He liked his activity as a lawyer, but even so, he considered these novels and not the legal profession his chief occupation. It seemed to him that he had a subtle, artistic constitution, and he had always been drawn to the arts. He did not sing or play any instrument himself, and was totally without a musical ear, but he attended all the symphonic and philharmonic gatherings, organized concerts for charitable purposes, met with singers...
During dinner they talked.
‘‘An amazing thing,’’ said Laptev, ‘‘again my Fyodor has nonplussed me! He says we must find out when is the hundredth anniversary of our firm, so as to petition for nobility, and he says it in the most serious way. What’s happened to him? Frankly speaking, I’m beginning to worry.’’
They talked about Fyodor, about the fact that it was now the fashion to affect something or other. Fyodor, for instance, tried to look like a simple merchant, though he was no longer a merchant, and when a teacher from the school where old Laptev was a trustee came to him for his salary, he even changed his voice and gait and behaved like the teacher’s superior.
After dinner there was nothing to do, so they went to the study. They talked about the decadents, about The Maid of Orleans, and Kostya recited a whole monologue; it seemed to him that he had done a very successful imitation of Ermolova.17 Then they sat down to play vint. The girls did not go to their wing but, pale and sad, sat both in one armchair, listening to the noise in the street: was it their father coming? In the evening, in the dark and with candles, they felt anguish. The conversation over cards, Pyotr’s footsteps, the crackling in the fireplace irritated them, and they did not want to look at the fire; in the evening they no longer even wanted to cry but felt eerie and heavyhearted. And they could not understand how it was possible to talk about something and laugh, when their mama was dead.
‘‘What did you see today through the binoculars?’’ Yulia Sergeevna asked Kostya.
‘‘Nothing today, but yesterday the old Frenchman himself took a bath.’’
At seven o’clock Yulia Sergeevna and Kostya went to the Maly Theater. Laptev stayed with the girls.
‘‘It’s time your papa came,’’ he kept saying, glancing at the clock. ‘‘The train must be late.’’
The girls sat silently in the armchair, huddled together like little animals in the cold, and he kept pacing the rooms, looking with impatience at his watch. The house was quiet. Then, towards nine o’clock, someone rang the bell. Pyotr went to open the door.
Hearing the familiar voice, the girls cried out, sobbed, and rushed to the front hall. Panaurov was wearing a luxurious fur coat, and his beard and mustache were white with hoarfrost.
‘‘One moment, one moment,’’ he muttered, but Sasha and Lida, sobbing and laughing, kissed his cold hands, his hat, his coat. Handsome, languid, pampered by love, he unhurriedly caressed the girls, then went into the study and said, rubbing his hands:
‘‘But I won’t stay with you long, my friends. Tomorrow I’m off to Petersburg. I’ve been promised a transfer to another town.’’
He stayed at the Dresden.
X
YARTSEV, IVAN GAVRILYCH, frequently visited the Laptevs. He was a healthy, robust man, black-haired, with an intelligent, pleasant face; he was considered handsome, but lately he had begun to put on weight, and that spoiled his face and figure; another thing that spoiled his looks was his close-cropped, almost shaven head. At the university, owing to his good height and strength, the students used to call him the ‘‘bouncer.’’
He took a degree in philology, along with the Laptev brothers, then studied natural science and now had a master’s degree in chemistry. He never counted on having a chair, and did not even work in any laboratory, but taught physics and natural history in a technical high school and in two girls’ schools. He was delighted with his students, especially the girls, and said that a wonderful generation was growing up. Besides chemistry, he was also occupied at home with sociology and Russian history, and his brief articles occasionally appeared in newspapers and magazines over the initial Y. When he talked about something from botany or zoology, he resembled a historian; when he discussed some historical question, he resembled a natural scientist.
Another familiar man at the Laptevs’ was Kish, nicknamed the eternal student. He had spent three years studying medicine, then had switched to mathematics and had sat through each course there twice. His father, a provincial pharmacist, sent him forty roubles a month, and his mother, in secret from his father, sent another ten, and this money was enough for his expenses and even such luxuries as an overcoat with Polish beaver, gloves, scent, and photography (he often had himself photographed and gave his portraits to acquaintances). Clean, slightly bald on top, with golden side-whiskers at his ears, modest, he had the look of a man ever ready to be of service. He always bustled about on other people’s business: ran around with a subscription list, froze by the theater box office from early in the morning to buy a ticket for a lady of his acquaintance, or went at someone’s request to order a wreath or a bouquet. All they said of him was: ‘‘Kish will go, Kish will do it, Kish will buy it.’’ For the most part, he performed his errands badly. Reproaches were showered on him, people often forgot to repay him for their purchases, but he never said anything and on embarrassing occasions only sighed. He was never especially glad or sorry, always told long and boring stories, and his witticisms provoked laughter each time only because they were not funny. Thus, one day, intending to make a joke, he said to Pyotr: ‘‘Pyotter, you’re not an otter,’’ and this provoked general laughter, and he himself laughed a long time, pleased to have made such a successful joke. Whenever some professor was buried, he walked in front with the torchbearers.
Yartsev and Kish usually came in the evening for tea. If the hosts were not going to the theater or a concert, the evening tea stretched till suppertime. On one February evening, the following conversation took place in the dining room:
‘‘A work of art is significant and useful only when its idea includes some serious social problem,’’ Kostya said, looking angrily at Yartsev. ‘‘If there is a protest against serfdom in the work, or the author takes up arms against high society with all its banality, such a work is significant and useful. While novels and stories where it’s ‘Oh’ and ‘Ah,’ and she falls in love with him but he falls out of love with her—these works, I say, are worthless, and to the devil with them.’’
‘‘I agree with you, Konstantin Ivanych,’’ said Yulia Sergeevna. ‘‘One describes a lovers’ tryst, another a betrayal, the third a meeting after the separation. Are there really no other subjects? A great many people who are sick, unhappy, worn out by poverty must find it disgusting to read all that.’’
Laptev was displeased that his wife, a young woman who was not yet twenty-two years old, should reason about love so seriously and coldly. He could guess why it was so.
‘‘If poetry doesn’t resolve the questions that seem important to you,’’ said Yartsev, ‘‘turn to works on technology, criminal and financial law, read scholarly articles. Who wants to have Romeo and Juliet talk not about love but, let’s say, about freedom of instruction or prison sanitation, if you can go to special articles and handbooks for that?’’
‘‘That’s going to extremes, uncle!’’ Kostya interrupted. ‘‘We’re not talking about giants like Shakespeare and Goethe, we’re talking about a hundred talented and mediocre writers who would be much more useful if they abandoned love and occupied themselves with bringing knowledge and humane ideas to the masses.’’
Kish, slightly nasally and rolling his R’s, began to recount the content of a short novel he had read recently. He recounted it thoroughly, unhurriedly; three minutes went by, then five, ten, and he still went on, and nobody could understand what it was all about, and his face grew more and more indifferent, and his eyes went dim.
‘‘Tell it more quickly, Kish,’’ Yulia Sergeevna could not stand it, ‘‘this is really torture!’’
&nb
sp; ‘‘Stop, Kish!’’ Kostya yelled at him.
Everybody laughed, including Kish.
Fyodor arrived. Red spots on his face, hurrying, he gave his greetings and led his brother to the study. Lately he had avoided gatherings of many people and preferred the company of a single person.
‘‘Let the young people laugh in there, but here you and I can have a heart-to-heart talk,’’ he said, sitting down in a deep chair away from the lamp. ‘‘We haven’t seen each other for a long time, brother. When was the last time you came to the warehouse? Must be a week ago.’’
‘‘Yes. I have nothing to do there. And, I confess, I’m sick of the old man.’’
‘‘Of course, they can do without us at the warehouse, but one must have some sort of occupation. In the sweat of your brow you shall eat your bread, as they say.18 God loves labor.’’
Pyotr brought a glass of tea on a tray. Fyodor drank it without sugar and asked for more. He was a great tea drinker and could drink ten glasses in an evening.
‘‘You know what, brother?’’ he said, getting up and going over to his brother. ‘‘Clever sophistries aside, why don’t you get yourself elected representative, and by easy stages we’ll make you a member of the board, and then associate head. The further the better; you’re an intelligent, educated man, you’ll be noticed and invited to Petersburg—zemstvo and city council activists are in fashion there, brother, and lo and behold, you won’t be fifty yet, and you’ll already be a privy councillor with a ribbon over your shoulder.’’
Laptev did not reply. He realized that all this—the privy councillor and the ribbon—was what Fyodor himself wanted, and he did not know how to reply.
The brothers sat and said nothing. Fyodor opened his watch and looked into it for a long, long time with strained attention, as if he wanted to observe the movement of the hands, and Laptev found the expression on his face strange.
Supper was served. Laptev went to the dining room, but Fyodor remained in the study. The argument was over, and Yartsev was saying in the tone of a professor reading a lecture:
‘‘Owing to differences of climate, energy, taste, and age, equality among people is physically impossible. But a cultured man can make this inequality harmless, as has already been done with swamps and bears. One scientist did succeed in having a cat, a mouse, a buzzard, and a sparrow eat from the same plate, and education, it must be hoped, will do the same with people. Life keeps going forward, forward, culture makes enormous progress before our eyes, and obviously the time will come when, for instance, the present-day situation of factory workers will seem as absurd as serfdom seems to us, when girls were traded for dogs.’’
‘‘That won’t be soon, it won’t be very soon,’’ Kostya said and grinned, ‘‘it won’t be very soon that Rothschild thinks his cellars of gold are absurd, and until then, the worker can slave away and be swollen with hunger. No, uncle. We mustn’t wait, we must fight. If a cat eats from the same plate as a mouse, do you think it’s conscious of it? Not at all. It was forced.’’
‘‘Fyodor and I are rich, our father is a capitalist, a millionaire, it’s with us you must fight!’’ Laptev said and rubbed his forehead with his palm. ‘‘Fighting with me—that doesn’t fit in with my thinking! I’m rich, but what has money given me so far, what has this power given me? How am I happier than you? My childhood was like hard labor, and money didn’t save me from birching. When Nina was sick and dying, my money didn’t help her. If someone doesn’t love me, I can’t force him to love me, though I spend a hundred million.’’
‘‘But you can do a lot of good,’’ said Kish.
‘‘What sort of good! Yesterday you solicited me for some mathematician who is looking for a post. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I can give him money, but that’s not what he wants. Once I solicited a post for a poor violinist from a famous musician, and his answer was: ‘You have turned to me precisely because you are not a musician.’ And so I will answer you: you’ve turned to me for help with such assurance, because you’ve never once been in the position of a rich man.’’
‘‘Why this comparison with the famous musician, I don’t understand!’’ said Yulia Sergeevna, and she turned red. ‘‘What does the famous musician have to do with it!’’
Her face trembled with hatred, and she lowered her eyes to conceal this feeling. And not only her husband but everyone sitting at the table understood the expression of her face.
‘‘What does the famous musician have to do with it!’’ she repeated quietly. ‘‘Nothing is easier than helping a poor man.’’
Silence ensued. Pyotr served grouse, but no one ate it, everyone ate only salad. Laptev no longer remembered what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful but merely the fact that he had interfered in the conversation.
After supper he went to his study; tensely, with pounding heart, expecting new humiliations, he listened to what was going on in the drawing room. There again an argument started; then Yartsev sat at the piano and sang a sentimental romance. He was a jack-of-all-trades: he could sing, play, and even do magic tricks.
‘‘As you like, gentlemen, but I don’t wish to sit at home,’’ said Yulia. ‘‘We must go somewhere.’’
They decided to drive out of town and sent Kish to the Merchants’ Club for a troika. Laptev was not invited, because he usually did not go out of town, and because his brother was now with him, but the way he understood it was that his society bored them, and that in this gay young company, he was quite superfluous. And his vexation, his bitter feeling were so strong that he all but wept; he was even glad that they treated him so unkindly, that they disdained him, that he was a stupid, boring husband, a moneybags, and it seemed to him that he would be even more glad if his wife was unfaithful to him that night with his best friend and then confessed it, looking at him with hatred... He was jealous of the students they knew, the actors, the singers, Yartsev, even passersby, and he now passionately wished that she would indeed be unfaithful to him, wanted to find her with someone, then poison himself, to get rid of this nightmare once and for all. Fyodor was drinking tea and swallowing loudly. But then he, too, got ready to go.
‘‘Our old man must be losing his sight,’’ he said, putting on his coat. ‘‘He sees quite poorly.’’
Laptev also put on his coat and left. He saw his brother off to Strastnoy, took a cab, and went to the Yar.
‘‘And this is called family happiness!’’ he laughed at himself. ‘‘This is love!’’
His teeth were chattering, and he did not know whether it was jealousy or something else. At the Yar he walked among the tables, listened to a coupleteer in the big hall; he did not have a single phrase prepared in case he met his people, and was certain beforehand that if he met his wife, he would only smile pitifully and stupidly, and everyone would understand what feeling had made him come there. The electric lights, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that the ladies he met stared at him, made him feel sick. He stopped by doorways, trying to see and hear what was going on in the private rooms, and it seemed to him that, along with the coupleteer and those ladies, he was playing some low, contemptible role. Then he went to the Strelna, but did not meet any of his people there, either, and it was only when he drove up to the Yar again on his way back that a troika noisily overtook him; the drunken driver was shouting, and he could hear Yartsev’s guffaw: ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’
Laptev came home after three. Yulia Sergeevna was already in bed. Noticing that she was not asleep, he went up to her and said sharply:
‘‘I understand your loathing, your hatred, but you might spare me in front of others, you might conceal your feelings.’’
She sat up in bed and hung her legs over the side. In the light of the icon lamp, her eyes looked big and dark.
‘‘I ask your forgiveness,’’ she said.
From agitation and the trembling of his whole body, he could no longer utter a single word but stood
before her in silence. She was also trembling and sat looking like a criminal, waiting for a talking to.
‘‘How I suffer!’’ he said at last and clutched his head. ‘‘It’s like I’m in hell, I’ve lost my mind!’’
‘‘And is it easy for me?’’ she asked in a quavering voice. ‘‘God alone knows what it’s like for me.’’
‘‘You’ve been my wife for half a year now, but there’s not even a spark of love in your soul, no hope, no bright spot! Why did you marry me?’’ Laptev went on in despair. ‘‘Why? What demon pushed you into my arms? What did you hope for? What did you want?’’
She looked at him in terror, as if she was afraid he would kill her.
‘‘Was I pleasing to you? Did you love me?’’ he went on breathlessly. ‘‘No! What was it, then? What? Tell me— what?’’ he shouted. ‘‘Oh, cursed money! Cursed money!’’
‘‘No, I swear to God!’’ she cried and crossed herself; she shrank under the insult, and for the first time he heard her weep. ‘‘No, I swear to God!’’ she repeated. ‘‘I didn’t think of money, I don’t need it, I simply thought that if I refused you, it would be a bad thing to do. I was afraid to ruin your life and mine. And now I’m suffering for my mistake, suffering unbearably!’’
The Complete Short Novels Page 41