Katerina Petrovna let out a gasp. The words had come so suddenly, so boldly, so heedlessly, that she sat down in the easy chair and folded her hands in her lap.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“Nothing. I won’t marry him and that’s all.”
“But your betrothal has already been decided, hasn’t it?”
“That is, you decided it, but I had not yet,” Olenka replied, smiling.
“But you’ve lost your mind! Nastasya Ivanovna, what is going on?” Katerina Ivanovna turned threateningly toward her.
“As Olenka sees fit,” Nastasya Ivanovna replied.
“But this is the worst kind of insult! When you had agreed…”
“I never agreed. I said nothing. Don’t ask Mama,” Olenka continued after a moment’s silence in the room. “This is my affair. Although I know that Erast Sergeyich also took it upon himself to try to talk Mama into it. It grieves me that he troubled himself in vain.”
“I was carrying out a request,” Ovcharov began, blushing.
“If you would be so good as to tell me, what is the reason for your refusal?”
“Semyon Ivanich repels me.”
“What?” Katerina Petrovna gasped.
“Well, how can I explain it to you? He’s just awful, that’s all.”
Katerina Petrovna was dumbstruck.
“Perhaps I have bad taste or I’m a fool,” Olenka continued, “but I can’t stand the sight of him. That’s how it is sometimes. A person might be the wisest man on earth, but not everyone’s going to like him. But what am I going on about? It’s not just me—some of the smartest people don’t like him either. Erast Sergeyich, for example, also can’t stand him. Ask him.”
Ovcharov just stood there. Katerina Petrovna turned to look at him.
“Isn’t it true? Isn’t it, Erast Sergeyich?” Olenka exclaimed, walking right up to him, her eyes afire. “Say it. As an honest man, say it now: is Simon a good-for-nothing or not?”
“Well, yes,” Ovcharov muttered. “But my personal taste…”
He did not finish. Lowering his gaze he met Katerina Petrovna’s eyes. They were fearsome.
Quiet settled over the room. Olenka even became timid. She herself did not understand what nerves she had struck, did not fully appreciate what she had done. She went over to her mother. Nastasya Ivanovna was neither dead nor alive. Ovcharov walked out.
“I see,” Katerina Petrovna pronounced finally, “what heights of shamelessness are possible…You had reached an agreement with him, Olga Nikolayevna! But I’m not so easily mocked. Everyone will find out about this. Respectable people will not cross your threshold. Very well, Nastasya Ivanovna! Very well! You’ve done a fine job looking after your daughter’s behavior!”
1. Kanaous was a colorful, plain-woven textile produced in Central Asia in the nineteenth century.
2. Balyk is sturgeon that has been salted and dried.
3. “Royal doors” are the central doors of the iconostasis in a Russian Orthodox church.
4. French: And your health?
5. French: Help this poor woman up.
6. French: Truly, this malice has no name.
7. French: You are here?
Mother and daughter were left alone.
Nastasya Ivanovna sat down on the couch without saying a word and looked around the empty room and at Olenka. Olenka was laughing, but it was an irritated laugh.
“Did you hear what she said?” Nastasya Ivanovna asked.
“I heard. What of it?”
“Nothing. God will be her judge. But it’s hard, Olenka, in old age…And for you, young one, I imagine, it’s hardly cheerful.”
“For me? I’m having a fine time. Good people won’t believe a word of it and the bad sort, well, let them think what they like!”
Nastasya Ivanovna hung her head. Olenka let her be. Now that her mother had spoken her piece, she was waiting for her to take a sober look at all that had happened and finally cheer up on her own. But Nastasya Ivanovna was not taking that look.
“Oh, enough, Mama,” Olenka finally exclaimed, kissing her red and tear-stained cheeks. “What are you so gloomy about?”
“Olenka, we’re quarreling with everyone!”
Olenka laughed.
“You are funny! We did just what we needed to!”
“What do you mean? And there’s Erast Sergeyich. You seem to have hurt his feelings somehow. It weighs on me so. In all my years of running an estate, never before has such a calamity…”
Olenka flared up.
“Haven’t you had enough of being preached to?” she exclaimed. “Don’t be silly! It’s shameful. Maybe we are a couple of country fools, maybe we do need to be taught, if only there was anyone with something to teach us! As it was, we had fine teachers: two crazy old hags and a pompous fool!”
“What pompous fool, Olenka?” Nastasya Ivanovna asked, smiling weakly.
“What pompous fool? That’s easy: your Erast Sergeyich. But it’d be better if you’d eat. With so many friends over you forgot all about the food. And then we’ll think about how to get rid of Anna Ilinishna.”
The sound of Anna Ilinishna’s name restored all of Nastasya Ivanovna’s energy. She boldly deposited a sizable piece of pie on her plate, filled a glass with kvass, and crossed herself. She was finally able to think clearly.
By the end of breakfast, mother and daughter had come up with a plan. The tarantass was prepared and they set out for town. There, not without difficulty, they borrowed money from Uncle Pavel Yefimovich and a variety of acquaintances. As soon as they returned home the next day, Nastasya Ivanovna resolutely burst into Anna Ilinishna’s room and announced her desire that the latter leave her house, for which purpose she was providing a sum of money. Anna Ilinishna was free to choose any place of residence that suited her; Nastasya Ivanovna was willing to give her last kopek to support her, so long as they would not see one another. Anna Ilinishna took the money without a word. Whether this was all she had been waiting for or she just decided on the spur of the moment what needed to be done is unclear (who can know the depths of the heart?). In any event, Anna Ilinishna began to pack her bags.
Through the locked door, Nastasya Ivanovna could hear her puttering about with Palashka.
“She just had to come here and torment me,” she commented.
But as her torment was many-sided, she immediately turned her attention to another of its facets.
“Olenka,” she said, having thought deeply on the subject, “does Erast Sergeyich really have to be turned out of the bathhouse? He doesn’t know anything; and who are we to judge?”
“Leave him alone, Mama,” Olenka replied. “It would only create more talk. If he’s got any sense, he’ll leave of his own accord.”
The following day, without saying goodbye, one source of Nastasya Ivanovna’s torment departed. Word was left that she would, of course, return the money. Incidentally, this never happened. From town Anna Ilinishna swooped like a hawk on her Princess Maria Sergeyevna, who had not yet departed for her trip abroad. Anna Ilinishna gave her princess such a talking-to that she was granted permanent residence and allotted her former quarters in the princess’s house.
“Must be that some people just need one another,” Nastasya Ivanovna remarked when news of this denouement reached her.
Erast Sergeyevich continued drinking his whey for another two weeks before he found that it was beginning to harm his health. One fine morning he disappeared. All that remained of the brilliant visitor was a note, in which he reminded Nastasya Ivanovna that their accounts had been settled in full.
He left for town, from there went to Moscow, and from there, having borrowed money, went abroad. His Beryozovka (which he fulminated against under another name in one last article he managed to write)—this Beryozovka he forsook, washing his hands of it. That is, he washed his hands of it in the symbolic sense, tearing it from his heart; in the material sense, he made all the necessary arrangements, having finally
drawn up his plans for future relations between him and its residents.
This year, those residents created a disturbance, provoking fear and temptation in their neighbors. Who was to blame? Many thought it was Erast Sergeyevich’s plans that were at fault, but others chalked it up to the general backwardness of the entire region, which forces the best society has to offer to abandon hearth and home.
This year, Ovcharov settled abroad permanently.
City Folk and Country Folk Page 22