City Folk and Country Folk

by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya

  “What do you mean, who?” Ovcharov responded waggishly. “You frightened me so just now…It’s true. You painted me as such a solemn and erudite scarecrow that I was just about ready to flee. Why are you laughing? You’re having a fine time, but what about me? Poor little me. There wasn’t a serious thought in my head, no sensible thoughts whatsoever. That’s how much I wanted to talk all sorts of cheerful nonsense with you…”

  “Is that so?” Olenka replied, shaking her head somewhat distrustfully at the schoolboy face he was managing quite elegantly and successfully.

  “Yes, that’s so; that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Well, talk your nonsense.”

  “I don’t dare,” he replied, playfully casting his gaze skyward.

  “Well, go ahead. Whatever you want!”

  “Whatever I want? No, what I would like to say…well, of course I wouldn’t say that,” he answered meaningly.

  “And why’s that?”

  He did not reply, but looked intently at Olenka.

  “What’s going on here?” she thought. “I shouldn’t have been so insulting; now he won’t say anything.”

  A strong sense of curiosity had awakened in her. In general, she was an extremely curious person. Ovcharov’s facial expression became more and more inscrutable. Olenka started to flirt, to pester him, and finally to rack her brains to contrive how she might cajole him. He, meanwhile, maintained his silence and only smiled.

  “Oh, come now, be a dear,” she exclaimed, not able to contain herself and taking him by the arm. “Tell me. If you tell me your secret, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about.”

  “Very well! That’s a reasonable condition. But since you’re the one who’s seen fit to pout, you should go first.”

  “If you please, we can do it that way, so long as you keep your end of the bargain.”

  “You think I won’t keep my end?” he exclaimed. “You’ve no idea how hard it’s been to keep my secret.”

  “So that’s how it is!” Olenka replied. Suddenly, she could detect something strange in his words and in his voice. She became quiet and her flirtatiousness vanished.

  “Tell me.”

  “I? In all honesty, I was thinking about our fight with Anna Ilinishna and that I was going to see an unbearable lady and an even less bearable young man, whom I already can’t stand and whom they’re trying to foist on me as a match.”

  “Is that all!” Ovcharov exclaimed with unusual fervor. “Nothing sweeter than that? At the age of seventeen, not a single dream on such a glorious summer day, a day just made for hiding away in this field of rye or in that grove with your beloved, so no one would see…Enough! You’re concealing your feelings. That’s hard to bear.”

  “I told the truth,” Olenka replied, but blushing. “I’ll have to be married.”

  “Marriage? To someone unbearable! Olga Nikolayevna! Come now, don’t betray yourself. At least don’t slander your own mind if perhaps…if what you want to hide is that you have passion and a heart. A forced marriage, a marriage based on calculations, a marriage to suit Papa and Mama, a marriage that makes no sense—that’s murder! It is quite simply the murder of your freedom. And what is marriage if not a crime, if not the murder of freedom? Do you know how you can be…how you must be free? Do you know?”

  “Well, how?”

  “As the wind,” Ovcharov concluded.

  “Is that so?” Olenka replied cheerfully.

  “Yes. You have your doubts, you think you would be less happy without any sort of marriage? Do you think there would be fewer men who love you?”

  “I’m not thinking anything, anything at all,” Olenka replied, coquettishly covering her ears against the torrent of words. “No one loves me, no one will want to know me…But you tell me your little secret now.”

  “My secret? Well, I’m mad about you, Olenka…”

  Ovcharov threw himself at her and, before she was able to say a word, kissed her neck and shoulders.

  Apparently Olenka really was stronger than he. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him to the other end of the carriage, quickly and without making noise or uttering a sound, so that the coachman did not even turn around.

  “You’re a vile person,” she said, crimson from agitation. “The slightest move and I’ll hit you. Don’t you dare say a word to me.”

  Ovcharov straightened his panama, enclosed himself more securely in his lap robe, and turned away. The only thing visible to Olenka was the chamois glove on his bony hand, which was supporting his chin. Then again, Olenka was not looking.

  Approximately a quarter hour passed in this manner. In the distance, Katerina Petrovna’s estate came into view.

  “Olga Nikolayevna,” Ovcharov said, suddenly turning to her. His face seemed distressed and upset. “Olga Nikolayevna, will you really not forgive my infatuation? If I didn’t like you so much…”

  “Nonsense, nonsense!” she said. “Be quiet. Don’t you dare lie. I don’t believe a word you say.”

  “Olga Nikolayevna, but how would I have dared…”

  She turned away, but could feel that he was not taking his eyes off her. He sighed, searched for her hand, and tugged at the hem of her burnous. Thus they traveled another verst, then another half verst. They passed over a wretched little bridge that traversed a miserable little stream; they passed through an abominable country road with unimaginably bad huts; then they finally reached a pasture, after which they had still to drive over a meager, crescent-shaped lawn to arrive at some sort of traveling case made of stone, with holes instead of windows and a steep iron roof clapped on top—Katerina Petrovna’s house.

  Upon seeing all this, Olenka called up to the coachman, “If you please, my good man, on the way back let me out at the bridge. In the dark, with your Viennese carriage, a person could fall out.”

  “So, you’ll go back with me?” Ovcharov hurriedly asked.

  “What?”

  “I thought…I was afraid that you would ask Katerina Petrovna…So you’ve forgiven me?”

  “That’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Olenka replied calmly. “I’ll go back with you just as I came. If you touch me, I’ll jump out or beat you in front of the coachman. Ask Katerina Petrovna for help! Coward! You were afraid that I would get you involved in some scandal? What good would that do me? Why would I want to do something like that? Perhaps you think that I’ll go and complain to Mama? I can handle you myself.”

  Ovcharov wanted to say something, but Katerina Petrovna’s manservant had already darted down the front steps and was opening the carriage door.

  1. A canezou is a tight-fitting short jacket, more often referred to as a “spencer” in nineteenth-century England. It is usually sleeveless, although one 1852 drawing portrays it with puffy sleeves. The following reference to a canezou is taken from Isabel F. Hapgood’s translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables: “There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish-brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday.” Variations on the burnous, a hooded cloak worn by North African Bedouins, were adopted in European fashion in the nineteenth century.

  2. French: Amorous pique.

  They entered a small, sparsely furnished room that had white stucco walls and was intersected by a narrow, faded runner. Other than a shuttlecock and some sorts of ladders and sticks for gymnastics in the corner, the room contained nothing but an old piano whose music rest held a yellowed book of Rosellen’s exercises.1 It was late enough that the midday meal had already been served, and a demilune table by the door to the servants’ quarters held, as relief from the heat, a pitcher of water and a small bottle of last year’s cranberry juice, which was swarming with flies. Millions of flies
were buzzing about. As the guests made their entrance, a girl of about fourteen, who had been leaning out the window to have a look at the carriage, jumped down from the sill and greeted the visitors with something between a curtsy and a bow. She was very tall, very plain, freckled, and coiffed à l’enfant.2 Her bow drew attention to the enormous fringes that had formed from the fraying of the pantalettes she wore beneath her faded muslin skirt and smallish crinoline, as well as her couleur chamois shoes,3 which might have been fashionable were they not worn somewhat askew.

  “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Annette; bonjour, George! Une poignée de main, mon garçon,”4 Ovcharov said as he bowed to the young lady and caught sight of a boy at the end of the hall.

  Mademoiselle Annette smiled at Ovcharov and silently nodded at Olenka, whose pretty dress drew her gaze. George turned to face them. He was a boy of about thirteen, pallid, stocky, and attired in old canvas, but with a watch and fashionable cravat. As he rushed to greet Ovcharov he dropped some photographs, which he had been putting back into a briefcase, on the floor.

  “How are you getting along? Where is your mother?”

  “Mama is in there; how do you do?” George replied, clicking his heels and breathing in the smell of Ovcharov’s shirt and vest, which emanated a subtle aroma.

  Olenka walked ahead.

  “And you, Mademoiselle Annette? How is life in the country?”

  “Merci, Monsieur,” she answered with a grimace, watching Olenka, whom she chose not to accompany. “You are staying with the Chulkovs?”

  “It’s deathly boring here,” George remarked, rubbing his hands together.

  “How can that be? I would have thought there were wide-open spaces for all kinds of mischief.”

  As he walked by, Ovcharov glanced at the photographs and glimpsed raised arms and legs and ballet dresses.

  “You recognize them, alright! Here’s Solovyova, Komarova, here’s Lyubov Petrovna. This is my collection.”

  “My, already so many acquisitions?”

  “I should say so!”

  “I congratulate you,” Ovcharov said before proceeding into the parlor, where he caught up with Olenka.

  The parlor was empty. All the furniture was covered and the coverings were billowing in the wind from the open windows. The worn runner extended through this room as well.

  “Bonjour,” a voice reached them from a third room, and a woman came into view, partially blocked by two meager orange trees that stood by the terrace door. She was sewing. A sewing box and a strip of muslin she had been attacking with an embroidery needle sat on a little table before her. The woman rose slightly in greeting, showing her diminutive stature and full, short waist, squeezed tightly into a corset. Her dress was also rather short, d’après la mode économique de campagne,5 with pockets on either side for household tools. Her small, wrinkled face, which maintained an ambiguous smile equally suggestive of pleasure and displeasure, seemed all the older from the contrast with her hair. Her hair was dyed as black as satin, and the end of a scarlet ribbon flapped about it, lifted by the wind from the circle of black lace that covered the top of her head.

  “How do you do, Katerina Petrovna?” There was a hint of irony in Ovcharov’s voice as he squinted at his hostess from a distance.

  “Oh, Erast Sergeyich…and Mademoiselle Olga? And you are together?” Katerina Petrovna offered Ovcharov her hand. She stared wide-eyed at Olenka and nodded at her only after a delay.

  “Yes, together,” Olenka replied.

  “And I thought that Nastasya Ivanovna…Is your mother unwell?”

  “No, she is well, thank you.”

  “And so, my dear Erast Sergeyich, vous voilà…Have a seat. Vous voilà.6 Can you imagine? I’d almost thought that you weren’t going to come at all.”

  Olenka took a few steps away and sat down in the closest easy chair.

  “You should have thought, on the contrary, that I would come without fail, quand même,”7 Ovcharov responded, graciously and hurriedly declining the offer of a chair that his hostess was nudging in his direction. “And your note? Will you explain it to me?”

  “My respects,” a voice came from nearby.

  The visitors had not noticed that someone was with Katerina Petrovna, obscured by the orange trees as he sat in the doorway leading onto the terrace. The gentleman stepped into the room and bowed.

  “Who is this bureaucratic type?” Ovcharov wondered, but then, upon closer inspection, said, “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  “Of course you recognize him! You are well acquainted, I believe,” Katerina Petrovna interceded, surprised and a bit taken aback that Ovcharov had not immediately known her guest. “It is not the first time that you’ve seen Simon in my home, and you, too, Mademoiselle Olga.”

  This was true. It was all coming back to Ovcharov. Before him, twirling his watch key, stood a man of average height, thickset, ruddy-faced, and about twenty-five years of age, with small round eyes peering out from under a protruding forehead. His movements were even and mechanical, and had it not been for a trace of obstinacy in the set of the mouth, his entire figure might have expressed the fulfillment of some command. Ovcharov had only ever seen this Simon—Semyon Ivanovich, that is—at Katerina Petrovna’s. She referred to him as “mon protégé.”8 He was dressed in broadcloth, wore bad boots, and was gloveless—all signs of poverty. There were many people of whose lives Ovcharov tried to stay abreast, and very little escaped his attention, but he had somehow failed to notice just when it was that Katerina Petrovna had taken this orphan under her wing. At large gatherings in her own drawing room, Katerina Petrovna kept Simon in the shadow, and little wonder. Among Moscow’s higher social circles he would have been indecent. Out of public view, however, Katerina Petrovna seemed to have allowed Simon great familiarity, and an experienced observer with a keen ear, catching the intonation of two or three of the most insignificant words passing between her and her protégé, would have no trouble drawing certain conclusions. However, no one in Katerina Petrovna’s immediate circle had drawn these conclusions. As far as they were concerned, this virtuous woman had become close with this orphan from the Moscow treasury office only out of compassion and as a tribute to his angelic nature. In a moment of idle fancy Ovcharov had once decided to take a closer look at the patroness and her protégé, and they had suddenly struck him as rather strange. Later, he forgot about them and turned his attention to more interesting phenomena of Moscow life.

  “Of course! Simon is staying here all summer. Government service has been hard on his lungs. We will remain here to serve in the provinces.”

  “You’re taking a position here?”

  “Yes. And how is your health, Erast Sergeyich?” Simon inquired unceremoniously, intentionally interrupting Katerina Petrovna, who had tried to say something.

  Ovcharov held forth on the subject of his whey.

  “And for you, too, Simon, it would do no harm,” Katerina Petrovna broke in.

  “It wouldn’t agree with my constitution,” Simon responded, barely glancing at Katerina Petrovna, and again turned to Ovcharov.

  “Does this fellow call the tune around here, by any chance?” Ovcharov wondered. As he continued to expound on his bathing regimen, tender glances were cast across the table from one side, while eyes were averted on the other. “But then again,” Ovcharov thought to himself, looking around, “it’s easy to lose your mind in the country!”

  He glanced at Olenka. She was sitting with her hands in her lap looking at the walls. There was nothing much to see there beside a few old family portraits (brought from Moscow because they were not good enough for the city and their subjects were long forgotten); two pastels, supposedly by Mademoiselle Annette (Olenka had seen the governess drawing them); a few books on the étagère, primarily on the subject of childrearing; and cabinets with teacups (some gifts, some family heirlooms) and wedding-gift bonbonnières—nothing worthy of notice. Olenka started to yawn and covered her mouth. Katerina Petrovna,
wide-eyed, caught her in the act, having turned her attention toward the girl when Ovcharov began looking at her.

  “Mademoiselle Olga, wouldn’t you like to go for a walk in the garden? Simon will accompany you. Simon, accompany Olga Nikolayevna.”

  “Yes, it is warm here,” Olenka replied.

  She was happy to leave. It was deathly boring there, and she thought that she would manage to slip away from the gentleman in the garden.

  “Well now, Katerina Petrovna,” Ovcharov said once they were alone and his hostess had brought her chair to an intimate distance from his, “I hope that these preparations mean that I am about to hear where my fault lies.”

  “Where it lies? But what kind of a life are you leading, mon cher Ovcharov? Where are you living? You know, I didn’t expect this of you. Avec ce genre de vie, ces tendances,9 you’ll be shut out of respectable circles.”

  “But why?”

  “Don’t interrupt me. I was so upset, so bewildered when I found out! And I’ve known a long time, since I first arrived. I couldn’t believe it. Un homme du monde10—living in some gentry woman’s bathhouse; and this gentry woman has a little minx of a daughter. Of course, I could have counseled them, but I didn’t want to get into a quarrel, and they wouldn’t have understood. But you must agree, my dear, this all appears rather dubious. Then I cast those thoughts aside and remembered how discriminating you are. Et puis…11 We’re living in a different sort of time now. I came to the conclusion that you had chosen such seclusion with another aim in mind…a most contemporary aim…quelque chose de plus monstrueux encore…”12

  “Oh, what horrors!” Ovcharov exclaimed, laughing.

  Katerina Petrovna shrugged her shoulders, but Ovcharov kissed her hand.

  “What kind of aims, my dearest Katerina Petrovna?”

  “The aim of spreading…” and she looked over her shoulder.

  “Just look how much trouble that whey has gotten me into!”

  “But I still believe in you,” Katerina Petrovna continued. “I wouldn’t want, I absolutely would not want to see you as un rouge. Vous êtes des nôtres, n’est-ce pas?13 You must reassure me.”