‘‘Greetings, Ivan Cheprakov!’’
When drunk, he was very pale and kept rubbing his hands and laughing with a sort of whinny: ‘‘Hee, hee, hee!’’ Out of mischief, he would strip and run naked through the fields. He ate flies and said they tasted sour.
IV
ONCE AFTER DINNER he came running to the wing, out of breath, and said:
‘‘Go, your sister’s here.’’
I went out. Indeed, a hired town droshky was standing by the porch of the big house. My sister had come, and Anyuta Blagovo with her, and some gentleman in a military tunic. Going closer, I recognized the military man: it was Anyuta’s brother, a doctor.
‘‘We’ve come for a picnic,’’ he said. ‘‘It that all right?’’
My sister and Anyuta would have liked to ask how my life was there, but they both said nothing and only looked at me. I also said nothing. They understood that I didn’t like it there, and tears welled up in my sister’s eyes, and Anyuta Blagovo turned red. We went to the garden. The doctor went ahead of us, saying rapturously:
‘‘What air! Holy Mother, what air!’’
In appearance, he was still quite the student. He spoke and walked like a student, and the gaze of his gray eyes was as lively, simple, and open as in a good student. Next to his tall and beautiful sister, he seemed weak and thin; and his little beard was thin, and his voice also—a thin little tenor, though pleasant enough. He served in a regiment somewhere, and had now come home on leave, and said that in the fall he would go to Petersburg to pass the examination for doctor of medicine. He already had a family of his own— a wife and three children; he had married early, while still in the second year of his studies, and now they said of him in town that he was unhappy in his family life and no longer lived with his wife.
‘‘What time is it now?’’ My sister was worried. ‘‘We should get back early, papa allowed me to visit my brother only till six o’clock.’’
‘‘Ah, your papa again!’’ sighed the doctor.
I prepared a samovar. We had tea on a rug in front of the terrace of the big house, and the doctor, on his knees, drank from the saucer and said that he was experiencing bliss. Then Cheprakov fetched the key and opened the glass door, and we all went into the house. Here it was dim, mysterious, it smelled of mushrooms, and our footsteps made a hollow sound, as if there was a basement under the floor. The doctor, standing, touched the keys of the piano, and it responded to him weakly, in quavering, husky, but still harmonious chords; he tested his voice and began to sing some love song, wincing and tapping his foot impatiently when one of the keys turned out to be mute. My sister no longer wanted to go home but went about the room excitedly, saying:
‘‘I feel merry! I feel very, very merry!’’
There was surprise in her voice, as if it seemed incredible to her that she also could be in good spirits. It was the first time in her life I had seen her so merry. She even became prettier. In profile she was unattractive, her nose and mouth were somehow thrust forward and made it look as if she was blowing, but she had beautiful dark eyes, a pale, very delicate complexion, and a touching expression of kindness and sorrow, and when she spoke, she looked comely and even beautiful. Both she and I took after our mother—broad-shouldered, strong, enduring—but her paleness was sickly, she coughed frequently, and in her eyes I sometimes caught the expression people have who are seriously ill but for some reason conceal it. In her present merriment, there was something childlike, naïve, as if the joy which, during our childhood, had been suppressed and stifled by a stern upbringing, had now suddenly awakened in her soul and burst out into freedom.
But when evening came and the horses were brought, my sister became quiet, shrank, and got into the droshky looking as if it was the prisoner’s bench.
Then they were all gone, the noise died away... I remembered that in all that time, Anyuta Blagovo had not said a single word to me.
‘‘An astonishing girl!’’ I thought. ‘‘An astonishing girl!’’
Saint Peter’s fast7 came, and we were now given lenten food every day. In my idleness and the uncertainty of my position, I was oppressed by physical anguish, and, displeased with myself, sluggish, hungry, I loitered about the estate and only waited for the appropriate mood in order to leave.
Before evening once, when Radish was sitting in our wing, Dolzhikov came in unexpectedly, very sunburnt and gray with dust. He had spent three days at his work site and had now arrived in Dubechnya by locomotive and come from the station on foot. While waiting for the carriage that was to come from town, he went around the estate with his steward giving orders in a loud voice, then sat for a whole hour in our wing writing some letters; telegrams addressed to him came in his presence, and he tapped out the replies himself. The three of us stood silently at attention.
‘‘Such disorder!’’ he said, looking scornfully into a report. ‘‘In two weeks I’ll transfer the office to the station, and I don’t know what I’ll do with you, gentlemen.’’
‘‘I try hard, Your Honor,’’ said Cheprakov.
‘‘I see how hard you try. All you know how to do is collect your salary,’’ the engineer went on, looking at me. ‘‘You rely on connections, so as to faire la carrière7 quickly and easily. Well, I don’t look at connections. Nobody put in a word for me, sir. Before I got ahead, I was an engine driver, I worked in Belgium as a simple oiler, sir. And you, Pantelei, what are you doing here?’’ he asked, turning to Radish. ‘‘Drinking with them?’’
For some reason, he called all simple people Pantelei, but those like me and Cheprakov he despised and called drunkards, brutes, and scum behind their backs. In general, he was cruel to underlings, fined them, and threw them out of their jobs coldly, without explanations.
At last the horses came for him. As a farewell he promised to dismiss us all in two weeks, called his steward a blockhead, and then, sprawling in the carriage, drove off to town.
‘‘Andrei Ivanych,’’ I said to Radish, ‘‘take me on as a hired hand.’’
‘‘Well, why not!’’
And we set off for town together. When the estate and the station were left far behind us, I asked:
‘‘Andrei Ivanych, why did you come to Dubechnya today?’’
‘‘First, my boys are working on the line, and second— I came to pay interest to the general’s widow. Last summer I borrowed fifty roubles from her, and now I pay her a rouble a month.’’
The painter stopped and took hold of my button.
‘‘Misail Alexeich, angel mine,’’ he went on, ‘‘it’s my understanding that if a simple man or a gentleman takes even the smallest interest, he’s already a villain. Truth cannot exist in such a man.’’
Skinny, pale, frightening Radish closed his eyes, shook his head, and pronounced in the tones of a philosopher:
‘‘Worm eats grass, rust eats iron, and lying eats the soul. Lord, save us sinners!’’
V
RADISH WAS IMPRACTICAL and a poor planner; he took more work than he could do, became worried and confused when calculating, and therefore almost always wound up in the red. He was a painter, a glazier, a paperhanger, and even did roofing, and I remember him running around for three days looking for roofers for the sake of a worthless job. He was an excellent craftsman, and it happened that he sometimes earned up to ten roubles a day, and if it hadn’t been for this wish to be the head at all costs and be called a contractor, he probably would have made good money.
He himself was paid by the job, but me and the other boys he paid by the day, from seventy kopecks to a rouble a day. While the weather stayed hot and dry, we did various outdoor jobs, mainly roof painting. My feet weren’t used to it and got as hot as if I was walking on a burning stove, but when I put on felt boots, they sweltered. But that was only at first; later I got used to it, and everything went swimmingly. I now lived among people for whom work was obligatory and inevitable, and who worked like dray horses, often unaware of the moral significance of labo
r and never even using the word ‘‘labor’’ in conversation; alongside them, I, too, felt like a dray horse, ever more pervaded by the obligatoriness and inevitability of all I did, and that made my life easier, delivering me from all doubts.
At first everything interested me, everything was new, as if I had been newly born. I could sleep on the ground, I could go barefoot—and that was a great pleasure; I could stand in a crowd of simple people without embarrassing anyone, and when a cab horse fell in the street, I ran and helped to lift it up with no fear of dirtying my clothes. And above all, I lived at my own expense and was not a burden to anyone!
Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and paint, was considered very profitable, and therefore even such good craftsmen as Radish did not scorn this crude, boring work. In his short trousers, with his skinny, purple legs, he walked over a roof looking like a stork, and as he worked with his brush, I heard him sigh heavily and say:
‘‘Woe, woe to us sinners!’’
He walked on a roof as freely as on the floor. Though ill and pale as a corpse, he was remarkably nimble; just like the young men, he painted the cupolas and domes of churches without scaffolding, only with the aid of ladders and ropes, and it was a bit scary when, standing up there, far from the ground, he would straighten up to his full height and pronounce for who knows whom:
‘‘Worm eats grass, rust eats iron, and lying eats the soul!’’ Or else, thinking about something, he would answer his own thoughts aloud:
‘‘Everything’s possible! Everything’s possible!’’
When I came home from work, all those who were sitting on benches by the gateways, all the shop clerks, errand boys, and their masters, sent various mocking and spiteful observations after me, and at first that upset me and seemed simply monstrous.
‘‘Small Profit!’’ came from all sides. ‘‘Housepainter! Ocher!’’
And nobody treated me as mercilessly as precisely those who still recently had been simple people themselves and had earned their crust of bread by common labor. In the market, when I passed a hardware store, they poured water on me as if accidentally and once even threw a stick at me. And one fishmonger, a gray-haired old man, stood in my way and said, looking at me with spite:
‘‘It’s not you who’s to be pitied, you fool! It’s your father!’’
And my acquaintances, on meeting me, were for some reason embarrassed. Some looked upon me as an eccentric and buffoon, others felt sorry for me, still others did not know how to treat me, and it was hard to understand them. One afternoon, in one of the lanes near our Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya, I met Anyuta Blagovo. I was on my way to work and was carrying two long brushes and a bucket of paint. Recognizing me, Anyuta blushed.
‘‘I beg you not to greet me in the street,’’ she said nervously, sternly, in a trembling voice, without offering me her hand, and tears suddenly glistened in her eyes. ‘‘If, in your opinion, all this is necessary, then so be it... so be it, but I beg you not to approach me!’’
I now lived not on Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya but in the suburb of Makarikha, with my nanny Karpovna, a kind but gloomy old woman who always anticipated something bad, was afraid of all dreams in general, and saw bad omens even in the bees and wasps that flew into her room. And the fact that I had become a worker, in her opinion, did not presage anything good.
‘‘It’ll be your head!’’ she repeated mournfully, shaking her head. ‘‘So it will!’’
With her in her little house lived her adopted son Prokofy, a butcher, a huge, clumsy fellow of about thirty, red-haired, with a stiff mustache. Meeting me in the front hall, he would silently and deferentially make way for me, and if he was drunk, he would give me a five-finger salute. He took his dinner in the evenings, and I could hear him through the wooden partition grunting and sighing as he drank glass after glass.
‘‘Mama!’’ he would call in a low voice.
‘‘Well?’’ Karpovna would answer (she loved her adopted son to distraction). ‘‘What is it, sonny?’’
‘‘I can do you this indulgence, mama. For all my earthly life, I’ll feed you in your old age in this vale, and when you die, I’ll bury you at my own expense. I’ve said it, and it’s so.’’
I got up every day before sunrise and went to bed early. We housepainters ate a lot and slept soundly, only for some reason my heart beat hard during the night. I never quarreled with my comrades. Abuse, desperate curses, and such wishes as that your eyes should burst, or you should drop dead from cholera, never ceased all day, but nonetheless we still lived together amicably. The boys suspected I was a religious sectarian and made fun of me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father had renounced me, telling me straight off that they seldom saw the inside of God’s church themselves, and that many of them hadn’t gone to confession for ten years, and justifying such dissipation by saying that a housepainter is among people what a jackdaw is among birds.
The boys respected me and treated me with deference; they apparently liked it that I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and led a quiet, sedate life. They were only unpleasantly shocked that I didn’t take part in stealing drying oil and didn’t go to the clients with them to ask for a tip. Stealing the owner’s oil and paint was habitual among housepainters and was not considered theft, and remarkably, even such an upright man as Radish, each time he left a job, took along a little whiting and oil. And even venerable old men, who owned their own houses in Makarikha, weren’t ashamed to ask for a tip, and I found it vexing and shameful when the boys would go in a bunch to congratulate some nonentity for the start or the finish and, getting ten kopecks from him, thank him humbly.
With clients, they behaved like wily courtiers, and I recalled Shakespeare’s Polonius almost every day.
‘‘But surely it’s going to rain,’’ the client would say, looking at the sky.
‘‘It is, it certainly is!’’ the painters would agree.
‘‘Though the clouds aren’t the rainy sort. Perhaps it won’t rain.’’
‘‘It won’t, Your Honor! It sure won’t.’’
Behind their backs, their attitude to the clients was generally ironic, and when, for instance, they saw a gentleman sitting on a balcony with a newspaper, they would observe:
‘‘Reads the newspaper, but I bet he’s got nothing to eat.’’
I never went home to my family. On returning from work, I often found notes, short and anxious, in which my sister wrote to me about father: now he was somehow especially preoccupied and ate nothing at dinner, now he lost his balance, now he locked himself in his study and didn’t come out for a long time. Such news disturbed me, I couldn’t sleep, and sometimes even went past our house on Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya at night, looking into the dark windows and trying to make out whether everything was all right at home. On Sundays my sister came to see me, but on the sly, as if not to me but to our nanny. And if she came into my room, she would be very pale, with tearful eyes, and would begin to cry at once.
‘‘Our father won’t survive it!’’ she would say. ‘‘If, God forbid, something should happen to him, your conscience will torment you all your life. It’s terrible, Misail! I implore you in our mother’s name: mend your ways!’’
‘‘Sister, dear,’’ I would say, ‘‘how can I mend my ways if I’m convinced that I’m acting according to conscience? Try to understand!’’
‘‘I know it’s according to conscience, but maybe it could be done somehow differently, so as not to upset anyone.’’
‘‘Oh, dear me!’’ the old woman would sigh behind the door. ‘‘It’ll be your head! There’ll be trouble, my dearies, there’ll be trouble!’’
VI
ONE SUNDAY, DR. BLAGOVO unexpectedly appeared at my place. He was wearing a tunic over a silk shirt, and high patent-leather boots.
‘‘I’ve come to see you!’’ he began, shaking my hand firmly, student-fashion. ‘‘I hear about you every day and keep intending to come and have, as they say, a heart-to-heart talk. It’s terribly bor
ing in town, not a single live soul, nobody to talk to. Heavenly Mother, it’s hot!’’ he went on, taking off his tunic and remaining in nothing but the silk shirt. ‘‘Dear heart, allow me to talk with you!’’
I was bored myself and had long wanted to be in the society of other than housepainters. I was sincerely glad to see him.
‘‘I’ll begin by saying,’’ he said, sitting down on my bed, ‘‘that I sympathize with you wholeheartedly and deeply respect this life of yours. Here in town you’re not understood, and there’s nobody to understand you, because, you know yourself, here, with very few exceptions, it’s all Gogol’s pig snouts.8 But I figured you out at once, that time at the picnic. You’re a noble soul, an honest, lofty man! I respect you and regard it as a great honor to shake your hand!’’ he went on rapturously. ‘‘To change your life as sharply and summarily as you did, one must have lived through a complex inner process, and to continue that life now and be constantly at the height of your convictions, you must work intensely in your mind and heart day after day. Now, to begin our conversation, tell me, don’t you find that if you expended this willpower, this intensity, this whole potential on something else, for instance, so as to become in time a great scholar or artist, your life would then expand more widely and deeply, and would be more productive in all respects?’’
We fell to talking, and when we began to discuss physical labor, I expressed the following thought: it is necessary that the strong not enslave the weak, that the minority not be parasites on the majority or a pump constantly pumping its best juices out of it; that is, it is necessary that everyone without exception—the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor—participate equally in the struggle for existence, each for himself, and there is no better means of leveling in this respect than physical labor in the quality of a common service obligatory for everyone.
‘‘So, in your opinion, everyone without exception should be occupied with physical labor?’’ asked the doctor.
The Complete Short Novels Page 48