncle? This is something new–I’ve never heard that.”
“There are a lot of things you’ve never heard of!”
“I’ve always thought there should be no marriage without love.”
“Marriage is one thing, and love is another,” said Pyotr Ivanych.
“How should one marry… by calculation?”
“With calculation, though not by calculation. One should not calculate in money alone, however. A man is made to live in companionship with a woman; you’ll begin to calculate how you should marry, begin to look, to choose among women…”
“Look, choose!” said Alexander, amazed.
“Yes, choose. That’s the reason I don’t advise you to marry when you fall in love. You see, love passes–that’s the horrid truth.”
“That’s the rudest lie and slander.”
“Well, one can’t persuade you now. In time you’ll see yourself, but for now just mark my words: Love will pass, I repeat, and then the woman who seemed the ideal of perfection to you will seem very imperfect perhaps, and then there’s nothing you can do. Love prevents you from seeing that she lacks various qualities necessary in a wife. In time you’ll judge coolheadedly while making your choice: Does this or that woman have the qualities you’d like to see in a wife–that’s the most important calculation. And if you find such a woman, she will please you all the time without fail because she corresponds to your wishes. That will give rise to close relations between you, which then form…”
An Ordinary Story Page 10