City Folk and Country Folk

by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya

  Olenka started.

  “How do you know he’s going bald?” she exclaimed. “You must have seen him today.”

  “I saw him through the keyhole,” Anna Ilinishna replied, unperturbed.

  “Why, then, did you say when you came out that you didn’t know we had a visitor?” Olenka persisted, even rising from her seat.

  “Why should I speak first about a guest if my hosts don’t tell me themselves. I think that’s a simple matter of hospitality; and if I am to be pushed into the background in someone else’s home, who am I to object?”

  “We talked for quite a while,” Nastasya Ivanovna interjected, terrified at the thought that her cousin might have heard everything. “Olga Nikolayevna! Why are you twiddling your thumbs, sitting around idly?” she abruptly pounced on her daughter, as if she were to blame for her anxieties. “We were talking, Cousin. And we talked about you.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna spoke these words resolutely. She suddenly decided to meet the danger head on, calculating that if her cousin had heard everything there was nothing to be done, but if she had not been able to make out what was said from behind the closed door, then Nastasya Ivanovna would demean herself—that is, lie—for Olenka’s sake.

  “Interesting, what might you have said about me?” Anna Ilinishna mused enigmatically.

  “Oh, not much: that you had visited holy places and how nice that is.”

  “I should say it’s nice. Only a heathen would need to be told that that’s nice. It’s true, you didn’t tell him much.”

  “Well, it doesn’t feel right to praise one’s own relatives too much, Cousin,” Nastasya Ivanovna remarked. “Of course, I could have told him about the good deeds you’ve done all over Moscow, and the cripples and everything…but I was afraid. Given your Christian humility, that might be unpleasant for you.”

  “I thank you with all my heart. If I had been babbling about myself, that would be one thing, but it seems God permits others to herald the good. In any event, you did very well not to say much about me.”

  “Why is that, Anna Ilinishna?”

  “You just shouldn’t.”

  “But, why?”

  Tortured confusion was reflected on Nastasya Ivanovna’s face. She was at a complete loss. Olenka bided her time.

  “Because he’s an unbeliever,” Anna Ilinishna calmly stated and busied herself with her needlework.

  “Truly? But doesn’t he—is he really? But, how could anyone know that?”

  “For you it would be difficult, but I know what I’m talking about.”

  “But how can one know that?”

  “His beard alone is enough,” Anna Ilinishna muttered as if talking to herself and jerking her head in the direction of Ovcharov’s departure.

  Complete silence followed. The only sound was Nastasya Ivanovna’s cautious sigh.

  “And most important, he’s an ignoramus,” Anna Ilinishna pronounced abruptly, breaking the silence, but then pausing again for some time.

  “As if I don’t know his sort,” she blurted, glancing at her speechless hostesses with an angry laugh, extremely animated. “I don’t think there’s another like him in all Moscow—and he knows my biography! He was good enough to wait for you to deign to tell it. Yes, I think all the world knows what powers God has granted me; about my experiences with hypnotism, and about my clairvoyance; and all the most eminent physicians wrote about it in Paris! I’ve seen through better than the likes of him, and I don’t even know how I do it. I’ve been known to strike fear into worthier men. And he, you see, doesn’t remember me! Here you are, graciously explaining who on earth Anna Ilinishna is! Ah—what a memory, I’ve never seen anything like it! Enough. There’s nothing to be done if you prefer one guest over another. I’ve done what I could. I told you about my anguish, about my dreams—and even talking about these things strains the health. Of course, I made this sacrifice because we are family. It is upsetting to see how little it’s valued.”

  Anna Ilinishna fell back into her easy chair and began energetically hooking her needlework.

  “Cousin,” Nastasya Ivanovna spoke up timidly. “You’re not angry with me over something, are you?”

  “What are you talking about? The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Your voice just now…”

  “I was speaking of Ovcharov, and if you think some of it applies to you—that’s not my fault. There’s no reason to be annoyed with me. And if you’ve got anything on your conscience, I think the Lord will give you the good sense to consider it.”

  “Cousin, I don’t know anything,” Nastasya Ivanovna said, “and may God grant that nothing should come between us. Please allow me…”

  And without waiting for permission, she stood up and gave Anna Ilinishna a heartfelt hug. Her cousin did not stop her. Olenka turned toward the window and quietly shrugged her shoulders.

  “I may be a sinner, but I hold no grudge,” Anna Ilinishna added after the hug, unwinding her ball of yarn.

  “May God grant it,” Nastasya Ivanovna replied, touched. “And Erast Sergeyich is sure to redeem himself in your eyes. You don’t know yet: he will be living here.”

  “I heard.”

  Olenka started to ask something, but stopped short.

  “He wants to rent the bathhouse for the summer; there’s no place for him at Beryozovka. I have agreed.”

  “The bathhouse?” Anna Ilinishna repeated, drawing out the word, her face taking on a strange expression. “I congratulate you.”

  “You think…it’s too small?” Nastasya Ivanovna asked meekly.

  “I don’t think anything, nothing at all. I’m merely congratulating you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nastasya Ivanovna began, even more confused than she had been by the storm that had just passed and noticing the rather significant fluttering of the bow on Anna Ilinishna’s hairnet.

  “You don’t understand? I thought that old people would not forget such things. It turns out I was wrong. I’m ashamed to have to teach you. Who always lives in bathhouses?”

  “What do you mean, who? Nobody lives there,” Nastasya Ivanovna replied, astonished.

  “No one, in your opinion?”

  “No one, Cousin. Truly, I don’t understand.”

  “And where does the devil reside?” Anna Ilinishna asked with a certain enjoyment, putting down her needlework.

  Nastasya Ivanovna laughed cheerfully.

  “Oh, you’re joking, Cousin! Who would believe such a thing? You yourself don’t believe it. God is everywhere. And the Lord is with you! You’ve made me laugh, my dear. What a surprise!”

  “As you please. But believers know that it’s no dwelling for men and that it’s not built to be one. Infants understand. It’s well known that some wish to gratify ‘him.’ I don’t interfere. I’m just telling you. It’s none of my business.”

  “But I can’t just refuse Erast Sergeyich over something so silly,” Nastasya Ivanovna remarked timidly, a little bewildered.

  “I’m staying out of it; I’m staying out of it,” Anna Ilinishna interrupted her, waving her hands. “Do as you see fit. It’s in my nature to want to prevent evil—that’s all.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna grew quiet.

  “I wonder if an icon should be hung there,” Anna Ilinishna said a moment later, having resumed her crocheting.

  “I’ll hang one myself,” Nastasya Ivanovna asserted firmly.

  Her cousin glanced at her, and silence again descended over the room. Anna Ilinishna seemed to be pondering something as she continued to crochet energetically. In a moment her face began to change; the creases around her eyes, which had taken on a sly expression, became more compressed. Nastasya Ivanovna, who had already calmed down, walked over to the window, leaned her entire plump figure out of it, and looked toward the flowerbed. Her favorite brood hen had gotten in there and was digging around the last of her peonies yet to flower.

  “Shoo!” Nastasya Ivanovna scolded her gently, “Shoo!”

  C
lapping at the chicken, she almost completely forgot her troubles.

  “I would be interested in knowing one more thing,” she heard her guest’s voice behind her. The question, it seemed, was not directed at anyone in particular—neither mother nor daughter. Olenka did not react. She was sitting and tugging at a thread on the border of her red calico and quietly humming to herself.

  “What would you like to know, Cousin?” Nastasya Ivanovna asked, turning around. The storm, it seemed, had not yet blown over.

  “When Erast Sergeyich departs your Sokolniki1—that is, leaves your bathhouse—will you finish building it?”

  “Of course I will, Cousin, I’ll finish it. The benches will just need to be ordered.”

  “And you…you will use it?”

  “Yes. We’ll start heating it this autumn.”

  “And that after…after a man?” Anna Ilinishna exclaimed in horror.

  Nastasya Ivanovna blushed.

  “Well, Cousin,” she said, trying to quiet her pounding heart. “I don’t understand you at all. What do you mean by that? I’m probably just slow-witted. Help me understand.”

  “That’s not my place,” Anna Ilinishna responded humbly and rose from her seat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my room. My nerves are unsettled.”

  Anna Ilinishna took some sort of vial from her pocket.

  “Do you at least understand,” she asked, standing in her doorway and sniffing her vial, “do you at least understand that you mustn’t say a word to anyone about where you have a gentleman living? That it’s indecent? Do you understand?”

  She closed the door behind her.

  For several minutes mother and daughter sat in silence. Olenka was overcome by laughter, which she muffled with both hands over her mouth. Nastasya Ivanovna was contemplating her situation. She was left with the strong suspicion that her cousin had heard everything, and to this woe, another had been added.

  “What a mess you’ve made, Olenka!” she began in a whisper.

  “What? It’s nothing. She didn’t hear anything.”

  “You think so? Reassure me.”

  “Enough, Mama.”

  “God only knows why you two haven’t gotten along from the very first day. It pains me. And aren’t you ashamed of yourself? She’s never been angry like that before. It’s not as if we’ve been inattentive, have we? Do you know what she’s so angry about?”

  “What she’s angry about? She’s angry that you didn’t call her to entertain Erast Sergeyich, to play hostess in your place. You think she’s really so pious? She’s an old flirt, my Auntie—that’s all there is to it.”

  “Olenka, have you no fear of God? Where did you come up with such a thing?”

  “I saw through her from the first. She’s envious because I’m seventeen and she’s fifty. Holy! Then why did she bring all those powders and corsets and supports with her? I’ve seen them.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” Nastasya Ivanovna interrupted her, pacing the room. “This is upsetting. I can’t make sense of it. And about Erast Sergeyich. Did you hear—indecent?”

  “Listen to nonsense if you like.”

  “But what if she’s actually right? I, like a ninny, in the heat of the moment, got excited and didn’t understand what I was doing. Don’t look out the window, listen. Well, what will the neighbors say? I’m a widow, you are a young thing…a young man…Olenka?”

  “You’re worried about the neighbors? Which ones, if I may ask?” Olenka responded, making a disdainful face. “Here in the country there isn’t a soul, and the others—I don’t want anything to do with them. They’re nothing but ignoramuses. I only pay attention to city folk. But in the city—no one would see it that way. Just look, just listen what goes on in the city.”

  “Well, if that’s the way it is, then it’s fine,” muttered Nastasya Ivanovna distractedly, but her heart was heavy. “I’m old, Olenka, and it’s time you started doing the thinking for both of us. You’ve got to help get me out of this trouble. As things stand now, you’re only getting me into it.”

  “I won’t, I won’t; just don’t demand a show of affection toward Auntie. And if you want my advice: don’t talk anymore today about Erast Sergeyich. Instead ask Auntie to show you her wardrobe, make a fuss over it—everything will be just fine. Please, don’t let anyone—not Auntie or anyone else—get the better of you. Don’t we know our own minds? Can’t we live as we please? It’s tiresome.”

  “Just behave yourself, and give me a kiss, Olenka,” Nastasya Ivanovna replied, taking hold of her daughter’s head with both hands and sighing. “Oh, the whole morning’s gone by and we haven’t accomplished a thing!”

  1. Sokolniki is a park in Moscow on territory that served as royal hunting grounds starting in the seventeenth century.

  Because he employed energetic measures, Erast Sergeyevich settled in very quickly. From his steward’s house, where he spent the first half of the day poring over various accounts, he sent a man on horseback to Snetki with a note to the lady of the house requesting her terms. The man waited. Never before had poor Nastasya Ivanovna’s mind been so taxed as it was that morning. She cloistered herself in Olenka’s attic where, together with her daughter and in secret from Anna Ilinishna, she tried to come up with prices. Nastasya Ivanovna could not find a way to reconcile with her own selflessness. After being consulted a hundred times, Olenka was finally fed up.

  “Just charge that man-of-the-world five hundred in silver,” Olenka pronounced, throwing herself on her bed, where she began to unravel and redo her disheveled braid.

  “That’s what you get when you ask a goat for advice!” her mother exclaimed as she walked out with her mathematical scribblings.

  She sent off the terms, even though she had not yet settled on a price for the whey. Because this price was missing and some others were suspiciously low, the man was forced to return again, and then again. Finally, at Nastasya Ivanovna’s request, Ovcharov wrote out a prix fixe for the therapeutic nutriment—one that was quite proper and reflected neither magnanimous sacrifice nor undue burden on his finances. Toward evening another horse appeared in Snetki, this time pulling a droshky loaded with Ovcharov’s possessions. At first glance, there was not much to them, but how surprised the uninitiated would be to see that “not much.” Ovcharov’s many visits to Europe’s industrial exhibitions had paid off, and his enthusiasm for the ingenuity of the New World had served him particularly well. He took advantage of anything that met the tourist’s needs, and this fleeting visitor to his native land, knowing what life in Rus is like, had brought along valuable resources. While he may not have possessed a coat that could be transformed, at its owner’s command, into a rowboat, a mattress, a pillow, an umbrella, or perhaps even a hat, he certainly came close.

  By the following morning the bathhouse was unrecognizable. The floor had been covered with American oilcloth, English rugs, and the fluffy pelt of some sort of wild animal. An English tapestry depicting a perfectly lifelike deer adorned one wall, along with various hunting accessories; beneath the tapestry stood a collapsible bed. Arranged around the bed were a collapsible table and chair and a tall writing stand, all of it sturdy, comfortable, refined, and elegant, every item breveté and garanti,1 every item having earned an exhibition medal. A magnificent trunk stood proudly in the corner bearing the venerable mark of railway labels from every European line and traces of foreign and native dirt. This trunk was some sort of magician. A hundred items emerged from it, and each of these multiplied itself a hundredfold: the finest linens and outer garments, a variety of accoutrements designed to warm and protect (all recommended by hygiene experts), a toiletries case equipped with a mirror, a silverware case, steam cookers, a lamp, candlesticks, and finally, from a special compartment, pamphlets and books. There was another bale of books still waiting to be unpacked.

  Ovcharov’s sprightly servant left for the provincial capital at dawn. He returned with an iron stove, a large leather easy chair, green taffe
ta curtains for the windows, and a large quantity of canvas. The servant had brought along two workmen. The stove was installed in an instant, and the bathhouse walls were covered with canvas. When the sun burst through the window and green-and-white curtains onto the clean canvas—and onto the English steel, the colorful rugs, the bronze, the lamps, and the inkwell, onto the blanket of crimson silk, and, finally, onto two photographic portraits that had appeared on the wall—it was a sight to behold. Ovcharov himself arrived to take a look and was satisfied. He then ordered that work begin on the final refurbishment, and as quickly as possible, so that everything would be ready by the following day: a canopy was added to the bathhouse. It was needed to provide a place to rest after bathing and to work when the baking sun made the bathhouse uncomfortably warm. He had asked Nastasya Ivanovna’s permission to make this addition to his accommodations in one of his notes the day before.

  No sooner had the canopy been ordered than it was already in place, and Ovcharov moved in.

  He arrived on foot and carrying his briefcase, which he did not entrust into servants’ hands, and placed it on his writing stand. This briefcase had been fashioned from magnificent leather by Paris’s finest craftsman, but was ancient, scratched, and ink-stained in many spots, the casualty of time—a venerable briefcase. This is where Ovcharov kept all his writing.

  After his many exertions and three sleepless nights, it was a pleasure to rest. Ovcharov relished being in bed. Sleep, however, did not come, not because of the unfamiliarity of his surroundings—he had experienced thousands of different living quarters in his life—but from the sort of fatigue that often drives away sleep rather than promoting it. He lay there thinking, and little by little the proximity of his native fields aroused in him recollections of the distant past, of the first years of his youth.

  Back then, Beryozovka and the Ovcharovs’ Moscow household were run in what they thought of as the European way, provoking the envy of the poor and smirks from the sons of the truly wealthy. Behind the scenes there was squalor, and the idea that might makes right held full sway. In the salon, old-fashioned hospitality had been replaced by dîners fixes2 and caricatures of maîtres d’hôtel. In the country, landowners with twenty to forty souls reacted with reverential dismay. This is what many naive people called “Europe.”