Father Khristofor glanced fearfully at the door and went on in a whisper:
‘‘Ivan Ivanych will help you. He won’t abandon you. He has no children of his own, and he’ll help you. Don’t worry.’’
He made a serious face and whispered still more softly:
‘‘Only watch out, Georgiy, God keep you from forgetting your mother and Ivan Ivanych. The commandment tells you to honor your mother, and Ivan Ivanych is your benefactor and takes the place of a father. If you become a learned man and, God forbid, begin to feel burdened and scorn people because they’re stupider than you are, then woe, woe to you!’’
Father Khristofor raised his arm and repeated in a thin little voice:
‘‘Woe! Woe!’’
Father Khristofor got warmed up and acquired what is known as a relish for speaking; he would have gone on till dinner, but the door opened and Ivan Ivanych came in. The uncle greeted them hastily, sat down at the table, and began quickly gulping tea.
‘‘Well, I’ve managed to take care of all my affairs,’’ he said. ‘‘We could have gone home today, but there’s still Egor to worry about. He’s got to be settled. My sister said her friend Nastasya Petrovna lives somewhere around here; maybe she’ll give him lodgings.’’
He rummaged in his wallet, took out a crumpled letter, and read:
‘‘ ‘To Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, at her own house, Malaya Nizhnyaya Street.’ I must go and look her up at once. Bother!’’
Soon after tea, Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka left the inn.
‘‘Bother!’’ the uncle muttered. ‘‘You’re stuck to me like a burr, deuce take it! For you it’s studies and noble ways, but for me you’re one big torment...’
When they passed through the yard, the wagons and wagoners were no longer there; they had gone to the pier early in the morning. In the far corner of the yard, the familiar britzka could be seen; beside it the two bays stood eating oats.
‘‘Farewell, britzka!’’ thought Egorushka.
First they had a long climb uphill by the boulevard, then they crossed a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanych asked a policeman how to get to Malaya Nizhnyaya Street.
‘‘Well, now!’’ the policeman grinned. ‘‘That’s pretty far, out there by the common!’’
On the way they met several cabs coming towards them, but the uncle allowed himself such a weakness as taking a cab only on exceptional occasions and major feast days. He and Egorushka walked for a long time along paved streets, then along streets where only the sidewalks were paved and not the roadways, and finally ended up on streets that had neither sidewalks nor paved roadways. When their legs and tongues had brought them to Malaya Nizhnyaya Street, they were both red in the face, and, taking off their hats, they wiped away the sweat.
‘‘Tell me, please,’’ Ivan Ivanych addressed an old man who was sitting on a bench by a gateway, ‘‘where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?’’
‘There’s no Toskunov here,’’ the old man replied, having pondered. ‘‘Maybe you mean Timoshenko?’’
‘‘No, Toskunov...’
‘‘Sorry, there’s no Toskunov...’
Ivan Ivanych shrugged his shoulders and plodded on.
‘‘Don’t go looking!’’ the old man called out behind him. ‘‘If I say no, it means no!’’
‘‘Listen, auntie,’’ Ivan Ivanych addressed an old woman who was selling sunflower seeds and pears at a stand on the corner, ‘‘where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house hereabouts?’’
The old woman looked at him in astonishment and laughed.
‘‘You mean you think Nastasya Petrovna still lives in her own house?’’ she asked. ‘‘Lord, it’s already some eight years since she married off her daughter and made the house over to her son-in-law! Her son-in-law lives in it now!’’
And her eyes said: ‘‘How is it you fools don’t know such a simple thing?’’
‘‘And where does she live now?’’ asked Ivan Ivanych.
‘‘Lord!’’ the old woman was astonished and clasped her hands. ‘‘She’s long been living in lodgings! It’s already eight years since she made her house over to her son-in-law. What’s the matter with you!’’
She probably expected that Ivan Ivanych would also be surprised and exclaim: ‘‘It can’t be!’’ but he asked very calmly: ‘‘Where are her lodgings?’’
The marketwoman rolled up her sleeves and, pointing with a bare arm, began to shout in a shrill, piercing voice:
‘‘Keep on straight, straight, straight... Once you’ve passed a little red house, there’ll be a lane on your left. Turn down that lane and look for the third gateway on the right...’
Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka reached the little red house, turned left into the lane, and made for the third gateway on the right. To both sides of this very old gray gateway stretched a gray wall with wide cracks; the right side of the wall leaned badly forward, threatening to collapse, the left sank backward into the yard, while the gates stood straight and seemed to be choosing whether it would suit them better to fall forward or backward. Ivan Ivanych opened the gate and, along with Egorushka, saw a big yard overgrown with weeds and burdock. A hundred paces from the gate stood a small house with a red roof and green shutters. A stout woman with rolled-up sleeves and a held-out apron stood in the middle of the yard, scattering something on the ground and calling out with the same piercing shrillness as the marketwoman:
‘Chick! ... chick! chick!’’
Behind her sat a ginger dog with sharp ears. Seeing the visitors, it ran to the gate and barked in a tenor voice (all ginger dogs bark in a tenor voice).
‘‘Who do you want?’’ shouted the woman, shielding her eyes from the sun.
‘‘Good morning!’’ Ivan Ivanych also shouted to her, fending off the ginger dog with his stick. ‘‘Tell me, please, does Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov live here?’’
‘‘She does! What do you want with her?’’
Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka went up to her. She looked them over suspiciously and repeated:
‘‘What do you want with her?’’
‘‘Might you be Nastasya Petrovna?’’
‘‘So I am!’’
‘‘Very pleased... You see, your old friend Olga Ivanovna Knyazev sends you her greetings. This is her little son. And I, as you may remember, am her brother, Ivan Ivanych... You come from our N. You were born there and married...’
Silence ensued. The stout woman stared senselessly at Ivan Ivanych, as if not believing or not understanding, then flushed all over and clasped her hands; oats poured from her apron, tears burst from her eyes.
‘‘Olga Ivanovna!’’ she shrieked, breathing heavily from excitement. ‘‘My own darling! Ah, dear hearts, why am I standing here like a fool? My pretty little angel...’
She embraced Egorushka, wetted his face with her tears, and began weeping in earnest.
‘‘Lord!’’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘‘Olechka’s little son! What joy! Just like his mother! Exactly! But why are we standing in the yard? Please come in!’’
Weeping, breathless, and talking as she went, she hastened to the house; the visitors trudged after her.
‘‘It’s not tidied up!’’ she said, leading the visitors into a small and stuffy parlor all filled with icons and flowerpots. ‘‘Ah, Mother of God! Vasilissa, open the blinds, at least! My little angel! My indescribable beauty! I didn’t even know Olechka had such a son!’’
When she had calmed down and grown used to her visitors, Ivan Ivanych asked to have a private talk with her. Egorushka went to another room; there was a sewing machine there, in the window hung a cage with a starling in it, and there were as many icons and plants as in the parlor. A girl stood motionless by the sewing machine, sunburnt, with cheeks as plump as Titus’s, and in a clean cotton dress. She looked at Egorushka without blinking and apparently felt very awkward. Egorushka looked at her for a moment in silence, then asked:
‘‘What’s your name?’’
‘Atka...’
This meant ‘‘Katka.’’
‘‘He’ll live with you,’’ Ivan Ivanych was whispering in the parlor, ‘‘if you’ll be so kind, and we’ll pay you ten roubles a month. He’s a quiet boy, not spoiled...’
‘‘I don’t really know what to say to you, Ivan Ivanych!’’ Nastasya Petrovna sighed tearfully. ‘‘Ten roubles is good money, but I’m afraid to take someone else’s child! What if he gets sick or something...’
When Egorushka was called back to the parlor, Ivan Ivanych was standing hat in hand and saying good-bye.
‘‘Well? So he can stay with you now,’’ he was saying. ‘‘Good-bye! Stay here, Egor!’’ he said, turning to his nephew. ‘‘Behave yourself, listen to Nastasya Petrovna... Good-bye! I’ll come again tomorrow.’’
And he left. Nastasya Petrovna embraced Egorushka once more, called him a little angel, and tearfully began setting the table. In three minutes Egorushka was already sitting beside her, answering her endless questions, and eating rich, hot cabbage soup.
And in the evening he was sitting again at the same table, his head propped on his hand, listening to Nastasya Petrovna. Now laughing, now weeping, she told him about his mother’s youth, about her own marriage, about her children... A cricket called out from the stove, and the mantle in the gas lamp hummed barely audibly. The mistress spoke in a low voice and kept dropping her thimble from excitement, and Katya, her granddaughter, went under the table to fetch it, and each time stayed under the table for a long while, probably studying Egorushka’s legs. And Egorushka listened drowsily and studied the old woman’s face, her wart with hairs on it, the streaks of her tears... And he felt sad, very sad! His bed was made up on a trunk, and he was informed that if he wanted to eat during the night, he should go out to the corridor and take some of the chicken that was there on the windowsill, covered with a plate.
The next morning Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor came to say good-bye. Nastasya Petrovna was glad and wanted to prepare the samovar, but Ivan Ivanych, who was in a great hurry, waved his hand and said:
‘‘We have no time for any teas and sugars! We’re about to leave.’’
Before saying good-bye, they all sat down and were silent for a moment. Nastasya Petrovna sighed deeply and looked at the icons with tearful eyes.
‘‘Well,’’ Ivan Ivanych began, getting up, ‘‘so you’re staying...’
The businesslike dryness suddenly left his face, he turned a little red, smiled sadly, and said:
‘‘See that you study... Don’t forget your mother and listen to Nastasya Petrovna... If you study well, Egor, I won’t abandon you.’’
He took a purse from his pocket, turned his back to Egorushka, rummaged for a long time among the small change, and, finding a ten-kopeck piece, gave it to the boy. Father Khristofor sighed and unhurriedly blessed Egorushka.
‘‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... Study,’’ he said. ‘‘Work hard, old boy... If I die, remember me. Here’s ten kopecks from me, too...’
Egorushka kissed his hand and wept. Something in his soul whispered to him that he would never see the old man again.
‘‘I’ve already applied to the school, Nastasya Petrovna,’’ Ivan Ivanych said in such a voice as if there was a dead person laid out in the parlor. ‘‘On the seventh of August you’ll take him to the examination... Well, good-bye! May God be with you. Good-bye, Egor!’’
‘‘You should at least have some tea!’’ Nastasya Petrovna groaned.
Through the tears that clouded his eyes, Egorushka did not see his uncle and Father Khristofor leave. He rushed to the window, but they were no longer in the yard, and the ginger dog, just done barking, trotted back from the gate with a look of duty fulfilled. Egorushka, not knowing why himself, tore from his place and went flying out of the house. When he came running through the gate, Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor, the one swinging his curved-handled stick, the other his staff, were just turning the corner. Egorushka felt that with these people, everything he had lived through up to then had vanished forever, like smoke; he sank wearily onto a bench and with bitter tears greeted the new, unknown life that was now beginning for him...
What sort of life would it be?
1888
THE DUEL
I
IT WAS EIGHT o’clock in the morning—the time when officers, officials, and visitors, after a hot, sultry night, usually took a swim in the sea and then went to the pavilion for coffee or tea. Ivan Andreich Laevsky, a young man about twenty-eight years old, a lean blond, in the peaked cap of the finance ministry1 and slippers, having come to swim, found many acquaintances on the shore, and among them his friend the army doctor Samoilenko.
With a large, cropped head, neckless, red, big-nosed, with bushy black eyebrows and gray side-whiskers, fat, flabby, and with a hoarse military bass to boot, this Samoilenko made the unpleasant impression of a bully and a blusterer on every newcomer, but two or three days would go by after this first acquaintance, and his face would begin to seem remarkably kind, nice, and even handsome. Despite his clumsiness and slightly rude tone, he was a peaceable man, infinitely kind, good-natured, and responsible. He was on familiar terms with everybody in town, lent money to everybody, treated everybody, made matches, made peace, organized picnics, at which he cooked shashlik and prepared a very tasty mullet soup; he was always soliciting and interceding for someone and always rejoicing over something. According to general opinion, he was sinless and was known to have only two weaknesses: first, he was ashamed of his kindness and tried to mask it with a stern gaze and an assumed rudeness; and second, he liked it when medical assistants and soldiers called him ‘‘Your Excellency,’’ though he was only a state councillor.2
‘‘Answer me one question, Alexander Davidych,’’ Laevsky began, when the two of them, he and Samoilenko, had gone into the water up to their shoulders. ‘‘Let’s say you fell in love with a woman and became intimate with her; you lived with her, let’s say, for more than two years, and then, as it happens, you fell out of love and began to feel she was a stranger to you. How would you behave in such a case?’’
‘‘Very simple. Go, dearie, wherever the wind takes you— and no more talk.’’
‘‘That’s easy to say! But what if she has nowhere to go? She’s alone, no family, not a cent, unable to work...’
‘‘What, then? Fork her out five hundred, or twenty-five a month—and that’s it. Very simple.’’
‘‘Suppose you’ve got both the five hundred and the twenty-five a month, but the woman I’m talking about is intelligent and proud. Can you possibly bring yourself to offer her money? And in what form?’’
Samoilenko was about to say something, but just then a big wave covered them both, then broke on the shore and noisily rolled back over the small pebbles. The friends went ashore and began to dress.
‘‘Of course, it’s tricky living with a woman if you don’t love her,’’ Samoilenko said, shaking sand from his boot. ‘‘But Vanya, you’ve got to reason like a human being. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t let it show that I’d fallen out of love, I’d live with her till I died.’’
He suddenly felt ashamed of his words. He caught himself and said:
‘‘Though, for my part, there’s no need for women at all. To the hairy devil with them!’’
The friends got dressed and went to the pavilion. Here Samoilenko was his own man, and they even reserved a special place for him. Each morning a cup of coffee, a tall cut glass of ice water, and a shot of brandy were served to him on a tray. First he drank the brandy, then the hot coffee, then the ice water, and all that must have been very tasty, because after he drank it, his eyes became unctuous, he smoothed his side-whiskers with both hands, and said, looking at the sea:
‘‘An astonishingly magnificent view!’’
After a long night spent in cheerless, useless
thoughts, which kept him from sleeping and seemed to increase the sultriness and gloom of the night, Laevsky felt broken and sluggish. Swimming and coffee did not make him any better.
‘‘Let’s continue our conversation, Alexander Davidych,’’ he said. ‘‘I won’t conceal it, I’ll tell you frankly, as a friend: things are bad between Nadezhda Fyodorovna and me, very bad! Excuse me for initiating you into my secrets, but I need to speak it out.’’
Samoilenko, who anticipated what the talk would be about, lowered his eyes and started tapping his fingers on the table.
‘‘I’ve lived with her for two years and fallen out of love...’ Laevsky went on. ‘‘That is, more precisely, I’ve realized that there has never been any love... These two years were a delusion.’’
Laevsky had the habit, during a conversation, of studying his pink palms attentively, biting his nails, or crumpling his cuffs with his fingers. And he was doing the same now.
‘‘I know perfectly well that you can’t help me,’’ he said, ‘‘but I’m talking to you because, for our kind, luckless fellows and superfluous men,3 talk is the only salvation. I should generalize my every act, I should find an explanation and a justification of my absurd life in somebody’s theories, in literary types, in the fact, for instance, that we noblemen are degenerating, and so on... Last night, for instance, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: ah, how right Tolstoy is, how pitilessly right! And that made it easier for me. The fact is, brother, he’s a great writer! Whatever they say.’’
Samoilenko, who had never read Tolstoy and was preparing every day to read him, got embarrassed and said:
‘‘Yes, other writers all write from the imagination, but he writes straight from nature.’’
‘‘My God,’’ sighed Laevsky, ‘‘the degree to which we’re crippled by civilization! I fell in love with a married woman, and she with me... In the beginning it was all kisses, and quiet evenings, and vows, and Spencer, 4 and ideals, and common interests... What a lie! Essentially we were running away from her husband, but we lied to ourselves that we were running away from the emptiness of our intelligentsia life. We pictured our future like this: in the beginning, in the Caucasus, while we acquaint ourselves with the place and the people, I’ll put on my uniform and serve, then, once we’re free to do so, we’ll acquire a piece of land, we’ll labor in the sweat of our brow, start a vineyard, fields, and so on. If it were you or that zoologist friend of yours, von Koren, instead of me, you’d live with Nadezhda Fyodorovna for maybe thirty years and leave your heirs a rich vineyard and three thousand acres of corn, while I felt bankrupt from the first day. The town is unbearably hot, boring, peopleless, and if you go out to the fields, you imagine venomous centipedes, scorpions, and snakes under every bush and stone, and beyond the fields there are mountains and wilderness. Alien people, alien nature, a pathetic culture—all that, brother, is not as easy as strolling along Nevsky5 in a fur coat, arm in arm with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and dreaming about warm lands. What’s needed here is a fight to the death, and what sort of fighter am I? A pathetic neurasthenic, an idler... From the very first day, I realized that my thoughts about a life of labor and a vineyard weren’t worth a damn. As for love, I must tell you that to live with a woman who has read Spencer and followed you to the ends of the earth is as uninteresting as with any Anfisa or Akulina. The same smell of a hot iron, powder, and medications, the same curling papers every morning, and the same self-delusion...’
The Complete Short Novels Page 14