‘She deceived you as well,’ Lavretsky remarked gloomily.
‘Granted, granted; I was an instrument of fate – but I’m talking nonsense, fate had nothing to do with it; it’s my old habit of expressing myself imprecisely. But what does that prove?’
‘It proves I’ve been all wrong since my childhood.’
‘Put yourself right then! That’s why you were born, that’s why you’re a man; you don’t need to borrow energy to do that! But, however that may be, is it possible, is it permissible to elevate a private fact, as it were, into the status of a general law, of an unalterable rule?’
‘What rule?’ Lavretsky broke in. ‘I don’t see…’
‘No, it’s your rule, your rule,’ Mikhalevich interrupted him in his turn.
‘You’re an egoist, that’s what you are!’ he thundered an hour later. ‘You wanted self-indulgence, you wanted happiness in life, you wanted to live only for yourself…’
‘What is self-indulgence?’
‘And everything deceived you; everything collapsed under your feet.’
‘What is self-indulgence, I’m asking you?’
‘And it was bound to collapse. Since you looked for support where it was impossible to find it, since you built your house on shifting sands…’
‘Speak more clearly, without analogies, since I do not understand you.’
‘Since – laugh if you like – since you have no faith, no heartfelt warmth, just intellect, nothing but tuppeny-ha’ penny intellect – you’re simply a miserable, old-fashioned Voltairean, that’s what you are!’
‘Who – I, a Voltairean?’
‘Yes, just like your father, and yet you don’t even suspect it.’
‘After that,’ Lavretsky exclaimed, ‘I’ve the right to call you a fanatic!’
‘Hey!’ Mikhalevich protested in a spirit of contrition. ‘Unfortunately I haven’t yet earned the right to such a lofty title…’
‘Now I’ve found what to call you,’ shouted Mikhalevich, the same as ever, after two in the morning. ‘You’re not a sceptic, not disillusioned, not a Voltairean, you’re a layabout, a vicious layabout, consciously a layabout, not the naive type. Naive layabouts lie on the stove and do nothing, because they don’t know how to do anything; and they don’t think, but you’re a thinking man – and yet you lie around; you could do something – and yet you do nothing; you lie with your full stomach sticking up in the air and say: This is how it must be, lying about like this, because no matter what people do, everything’s nonsense, it’s all a lot of rubbish leading to nothing.’
‘Where have you got the idea from that I’m lying about?’ Lavretsky asked. ‘Why do you ascribe such ideas to me?’
‘But above all, you’re like all, all your gentry sort,’ continued the indefatigable Mikhalevich, ‘you’re all well-read layabouts. You know the Achilles’ heel of the Germans, you know what’s wrong with the English and the French, and this pitiful knowledge of yours is your mainstay and is a justification of your shameful apathy and your disgusting inactivity. Some of you even take pride in the fact that you’re so clever, you’re just going to go on lying there, while some other fools do all the work. Yes, indeed! Or there are some gents among us – however, I’m not saying this on your account – who spend their whole lives in an absolute ecstasy of boredom, who grow so used to it they wallow in it like… like a mushroom in sour cream.’ Mikhalevich burst out laughing at his own analogy. ‘Oh, this ecstasy of boredom is the ruin of the Russian people! The crass layabout spends his whole life making up his mind to start work…’
‘What’s all this scolding!’ Lavretsky howled in his turn. ‘Work… activity…. Just you say what ought to be done, and stop scolding, you Poltavan Demosthenes!’
‘See what he wants now! I’m not going to tell you that, my good chap, because everyone should know that,’ said the Demosthenes with irony. ‘A landowner, a member of the gentry – and he doesn’t know what to do! You’d know well enough if you had faith; no faith – and no vision to go with it.’
‘Give me a chance to get my breath back at least, you devil, give me a chance to take stock of things,’ begged Lavretsky.
‘Not a minute’s rest, not a second’s!’ protested Mikhalevich with an authoritarian wave of the hand. ‘Not a single second’s! Death doesn’t wait, and life shouldn’t be allowed to.’
‘And when and where have people taken it into their heads to become layabouts?’ he cried at four o’clock in the morning, but in a voice already grown hoarse. ‘Among us! Now! In Russia! when each individual person has a duty, a great responsibility before God, before the people and before himself! We’re sleeping while time’s passing away; we’re sleeping…’
‘Permit me to point out to you,’ Lavretsky said, ‘that we’re not sleeping now at all, but rather not giving the others a chance to sleep. We’re straining our throats like crowing cocks. Listen, there’s the cock crowing thrice.’
This joke delighted and quietened Mikhalevich. ‘Till tomorrow,’ he said with a smile and put his pipe away in his pouch. ‘Till tomorrow,’ Lavretsky repeated. But the friends went on chatting for more than an hour. Still, their voices were not raised any more, and their talk was quiet, wistful and kindly.
Mikhalevich left the next day, notwithstanding Lavretsky’s attempts to keep him there. Fyodor Ivanych did not succeed in persuading him to remain; but he talked to him to his heart’s content. It transpired that Mikhalevich had not got a penny to his name. On the previous day Lavretsky had noticed in him with regret all the signs and habits of longstanding poverty: his shoes were down at heel, a button was missing from the back of his coat, his hands were strangers to gloves and there was fluff in his hair; when he arrived he did not think of asking to wash, and at dinner he ate like a shark, tearing the meat with his hands and crunching the bones in his strong black teeth. It also transpired that government service had done him no good and that all his hopes were now placed on the tax-farmer, who had employed him solely in order to have ‘an educated man’ in his office. Despite this, Mikhalevich was not dispirited and lived to his liking the roles of cynic, idealist and poet, sincerely delighting in, and grieving for, the fate of mankind and his own vocation – and taking very little care about whether or not he died from hunger. Mikhalevich was unmarried, but he had fallen in love countless times and wrote poems to all his beloveds; he celebrated particularly ardently one mysterious black-curled ‘Polish lady’…. True, there were rumours that this Polish lady was no more than a Jewess well known to many cavalry officers…. But when you come to think of it, does that make any difference?
Mikhalevich did not get on with Lemm: not being used to them, the German was apprehensive of his exceedingly noisy talk and brusque manners. Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together – not even hopes.
Before his departure Mikhalevich again had a long talk with Lavretsky, prophesied his doom if he did not mend his ways, begged him to occupy himself seriously with the life and conditions of his peasants, set himself up as an example to him, saying that he had been purified in the crucible of misfortune – and yet more than once called himself a happy man, compared himself with the birds of the air and the lilies of the valley…
‘A black lily, in any case,’ remarked Lavretsky.
‘My dear fellow, don’t come the aristocrat,’ Mikhalevich responded with magnanimity, ‘but rather thank God you’ve got honest plebeian blood flowing in your veins as well. But I can see that what you need now is some pure, heavenly creature who would drag you out of your apathy…’
‘Thank you, my dear chap,’ Lavretsky said, ‘I’ve had enough of these heavenly creatures.’
‘Don’t talk like that, you seeneek!’ Mikhalevich exclaimed.
‘Cynic,’ Lavretsky corrected him.
‘Precisely, seeneek,’ repeated Mikhalevich unperturbed.
Even sitting in the tarantass, to which his flat, yellow, strangely light trunk had been carried out, he still went on talking; shrouded in a kind of Spanish cloak with a rust-fed collar and lions’ claws instead of clasps, he went on amplifying his views on the fate of Russia and waving his swarthy hands about in the air as though he were distributing the seeds of future prosperity. The horses finally started away. ‘Remember my last three words,’ he shouted, doing a balancing act with his whole body thrust out of the tarantass, ‘religion, progress, humanity!… Farewell!’ His head, with his cap pulled down over his eyes, disappeared from view. Lavretsky remained standing alone on the porch and gazed intently away along the road until the tarantass was lost from sight. ‘Probably he’s right,’ he thought, turning back to the house, ‘probably I am a layabout.’ Many of Mikhalevich’s words had entered irresistibly into his soul, although he had argued and disagreed with him. So long as a man is good-natured, no one can resist him.
XXVI
TWO days later Marya Dmitrievna, according to her promise, arrived in Vasilyevskoye with all her young people. The little girls at once ran into the garden, while Marya Dmitrievna made a languid tour of the rooms and languidly praised everything. Her visit to Lavretsky she regarded as a mark of her great condescension, almost as an act of virtue. She graciously smiled when Anton and Apraxia, in the old-fashioned house-serf style, kissed her hand, and in a limp voice, nasally, asked if she might have some tea. To the profound annoyance of Anton, who had put on white knitted gloves for the occasion, tea was poured for the lady visitor not by him but by Lavretsky’s hired man who had no understanding, in the old man’s words, of the proper order of things. However, he came into his own at lunch-time: with a firm step he took his place by Marya Dmitrievna’s chair and would not surrender his place to anyone. The long unfamiliar arrival of guests at Vasilyevskoye both alarmed and delighted the old man: it pleased him to see that people of such good standing knew his master. Yet he was not the only one to be excited that day: Lemm was also excited. He had put on a short tobacco-coloured swallow-tail coat and tied his neck-tie tightly round his neck, and he ceaselessly cleared his throat and made way for people with a pleasantly welcoming expression. Lavretsky noted with satisfaction that the intimacy between him and Liza was continuing: as soon as she had entered the house she had amicably offered him her hand. After the meal Lemm extracted from the rear pocket of his coat, where he had from time to time been putting his hand, a small rolled-up sheet of music and, pursing his lips, silently laid it on the piano. It was a romance, composed by him the previous day to old-fashioned German words which made mention of the stars. Liza at once sat down at the piano and started to play. Alas! the music turned out to be involved and unpleasantly strained; it was apparent that the composer had striven to express something passionate and profound, but nothing had come of it: the striving remained striving and nothing more. Lavretsky and Liza both felt this – and Lemm understood: without a word, he replaced his romance in his pocket and, in response to Liza’s proposal that he should play it over again, simply gave a shake of the head, said significantly: ‘Now – that’s all!’, hunched his shoulders, cringed into himself and left the room.
In the afternoon everyone went fishing. In the pond at the bottom of the garden there were many carp and roach. Marya Dmitrievna was esconced in an armchair beside the bank, in a shady part, a rug was spread at her feet and she was given the best fishing-rod; Anton, as an old and experienced fisherman, offered her his services. He assiduously baited the hook with worms, slapped them with his hand, spat on them and even cast the line himself, elegantly bending his whole body forward as he did so. That very day Marya Dmitrievna expressed herself about him to tyodor Ivanych with the following phrase in her schoolgirl French: ‘Il n’y a plus maintenant de ces gens comme ça comme autrefois.’ Lemm and the two little girls went further on, to the dam; Lavretsky settled himself beside Liza. The fish were biting all the time; time and again carp hooked out of the water flashed their golden or silver sides in the air; the joyous cries of the girls never ceased; Marya Dmitrievna herself screeched delicately a couple of times. Lavretsky and Liza made catches less frequently than the others; no doubt this was because they paid less attention to their fishing than the others and let their floats drift right up to the bank. The reddish tall reeds rustled quietly all round them, the motionless water shone softly in front of them, and their conversation took a peaceful course. Liza stood on a small raft; Lavretsky sat on the overhanging trunk of a willow; Liza wore a white dress caught in at the waist by a broad ribbon, also white; a straw hat hung on one arm, while the other arm was holding up with some effort the pliant rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, rather severe profile, at her hair thrown back behind the ears, at her soft cheeks which were as sunburned as a child’s, and thought: ‘Oh, how charming you look standing at my pond!’ Liza did not turn towards him, butlooked at the water and was either smiling or frowning, it was difficult to tell which. The shade from a nearby lime-tree fell upon both of them.
‘You know,’ Lavretsky began, ‘I’ve been thinking about our last conversation a great deal and I’ve come to the conclusion that you have an exceedingly kind nature.’
‘I didn’t intend that at all…’ Liza began to protest, and became confused.
‘You have a kind nature,’ Lavretsky repeated. ‘I’m an uncouth sort of chap, but I feel that everyone is bound to love you. Take Lemm, for example; he’s quite simply in love with you.’
Liza’s eyebrows did not so much pucker as quiver; this always happened when she heard something unpleasant.
‘I thought him very pitiful today,’ Lavretsky added hastily, ‘with his unsuccessful romance. To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not to have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what’s so painful is you can’t sense your powers leaving you. It’s hard for an old man to endure such blows! Careful, one’s biting! I’ve heard’, Lavretsky added after a short pause, ‘that Vladimir Nikolaichhas written a very charming romance.’
‘Yes,’ answered Liza, ‘it’s a trifle, but not bad.’
‘In your opinion,’ asked Lavretsky, ‘is he a good musician?’
‘It seems to me that he has a great capacity for music, but so far he hasn’t studied it as much as he should.’
‘I see. Is he a nice man?’
Liza laughed and glanced quickly at Fyodor Ivanych.
‘What a strange question!’ she exclaimed, drawing the line out of the water and casting it again.
‘Why strange? I’m asking you about him as a recent arrival and a relative.’
‘As a relative?’
‘Yes. Surely don’t I qualify as an uncle of yours?’
‘Vladimir Nikolaich has a kind heart,’ Liza said, ‘and he’s clever; maman likes him very much.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘He’s a nice man; why shouldn’t I like him?’
‘Ah!’ Lavretsky said and was silent. A half-melancholy, half-amused expression passed across his face. His intent gaze embarrassed Liza, but she continued to smile. ‘Well, God grant them happiness!’ he muttered at last, as if to himself, and turned his head away.
Liza blushed.
‘You’re mistaken, Fyodor Ivanych,’ she said, ‘you needn’t think…. But don’t you like Vladimir Nikolaich?’ she asked suddenly.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘It seems to me he has no heart at all.’
The smile left Liza’s face.
‘You’ve grown used to judging people severely,’ she said after a long silence.
‘I have? No, I don’t think so. What right have I to judge others severely, I ask you, when I myself am in need of charity? Or have you forgotten that it’s only the lazy who don’t laugh at me? By the way,’ he added, ‘did you keep your promise?’
‘What promise?’
‘Did you say a prayer for me?’
‘Yes, I did pray for you and I pray for you each
day. But please don’t speak lightly about it.’
Lavretsky began to assure Liza that such a thing had never entered his head, that he had a profound respect for any and every conviction; then he embarked on a discussion of religion, its significance in the history of mankind and the significance of Christianity.
‘One must be a Christian,’ said Liza, not without a certain effort, ‘not in order to perceive the divine… there… or the earthly, but because every man must die.’
Lavretsky raised his eyes to Liza in astonishment and met her gaze.
‘What a thing to have said!’ he remarked.
‘They’re not my words,’ she answered.
‘Not yours…. But why did you talk about death?’
‘I don’t know. I often think about it.’
‘Often?’
‘Yes.’
‘One wouldn’t think that, looking at you now: you’ve such a happy, bright face, you’re smiling…’
‘Yes, I’m very happy now,’ Liza replied naïvely.
Lavretsky wanted to take both her hands and press them tightly, tightly…
‘Liza, Liza,’ cried Marya Dmitrievna, ‘come and have a look at the carp I’ve caught!’
‘Coming, maman,’ Liza answered and went to her, while Lavretsky remained sitting on his willow. ‘I talk to her just as if I weren’t a man whose life is finished,’ he thought. As she went, Liza had hung her hat on a branch; with an unfamiliar, almost tender, feeling Lavretsky looked at the hat and its long, slightly creased ribbons. Liza quickly returned to him and again stood on the raft.
‘Why do you think Vladimir Nikolaich has no heart?’ she asked a few moments later.
‘I told you I could be mistaken; however, time will show.’
Liza became thoughtful. Lavretsky began talking about his day-to-day existence in Vasilyevskoye, about Mikhalevich and Anton; he felt a need to talk to Liza, to tell her everything he thought and felt: she listened to him so charmingly and attentively; her occasional remarks and objections seemed to him so unaffected and intelligent. He even told her so.
Home of the Gentry Page 11