After three days or so, Yartsev came to see him and spend the evening together.
‘‘And I’ve got news,’’ he said and laughed. ‘‘Polina Nikolaevna has moved in with me for good.’’ He was slightly embarrassed and went on in a low voice: ‘‘What, then? Of course, we’re not in love with each other, but I think that . . . that makes no difference. I’m glad I can give her shelter and peace and the possibility of not working, in case she gets sick, and it seems to her that if she lives with me, there will be more order in my life, and that under her influence, I’ll become a great scholar. So she thinks. And let her think it. They have a saying in the south: ‘A fool gets rich on fancies.’ Ha, ha, ha!’’
Laptev was silent. Yartsev strolled about the study, looked at the pictures he had seen many times before, and said with a sigh:
‘‘Yes, my friend, I’m three years older than you, and it’s late for me to think about true love, and essentially a woman like Polina Nikolaevna is a find for me, and I could certainly live my life very well with her into old age, but, devil take it, I keep regretting something, keep wanting something, and imagining that I’m lying in the Vale of Dagestan and dreaming of a ball.27 In short, a man is never content with what he’s got.’’
He went to the drawing room and sang romances as if nothing had happened, but Laptev sat in his study, his eyes closed, trying to understand why Rassudina had gone with Yartsev. And then he became sad that there were no firm, lasting attachments, and felt vexed that Polina Nikolaevna had gone with Yartsev, and vexed with himself that his feeling for his wife was not at all what it had been before.
XV
LAPTEV WAS SITTING in an armchair, reading and rocking; Yulia was there in the study and also reading. There seemed to be nothing to talk about, and both had been silent since morning. Now and then he glanced at her over his book and thought: whether you marry from passionate love or without any love—isn’t it all the same? And the time when he was jealous, worried, tormented now seemed far away. He had managed to travel abroad and was now resting from the trip and counting, with the coming of spring, on going to England, which he had liked very much.
And Yulia Sergeevna had grown accustomed to her grief and no longer went to the wing to weep. That winter she did not drive around shopping, did not go to theaters and concerts, but stayed at home. She did not like big rooms and was always either in her husband’s study or in her own room, where she kept the encased icons she had received as a dowry, and that landscape she had liked so much at the exhibition hung on the wall. She spent almost no money on herself and lived on as little as she had once lived on in her father’s house.
The winter passed cheerlessly. Everywhere in Moscow, they were playing cards, but if instead of that they invented some other diversion, for instance singing, reading, drawing, it came out still more boring. And because there were few talented people in Moscow, and the same singers and readers participated in all the evenings, the enjoyment of art itself gradually became habitual and, for many, turned into a boring, monotonous duty.
Besides, not a single day passed for the Laptevs without some distress. Old Fyodor Stepanych’s eyesight was now very poor, he did not go to the warehouse, and the eye doctors said he would soon be blind; Fyodor also stopped going to the warehouse for some reason and stayed at home all the time writing something. Panaurov obtained a transfer to another town, with a promotion to the rank of actual state councillor,28 and now lived at the Dresden and came to Laptev almost every day to ask for money. Kish finally left the university and, while waiting for the Laptevs to find some job for him, spent whole days sitting with them, telling long, boring stories. All this was annoying and wearisome and made daily life unpleasant.
Pyotr came into the study and announced that some unknown lady had come. Written on the card he brought was: ‘‘Josephina Iosifovna Milan.’’
Yulia Sergeevna got up lazily and went out, limping slightly because her foot was asleep. A lady appeared in the doorway, thin, very pale, with dark eyebrows, dressed all in black. She clasped her hands to her breast and said pleadingly:
‘‘Monsieur Laptev, save my children!’’
The jingling of bracelets and the face with blotches of powder were familiar to Laptev: he recognized her as the same lady in whose house he had happened to dine so inappropriately sometime before his wedding. It was Panaurov’s second wife.
‘‘Save my children!’’ she repeated, and her face quivered and suddenly became old and pathetic, and her eyes reddened. ‘‘You alone can save us, and I’ve come to you in Moscow on my last money! My children will starve!’’
She made a movement as if to go on her knees. Laptev became alarmed and grasped her arms above the elbows.
‘Sit down, sit down...’ he murmured, seating her. ‘I beg you, sit down.’’
‘‘We have no money now to buy bread,’’ she said. ‘‘Grigory Nikolaich is leaving for his new post, but he does not want to take me and the children with him, and the money that you have been sending us so magnanimously, he spends only on himself. What are we to do? What? Poor, unfortunate children!’’
‘‘Calm yourself, I beg you. I’ll tell them in the office to send the money in your name.’’
She burst into sobs, then calmed down, and he noticed that the tears had made tracks on her powdered cheeks, and that she had a mustache sprouting.
‘‘You are endlessly magnanimous, Monsieur Laptev. But be our angel, our good fairy, persuade Grigory Nikolaich not to abandon me but to take me with him. I love him, love him madly, he is my joy.’’
Laptev gave her a hundred roubles and promised to talk with Panaurov and, seeing her off to the front hall, kept fearing she might burst into sobs or go down on her knees.
After her came Kish. Then came Kostya with his camera. Lately he had become interested in photography, and each day he photographed everyone in the house several times, and this new occupation caused him much distress, and he even lost weight.
Before evening tea, Fyodor came. He sat down in a corner of the study, opened a book, and stared at one page for a long time, apparently without reading it. Then for a long time he drank tea; his face was red. In his presence, Laptev felt inwardly oppressed; he even found his silence disagreeable.
‘‘You may congratulate Russia on the appearance of a new publicist,’’ said Fyodor. ‘‘However, joking aside, I’ve been delivered of a little article, brother, a trial of the pen, so to speak, and I’ve brought it to show you. Read it, dear heart, and tell me your opinion. Only frankly.’’
He took a notebook out of his pocket and handed it to his brother. The article was entitled ‘‘The Russian Soul.’’ It was written dully, in the colorless style usually employed by untalented, secretly vain people, and its main thought was this: an intelligent man has the right not to believe in the supernatural, but it is his duty to conceal this disbelief, so as not to cause temptation and shake people’s faith; without faith, there is no idealism, and idealism is predestined to save Europe and show mankind to the true path.
‘‘But you don’t write what Europe must be saved from,’’ said Laptev.
‘‘That’s self-evident.’’
‘‘Nothing is evident,’’ said Laptev, and he paced about in agitation. ‘‘It’s not evident what you wrote it for. However, that’s your affair.’’
‘‘I want to publish it as a separate brochure.’’
‘‘That’s your affair.’’
There was a moment’s silence. Fyodor sighed and said:
‘‘I’m deeply, infinitely sorry that you and I think differently. Ah, Alyosha, Alyosha, my dear brother! You and I are Russian people, broad Orthodox people; do all these little German and Jewish ideas suit us? We’re not some sort of scalawags, we represent a distinguished merchant family.’’
‘‘What sort of distinguished family?’’ Laptev said, restraining his irritation. ‘‘Distinguished family! Landowners thrashed our grandfather, and every last little official hit him
in the mug. Grandfather thrashed our father, father thrashed you and me. What has this distinguished family given us? What nerves and blood have we inherited? For almost three years now you’ve been reasoning like a beadle, saying all sorts of nonsense, and here you’ve written it down—it’s boorish raving. And me? And me? Look at me... No resilience, no courage, no strength of will; I’m afraid at every step, as if I’m going to be whipped, I’m timid before nonentities, idiots, brutes who are incomparably beneath me mentally and morally; I’m afraid of caretakers, porters, policemen, gendarmes, I’m afraid of everybody, because I was born of a cowed mother, I’ve been beaten down and frightened since childhood!... You and I would do well not to have children. Oh, God grant that this distinguished merchant family ends with us!’’
Yulia Sergeevna came into the study and sat down by the desk.
‘‘You’ve been arguing about something?’’ she said. ‘‘Am I interfering?’’
‘‘No, little sister,’’ answered Fyodor, ‘‘our conversation is on principle. So you say our family is this and that,’’ he turned to his brother, ‘‘however, this family has created a million-rouble business. That’s something!’’
‘‘Big deal—a million-rouble business! A man of no special intelligence or ability happens to become a trader, then a rich man, he trades day in and day out with no system or goal, not even a lust for money, he trades mechanically, and money comes to him, not he to it. All his life he sits in his shop and loves it only because he can dominate his salesclerks and scoff at his customers. He’s a church warden because there he can dominate the choir and bend them to his will; he’s a school trustee because he likes to think the teacher is his subordinate and he can play the superior before him. The merchant doesn’t like to trade, he likes to dominate, and your warehouse is not a trading establishment but a torture chamber! Yes, for such trading as yours, you need depersonalized, deprived salesclerks, and you prepare them that way yourselves, making them bow at your feet from childhood on for a crust of bread, and from childhood on you accustom them to thinking that you’re their benefactors. No fear you’d take a university man into your warehouse!’’
‘‘University people are no use in our business.’’
‘‘Not true!’’ cried Laptev. ‘‘That’s a lie!’’
‘‘Excuse me, but it seems to me you’re fouling the well you drink from,’’ Fyodor said and got up. ‘‘Our business is hateful to you, and yet you make use of its income.’’
‘‘Aha, you’ve finally come out with it!’’ Laptev said and laughed, looking angrily at his brother. ‘‘If I didn’t belong to your distinguished family, if I had at least a pennyworth of will and courage, I’d have flung away that income long ago and gone to earn my bread. But you in your warehouse depersonalized me from childhood on! I’m yours!’’
Fyodor glanced at his watch and hastily began taking his leave. He kissed Yulia’s hand and went out, but instead of going to the front hall, he went to the drawing room, then to the bedroom.
‘‘I’ve forgotten the layout of the rooms,’’ he said in great perplexity. ‘‘A strange house, isn’t it? A strange house.’’
As he was putting on his coat, he looked as if stunned, and his face expressed pain. Laptev no longer felt angry; he was alarmed and, at the same time, sorry for Fyodor, and that warm, good love for his brother, which seemed to have been extinguished in those three years, now awakened in his breast, and he felt a strong desire to express that love.
‘‘Come for dinner tomorrow, Fedya,’’ he said and stroked his shoulder. ‘‘Will you?’’
‘‘Yes, yes. But give me some water.’’
Laptev himself ran to the dining room, took the first thing he happened upon in the sideboard—it was a tall beer mug— poured water into it, and brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking greedily, then suddenly bit the mug, there was a gnashing sound, then sobbing. Water poured onto his coat and frock coat. And Laptev, who had never seen a man cry before, stood confused and frightened and did not know what to do. He watched like a lost man as Yulia and the maid took Fyodor’s coat off and brought him back inside, and he walked after them, feeling himself to blame.
Yulia helped Fyodor to lie down and lowered herself onto her knees before him.
‘‘Never mind,’’ she comforted him. ‘‘It’s your nerves...’
‘‘Dear heart, it’s so hard for me!’’ he said. ‘‘I’m unhappy, unhappy...but I’ve been concealing it, concealing it all the while!’’
He put his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear:
‘‘I see my sister Nina every night. She comes and sits in the armchair by my bed...’
An hour later, as he was again putting his coat on in the front hall, he smiled and felt abashed in front of the maid. Laptev drove with him to Pyatnitskaya.
‘‘Come for dinner with us tomorrow,’’ he said on the way, holding him under the arm, ‘‘and for Easter we’ll go abroad together. You need airing out, you’ve grown quite stale as it is.’’
‘‘Yes, yes. I’ll go, I’ll go...And we’ll take little sister along.’’
When he returned home, Laptev found his wife in great nervous agitation. The incident with Fyodor had shocked her, and she was unable to calm down. She did not cry, but she was very pale, and thrashed about on her bed, and with her cold fingers tenaciously clutched hold of the blanket, the pillow, her husband’s hands. Her eyes were large, frightened.
‘‘Don’t go, don’t go,’’ she kept saying to her husband. ‘‘Tell me, Alyosha, why have I stopped praying to God? Where is my faith? Ah, why did you talk about religion in front of me? You’ve confused me, you and your friends. I don’t pray anymore.’’
He put compresses on her forehead, warmed her hands, gave her tea, and she clung to him in fear...
Towards morning she grew weary and fell asleep, with Laptev sitting beside her and holding her hand. He did not have a chance to sleep. The whole next day he felt broken, dull, thought about nothing, and wandered sluggishly through the rooms.
XVI
THE DOCTORS SAID that Fyodor had a mental illness. Laptev did not know what was going on at Pyatnitskaya, and the dark warehouse, in which neither the old man nor Fyodor appeared anymore, gave him the impression of a tomb. When his wife told him that it was necessary for him to go every day both to the warehouse and to Pyatnitskaya, he either said nothing or began talking irritably about his childhood, about his inability to forgive his father for his past, about Pyatnitskaya and the warehouse being hateful to him, and so on.
One Sunday morning Yulia herself drove to Pyatnitskaya. She found old Fyodor Stepanych in the same big room where the prayer service had been held on the occasion of her arrival. In his canvas jacket, without a tie, in slippers, he was sitting motionless in an armchair, blinking his blind eyes.
‘‘It’s me, your daughter-in-law,’’ she said, going up to him. ‘‘I’ve come to see how you are.’’
He started breathing heavily from excitement. Moved by his misfortune, by his solitude, she kissed his hand, and he felt her face and head and, as if he had assured himself that it was her, made the sign of the cross over her.
‘‘Thank you, thank you,’’ he said. ‘‘And I’ve lost my eyes and don’t see anything... I can just barely see the window, and also the fire, but not people or objects. Yes, I’m going blind, Fyodor’s fallen ill, and it’s bad now without a master’s supervision. If there’s some disorder, nobody’s answerable; people will get spoiled. And why is it Fyodor’s fallen ill? Was it a cold? I’ve never taken sick and never been treated. Never known any doctors.’’
And the old man started boasting as usual. Meanwhile, the servants were hurriedly setting the table in the big room and putting hors d’oeuvres and bottles of wine on it. They put out some ten bottles, and one of them looked like the Eiffel Tower. A dish of hot little pirozhki was served, smelling of boiled rice and fish.
‘‘My dear guest, please have a bite to eat,’’ said t
he old man.
She took him under the arm, led him to the table, and poured him some vodka.
‘‘I’ll come to see you tomorrow, too,’’ she said, ‘‘and bring along your two granddaughters, Sasha and Lida. They’ll feel sorry and be nice to you.’’
‘‘No need, don’t bring them. They’re illegitimate.’’
‘‘Why illegitimate? Their father and mother were married in church.’’
‘‘Without my permission. I didn’t bless them and don’t want to know them. God be with them.’’
‘‘That’s a strange thing for you to say, Fyodor Stepanych,’’ Yulia said with a sigh.
‘‘In the Gospel it says children should respect and fear their parents.’’
‘‘Nothing of the sort. In the Gospel it says we should even forgive our enemies.’’
‘‘In our business you can’t forgive. If you start forgiving everybody, in three years it’ll all fly up the chimney.’’
‘‘But to forgive, to say an affectionate, friendly word to a man, even if he’s to blame—is higher than business, higher than riches!’’
Yulia wanted to soften the old man, to fill him with a sense of pity, to awaken repentance in him, but everything she said he listened to only with condescension, as adults listen to children.
‘‘Fyodor Stepanych,’’ Yulia said resolutely, ‘‘you’re old, and God will soon call you to Him; He will ask you not about your trade, and whether your business went well, but whether you were merciful to people; weren’t you severe to those weaker than you, for instance, to servants, to salesclerks?’’
‘‘I’ve always been a benefactor to those who worked for me, and they should eternally pray to God for me,’’ the old man said with conviction; but, touched by Yulia’s sincere tone and wishing to give her pleasure, he said: ‘‘Very well, bring the granddaughters tomorrow. I’ll have presents bought for them.’’
The old man was untidily dressed and had cigar ashes on his chest and knees; apparently no one cleaned his boots or clothes. The rice in the pirozhki was undercooked, the tablecloth smelled of soap, the servants stamped their feet loudly. Both the old man and this whole house on Pyatnitskaya had an abandoned air, and Yulia, who felt it, was ashamed of herself and of her husband.
The Complete Short Novels Page 44