City Folk and Country Folk

by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya

  “Did Olenka say anything to you?” Nastasya Ivanovna asked.

  “No, nothing. Well?”

  “If Olenka hasn’t decided, what sort of decision can I make?”

  “There is a great deal you can decide,” Ovcharov replied, somewhat haughtily.

  “What, my dear man? I don’t see…My head is in a whirl with all these problems! You advise me, you are smarter.”

  “I thank you, but no great wisdom is required here. Command your daughter to give up her obstinacy, if she should decide to be obstinate.”

  “Command her—how can I?” Nastasya Ivanovna replied, shaking her head even as she smiled at her guest. “May God preserve us! I’ve known mothers to force their daughters, and then…”

  “Is commanding really the same as forcing?” Ovcharov began to argue, but then thought better of it. “Well, yes, commanding. When it is for her own good, even if she doesn’t realize it? The exercise of maternal authority, I believe, is nothing to shrink from.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna shook her head, deep in thought.

  “If we do a poor job of preparing our children for life, if their heads are filled with nonsense, and we, out of weakness, out of shortsightedness…Well then there’s nothing left but to take them forcibly in hand.”

  Ovcharov’s tone was angry. Nastasya Ivanovna was thinking. At first she felt terribly hurt, then she concluded there must be some misunderstanding, and finally she was even struck by the idea that the entire situation was somehow comical.

  “Erast Sergeyich,” she said confidentially, taking him by the sleeve. “Don’t be angry with me, my dear.”

  “What is it?”

  “I just don’t see much of anything in this marriage for Olenka.”

  “Do you have many other prospects in mind for your daughter?” Ovcharov asked after a moment’s silence.

  “None whatsoever, Erast Sergeyich,” she replied, perplexed.

  “Is Olga Nikolayevna in love with anyone else? Hopelessly in love, that is, so that it might prevent her from considering another?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Fine. Is there any hope of her deciding on another choice anytime soon? No. Do you feel that you will ever be able to count on yourself to wisely choose a husband for her? No?”

  There was no mistaking the fact that these questions were beginning to sound like an interrogation. Nastasya Ivanovna felt annoyance welling up inside her, annoyance she could not explain. She wanted to respond, but waited. The idea of being angry with Erast Sergeyevich saddened her.

  “I can’t see what the future will bring, my dear Erast Sergeyich,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “Whatever the Lord has in store for us will come to pass.”

  “Superb!” he muttered through his teeth.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is it?” she repeated after a minute.

  “I’m surprised at you. You must excuse me,” he said, finally, slightly shrugging his shoulders. “I thought you had more sense than that. How can it be that at your age…How can you take such an easygoing view of the future—no preparing, no thinking, come what may?”

  “So, what should I do, Erast Sergeyich?”

  “I think you should listen to intelligent people. It is better to let others do your thinking for you than to be stubborn. You cannot count on yourself, or on your daughter either, so it’s better to let others take charge. Katerina Petrovna has offered to play the role of matchmaker. She’s being exceptionally kind, and I believe that this matchmaking is motivated by nothing beyond a desire to do you a good turn.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna smiled. Ovcharov noticed that smile.

  “It is your lack of trust in people—you will excuse me, please—in your betters, that is at the root of the trouble,” he pronounced sharply and didactically. “I’m being truthful, Nastasya Ivanovna, which is more than most people would do. Your lack of trust—you will excuse me—looks very much like envy. There’s no way around it—it’s a shortcoming of your caste. And I will conclude by saying that your Olga Nikolayevna is quite infected with this shortcoming. Harmful spoiling: that’s what we have here, Nastasya Ivanovna. I am surprised at Katerina Petrovna! The way Olga Nikolayevna looks at her…I would advise you to do something about that.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna remained silent. Although she kept her plump arms, folded at the waist, perfectly still, they rose and fell with her heavy breathing.

  Ovcharov smoothed his hair and leaned against the back of the couch. Neither made a sound. Through the window, chickens pecked and scratched as usual. Ovcharov made a face and sighed. It was as if the light coming through the window, the chickens outside, and his entire surroundings filled him with nervous irritation. Nastasya Ivanovna did not say a word. Ovcharov also did not speak. Finally, he yawned slightly and rose.

  “Farewell, Nastasya Ivanovna,” he said, “I’m not in the habit of interfering in family affairs, but in this case I considered it my duty.”

  “Farewell, Erast Sergeyich,” Nastasya Ivanovna murmured, rising with difficulty.

  She escorted him out onto the steps. Ovcharov walked away thinking he had rarely seen such dimwittedness and lack of tact.

  After coming back inside, Nastasya Ivanovna resumed her place on the couch. Soon, she began to cry. She was not a woman to take offense, but now her feelings were truly hurt. Erast Sergeyevich had taken her completely by surprise. She had not expected this from him of all people, such a smart man and one she loved with all her heart. He had grievously offended her. He may have long considered her a fool, but envious? That made no sense whatsoever! And Olenka! It had never occurred to them to envy the more distinguished nobles! Let them do as they please—may they prosper, since they were born smarter. But we don’t have to accept whatever husband it pleases them to send our way out of charity; we’re allowed our own say in the matter!

  The tears continued to flow. Nastasya Ivanovna was heartbroken. Discord had overtaken her home. “What a bad patch I’m in,” she thought. “Never, in all my days, has anything like this ever happened. I think I’m doing everything right, but it turns out it’s all wrong. I suppose I really am an old fool! Erast Sergeyich will probably leave me now. After everything he said, how could he live under a roof like mine? He’ll probably send the accounts to be settled today.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna watched expectantly all day for the valet to bring the accounts, but closer at hand she had another source of torment that was almost unbearable without Olenka by her side. She could hear Anna Ilinishna moving about, talking with Palashka—the only person with whom she deigned to interact after the perfidy of the other servants. With each meal, her guest loudly announced through the door that she would pay Nastasya Ivanovna for everything in full. Nastasya Ivanovna always rushed to the door protesting, but her protests were in vain. At night, after Nastasya Ivanovna was in bed, Anna Ilinishna would go out into the yard for a bit of fresh air. Just when this life seemed to be on the verge of becoming routine, evidence to the contrary emerged, much to Nastasya Ivanovna’s surprise and joy.

  Toward evening of the second day without Olenka, Aksinya Mikhailovna crept quietly into her mistress’s room. Her expression was stern and seemed to promise some important revelation.

  “Ma’am, it appears that Anna Ilinishna wants to come out,” she announced, but so quietly that Nastasya Ivanovna did not believe her ears and asked twice for this news to be repeated.

  “Can it really be, Aksinya Mikhailovna?” she exclaimed.

  “So it seems. On Sunday, for mass. She ordered Palashka to prepare her dress. That’s how she said it, ‘Get it ready for me for mass.’ ”

  “Oh, Lord in heaven, bring her to her senses!” Nastasya Ivanovna cried out, crossing herself.

  “It may be a bit soon to rejoice, Ma’am.”

  “There’s something else?”

  “Well, Lord only knows…There was something funny in her voice. She’s got something up her sleeve.”

 
“What do you mean, something funny in her voice?”

  “That’s how it was, sort of spoken to the side, with a sneer and a grin. Even the girl found it odd. And she gave orders that you were not to know, that it should all be hushed up. But that girl—she went and told us all anyway.”

  “That little fool’s just seeing things! Cousin simply wants to make peace.”

  “Well, as you will, Ma’am. But she’s up to something. She also asked whether many of the parish landowners come to mass, or any of your acquaintances from town.”

  “And?”

  “And Palashka told her that plenty of them come.”

  “This time I’m not expecting anyone from town and I’m not urging anyone to come, not even Cousin Pavel Yefimich,” Nastasya Ivanovna remarked. “What kind of tales is she telling? And what did Cousin say?”

  “Anna Ilinishna took back the dress and got out another, not as nice, the dyed black one she wears on weekdays.”

  “But said to prepare it?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Nastasya Ivanovna grew pensive.

  “Think what you will, Ma’am.”

  “There’s nothing to think!” Nastasya Ivanovna replied calmly, although her initial elation had vanished for some reason. “Cousin is a very modest woman; perhaps she doesn’t want to stand out in public, at the pulpit…and in the country there’s really no need to dress up. Even if people see her, nobody holds it against old women like us.”

  Having come to this understanding of the matter, Nastasya Ivanovna cheered up. From that moment forward she was able to think clearly again. She and Aksinya Mikhailovna turned to planning for the holiday and the visitors it might bring, a possibility she had almost forgotten amid her troubles. Having deduced on her own (since Ovcharov had offered no information on the matter) that Olenka would be coming to mass with Katerina Petrovna, she was no longer preoccupied by that question—they would be reunited soon enough. And then, once Cousin has said her prayers—may the Lord guide her!—she will start coming out into the parlor. Finally some semblance of normalcy would be restored.

  Nastasya Ivanovna was suddenly overcome by such a longing for that normalcy that she approached the locked door with the intention of giving away everything that Aksinya Mikhailovna had confided in her. But then she thought better of it.

  “It would probably just annoy her,” she decided. “I’ll be patient. It won’t be long now.”

  That night Nastasya Ivanovna slept very little. A good night’s sleep was impossible; she was too upset about Erast Sergeyevich.

  Erast Sergeyevich, meanwhile, had no idea that he was a source of grief. As a man with a sophisticated understanding of things, he believed that differences of conviction should in no way prevent him from consuming whey chez Madame and Mademoiselle Chulkova so long as he paid for it. He took his walks and his swims and in between wrote articles for the people. His mood was foul. The peasants at Beryozovka were still causing him trouble. They stubbornly resisted accepting his conditions, and, what was worse, refused to understand what he was saying. He was beside himself. The same evening that Nastasya Ivanovna regained a measure of calm, Ovcharov seized his pen and started composing an article, which began as follows:

  We have spoiled the people—do not praise them. No, the people are beyond redemption. Do not try to teach them; they don’t deserve it. And they won’t learn a thing. You have to stand face-to-face with them, as I am standing, in order to understand the enormity of the sacrifice we are making, and once you understand, you’ll send all our noble undertakings to the devil.

  But the article progressed no further. Ovcharov thought that, although it would pass the censors, it did not reflect the way those in charge of our journals converse among themselves. He tore up what he had written and went to bed.

  He did not sleep well. Foolish thoughts overcame him. Ovcharov grew angry at the very fact that he was having foolish thoughts, and at that point sleep abandoned him entirely. Some of the thoughts entering his head involved the most trivial matters—for instance, matters like Nastasya Ivanovna. Nastasya Ivanovna apparently had her own opinion. Nastasya Ivanovna had not been sufficiently influenced by his opinion. She had been frightened, but this sort of influence is not sufficient. Could it really be that even here intense effort was required, and whose? His, Ovcharov’s.

  In the morning, to the utter astonishment of his valet, he twice asked whether Olga Nikolayevna had returned.

  Early Sunday morning Olenka rode home with Katerina Petrovna.

  Having taken up all the space in the carriage and squeezed her traveling companion into a corner, Katerina Petrovna was dozing. Her head was resting on Olenka’s shoulder, forcing her to sit perfectly still. Olenka could not sleep. She was uncomfortable. Furthermore, she was bored.

  Olenka was returning home in a difficult predicament and full of self-reproach. She was surprised at herself for handling her own affairs so foolishly, affairs that she—so brave, so decisive—had imagined she would settle as she saw fit and in one fell swoop.

  The problem was that Katerina Petrovna was now going to see her mother believing that her betrothal to Simon was an immutable fact, notwithstanding the want of a single word on Olenka’s part to suggest that immutability. During the four days spent in Katerina Petrovna’s village, the word “marriage” was never uttered, but everything said seemed to presume that a marriage would take place. Katerina Petrovna was the one doing the talking, not Olenka. Olenka, however, had raised no objections. Having raised no objections on the day of her arrival with Ovcharov, she could not figure out how to raise them during the rest of her stay.

  “That insufferable mother of mine,” she decided once in a fit of rage against herself. “It would be better if I didn’t love her! If it weren’t for that, I’d nip this in the bud. I don’t want to, and that’s that. Let Katerina Petrovna marry Simon herself! But no, I’d better be careful not to make trouble for Mama when she’s not around.”

  Olenka did not want to admit that she herself was feeling rather cowardly. At the age of seventeen, no matter how brave or even defiant a girl of the rural nobility might be, it is not easy to do battle tête-à-tête with an aged and distinguished lady when that lady has gotten a notion firmly lodged in her head. Olenka also did not want to admit that once she was no longer tête-à-tête with Katerina Petrovna and instead under the wing of her own dear mother, she would be a great deal braver.

  The time she spent in the village was both tedious and ludicrous. She hardly saw her hosts. Mademoiselle Annette and George sometimes disappeared from morning to dusk. To improve their frail health, Katerina Petrovna granted them complete freedom. George spent the morning lying about his room, swinging his legs against the divan and singing French ditties. So much time was devoted to this activity that the heels of his boots came off. Having no other boots, he spent an entire day fighting with the valet over the repair of his heels and running all over the house with the shoe tree and awl. Toward evening, George would head for the stables or the peasant huts, licking his chops as he returned home. The servants would selflessly, albeit grudgingly, feed him from their own table, since Katerina Petrovna’s was rather meager. Mademoiselle Annette, after starting the day quarrelling with her brother and tinkling tunes from her exercise book on the piano, would usually go out into the garden and head for the stream to fish. On occasion, she would try to start a conversation with Olenka, but her manner was so condescending that Olenka did not condescend to reply. Most of Mademoiselle Annette’s questions concerned the girls in town. Olenka intentionally described them as paragons of beauty, their frocks as paragons of fashion, and their deportment as the paragon of elegance. Piqued, Mademoiselle Annette would leave the house. Olenka also liked to go outside, taking her sewing somewhere into the tree-lined alley, where she would doze. Katerina Petrovna had ordered her to trim Annette’s pantalettes with broderie anglaise.1 Olenka cut a few slits in the buckram, completely out of proportion to the surrounding patt
ern, stitched them as poorly as possible, and waited for Katerina Petrovna to upbraid her. She thought that this might lead to an opportunity to quarrel with Katerina Petrovna over Simon.

  No such opportunity presented itself for the simple reason that Olenka hardly ever saw either Katerina Petrovna or Simon. Morning tea was taken separately; Katerina Petrovna drank it in her room, with Simon. From there, muted conversation could be heard, at times with long pauses, as if the conversation was sluggish. Their discussions apparently included household matters, as the clicking of the abacus could be heard. Eventually Katerina Petrovna would emerge arm-in-arm with Simon and accept greetings from the children and Olenka, after which they all went their separate ways. Still arm-in-arm with Simon, Katerina Petrovna would then go out for a walk or to check on the workings of her estate. On one occasion, a ramshackle old gig was taken out of the shed and fixed up, and in this cabriolet Katerina Petrovna and Simon rode out into the fields. So passed the day until mealtime. Olenka counted and recounted the stripes on the parlor wallpaper and even learned to take books from the étagère of her own free will.

  At mealtime the household livened up. The family was reunited and conversations were conducted. Katerina Petrovna turned her attention to the children. Apparently, in anticipation of this moment of the day, she specially prepared topics for conversation, a sort of game whereby words were offered up from which mother and children were supposed to weave moralistic adages and judicious answers. If Olenka had read our children’s magazines from fifty years ago, she would have seen come to life the pages in which some Mrs. Lidina converses with a bunch of Mashenkas and Vanichkas about the transient nature of this world. As it was, these conversations proceeded rather lethargically. Simon took no part in them. He was silent and ate whatever fell to his share. Occasionally he would glance at Olenka, but calmly, like a man who has worked out a straightforward but profitable business transaction. From time to time he would exchange words with her about the summer heat or the delights of cold kvass.