A common story

by Ivan Goncharov

  But how happy he had been at times in that room ! he had not been alone then; a vision of splendour had been near him then, by day it had beckoned him to earnest work, by night it had kept watch over his pillow. Dreams had been his companions in those days, the future had been clothed in mist, but not a gloomy mist presaging storm, but the mist of morning veiling the brilliance of dawn. Behind this mist something was hidden, doubtless, happiness. But now, not his room only, but the whole world was empty for him, and within himself all was chill dreariness.

  Looking at life, questioning his heart and his head, he perceived with horror that there was neither within or without a single ideal left nor a single bright hope; all now lay

  behind him ; the mist had parted ; behind it stretched the desert of bald reality. Good Heavens! what an immense void ! what a dreary comfortless prospect 1

  The past was over, the future was ruined, happiness was not; all had been a dream, and still he had to live !

  What he wanted he did not know himself; but how much he did not want!

  His head seemed as though it were in a fog. He did not sleep, but seemed in a lethargy. Disquieting thoughts were drawn out in an unending series in his brain. He thought: "what could attract him? Seductive hope, happy heedlessness, was no more! he knew all that was before him. Success, a struggle along the path that leads to honour? What was there in that for him? Was it worth while for twenty or thirty years to fight like a fish against the ice ? And would it cheer his heart ? A consolation truly to the spirit for a few men to bow low to one while they are cursing one very likely in their hearts!

  What of love ? Ah, that was worse! He knew it by heart, and had lost even the power of loving. And as though in irony his memory officiously recalled to him Nadinka, not the innocent, simple-hearted Nadinka—that was never recalled to him—but invariably Nadinka the traitress, with all her surroundings : the trees, the little path, the flowers, and among all this the wily one, with the smile he knew so well, with her blush of shame and passion—and all for another, not for him !

  With a frown he clutched at his heart. He believed in no one and nothing, and never forgot himself in enjoyment; he tasted pleasure as a man without appetite tastes dainties, coldly, knowing that satiety presses close upon it, that nothing can ever fill up the void in his heart; that if one trusts oneself to passion, it will deceive one and only agitate the heart, and add fresh wounds to the old ones. When he saw people united by love forgetting everything in their happiness, he smiled ironically and thought: "Wait a little, you will change your minds."

  He dreaded feeling a desire, knowing that often at the moment of attaining what one desires, Fate snatches happiness out of one's hands, and substitutes something altogether

  different, some wretched thing which one does not want at all, and if in the end it does grant one's desire, it first tortures, wearies out, and degrades one in one's eyes, and then throws it as men throw sop to a dog after just making him crawl to the dainty morsel, look at it, balance it on his nose, roll it in the dust, stand on his hind paws and then— good dog, have it!

  He dreaded the periodical interchange of happiness and unhappiness in life. He foresaw no pleasures, but pain was always inevitably before one; there was no escaping that— all men were subject to that general law; to all, as he thought, there were allotted equal parts of pain and happiness. Happiness was over for him ; and what kind of happiness was it? A phantom, a cheat. Only pain was real, and that was all before him. There were sickness and old age, and losses and perhaps even want. All these strokes of destiny, as his auntie in the country called them, were in store for him ; and what were the compensations ? His high poetic vocation had forsaken him ; they impose a wearisome burden on him, and call it duty! All that is left him are the pitiful rewards—money, comfort, rank. Confound them!

  So he brooded in melancholy, and saw no outlet from this slough of doubt.

  His despair drew the tears from his eyes—'tears of mortification, envy, ill-will to all men—the bitterest of tears. He felt acute regret that he had not listened to his moth er, an d jiad ever left his obscure Country place.

  il My moFherTiacTa presentiment at heart of sorrow n cpme, M he thought; " there these unquiet moods would have slept an eternal sleep; there there would have been none of the troubled ferment of this complex life. There, too, all the human passions and feelings would have come to me; vanity and pride and ambition—all would have occupied my thoughts on a small scale within the narrow limits of the district, and all would have been satisfied. The first in the district. Yes, all is relative. The divine spark of heavenly fire which in greater or less degree burns in all of us, would have shone there unseen in me, and would quickly have been extinguished in a life of indolence, or would have passed into the warmth of attachment to wife and children. Existence would not hav« been polluted. I

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  should have pursued my way proudly; the path of life would have been easy: it would have seemed simple and comprehensible to me; life would have been within my powers : I should not have come into conflict with it. And love ? It would have blossomed happily and have filled my whole life. Sophia would have gone on loving me tranquilly. I should not have lost faith in anything, I should have picked the roses without recognising the thorns, without knowing anything of jealousy for want of a rival! Why was I so blindly and overmasteringly drawn to what was far off and obscure, to unequal and uncertain conflict with destiny ? And how well I understood men and life in those days! There I should have understood them still as well without an inkling of anything. I expected so much of life there, and without a persistent analysis of it I should have been expecting something of it still even up to now. How many treasures I discovered in my soul ; what has become of them ? I have bartered them with the world, I have given away the sincerity of my heart, my first innermost passion ; and what have I received for it ? a bitter disillusionment. I have learnt that all is a cheat, all is transitory, that one cannot depend either on oneself or on others, and I have begun to be afraid of others and of myself. And in the midst of this analysis I cannot acknowledge the pettiness of life and yet be contented, like my uncle and many others. And that's my present position !"

  Now he desired only one thing—forgetfulness of the past, tranquillity, the slumber of the soul. He grew more and more indifferent to life, and looked at everything with drowsy eyes. From crowds of people and the noise of assemblies he found only ennui, and he fled from them, but ennui followed him.

  He was amazed that people could be light-hearted and incessantly occupy themselves with something or other, and everyday be attracted by fresh interests. It seemed strange to him that all men did not go about as wearily as he, did not weep, and did not—instead of chattering about the weather—talk of their pain and their respective sufferings— if they did talk of it, it was always of a pain in their legs or some other part, rheumatism or some such ailment. They were only anxious about their body—as for their soul—it was never even mentioned ! " Empty, wretched creatures—

  animals!" he thought. Yet sometimes he fell to pondering deeply. "There are so many of them, these wretched creatures," he said to himself with some uneasiness, " and I am only one; can it be—all of them are empty—wrong— and I?"

  Then it struck him that it might almost be that he alone -^ was to blame, and this made him even more unhappy.

  His old acquaintances he ceased to visit; meeting new faces chilled him. After his conversation with his uncle, he sank into still deeper lethargy ; his soul was wrapped in complete slumber. He fell into a kind of stony indifference, lived in indolence, and obstinately cut himself off from everything that even reminded him of the civilised world.

  " What does it matter how one lives so long as one lives!" he said. " Every one is free to take life as he likes, and then to die."

  He sought the society of men of sour turn of mind, of embittered feelings, and found relief for his heart in listening to their spiteful epigrams on destiny; or wast
ed his time with people inferior to him both in intelligence and education, most frequently of all with Kostyakoff, the old man whom Zayeshaloff had tried to introduce to riotr Ivanitch. Kostyakoff lived in Peskae, and walked about the street there in a shiny cap and a dressing-gown, tied round the waist with a pocket-handkerchief. With him lived a cook with whom he used to play cribbage in the evening.

  If a fire broke out, he was the first man to be on the spot and the last to go away. If he passed by a church where a funeral service was being conducted, he would force his way through the crowd to take a look at the face of the corpse, and then would proceed to follow the funeral to the cemetery.

  He was devoted to ceremonies of every kind, whether mournful or festive in character; he liked also to be present at any extraordinary events, such as street brawls, fatal accidents, roofs falling in, &c, and read with peculiar enjoyment the account of such occurrences in the newspapers. Besides this, he used to read medical books, " so as to know what is in man/ he used to say. In the winter Alexandr used to play draughts with him, and in the summer he used to make excursions out of town to go fishing with him. The old man would talk of one thing and another. When

  they went into a field, he talked of the crop and of sowing; on the bank of the river he talked of fish, of navigation; in the street, he made remarks about the houses, about architecture, and building materials and rents .... no abstract ideas of any kind. He looked on life as a good thing if he had money, and vice versd. Such a man was quite without danger for Alexandr; he could not awaken any spiritual emotion.

  Alexandr tried as zealously to mortify the spiritual element in himself as hermits try to mortify the flesh. At the office he was silent; if he met acquaintances he exchanged two or three words and, on the pretext of want of time, made his escape. His friend Kostyakoff, however, he saw every day. Sometimes the old man would spend the whole day at Adouev's, sometimes he would invite him home to eat cabbage soup. He had already taught Alexandr to make beverages and to cook pickled cabbage and tripe. Later they would set off together somewhere in the surrounding neighbourhood to the open country. Kostyakoff had many acquaintances everywhere. With the peasants, he would talk about their way of living, with the women he would joke, and was precisely the merry fellow that Zayeshaloff had eulogised him for being. Alexandr gave him full liberty to talk, but for his part was mostly silent.

  He already felt that ideas of the world he had abandoned visited him less frequently, moved more slowly through his head, and meeting nothing to reflect them or resist them in his surroundings, did not find utterance and died away without coming to anything. His soul was in as wild and sterile a condition as an overgrown garden. He had still not quite attained the state of complete petrifaction. A few months more, and it would be over! But this is what happened.

  One day Alexandr had gone fishing with Kostyakoff. Kostyakoff in a full-skirted overcoat and leather foraging cap, after setting on the bank several hooks of various sizes, with floats and little bells and reels, was smoking a short pipe, and without daring so much as to wink, was keeping guard over the whole battery of hooks, including Adouev's as well, for Alexandr was standing leaning against a tree and gazing in an opposite direction. They stood thus a long while in silence.

  "You've got a bite! look, Alexandr Fedoritch," said Kostyakoff suddenly in a whisper.

  Adouev looked at the water, and turned away again.

  " No, it's the current makes you think so," he said.

  " Look, look !" cried Kostyakoff; " it's a bite, upon my soul, it's a bite. Ah, ah ! pull it up, pull it up ! hold it!"

  The float did actually plunge under water, and after it the line, and after the line the rod too began to slip from behind the bushes. Alexandr clutched the rod, and then the line.

  " Softly, gently there, not so . . . . what are you doing ? " cried Kostyakoff, laying hold of the line. " My dear sir, what a weight; don't hold it; let it go, let it go, or it will break. There so, to the right, to the left; here, to the bank. Let it go! further; now draw it up, draw it up, only not all at once; that's the way—so."

  A huge pike appeared above the surface of the water. It twisted quickly with a flash of silver scales, beat its tail to right and to left, and sprinkled them both with drops. Kostyakoff was quite pale with excitement.

  " What a pike !" he cried almost in tones of awe, and stretching over the water he fell down stumbling over his hooks, and with both hands tried to capture the pike as it was wriggling back to the water.

  " Come to the bank, this way, further! there now, it's ours, and no wriggling back. See, it's as slippery as the devil! Ah, what a pike ! "

  " Ah !" some one repeated from behind.

  Alexandr turned round. Two paces from them stood an old man, and on his arm a tall pretty young girl, with her head uncovered and a sunshade in her hands. Her brows were slightly knitted. She was bending a little forward and following every movement of Kostyakoff with great interest. She had not even noticed Alexandr.

  This unexpected apparition rather disturbed Adouev. He let the rod slip out of his hands, the pike went flop into the water, gracefully shook its tail, and was off into the depths, drawing the line after it. All this took place in a second.

  " Alexandr Fedoritch ! what are you doing," Kostyakoff shouted like a madman, beginning to seize the line. He kept hold of it, but drew out only the end, without the hook and without the pike.

  Quite pale, he turned to Alexandr, showed him the end of the line, and looked furiously at him for a minute without speaking, then he spat on the ground.

  " I will never go fishing with you again; I'll be damned if I do," he ejaculated, and turned away to his own hooks.

  Meanwhile the young girl had noticed that Alexandr was looking at her; she blushed and was stepping away. The old man, apparently her father, bowed to Adouev. Adouev responded sullenly to his salutation, threw down the hooks and sat down some ten paces away on a bench under a tree.

  " Even here there is no peace !" he thought. " Here is some CEdipus with an Antigone. Woman again ! There's no escaping them anywhere. Good Heavens ! what heaps of them there are everywhere."

  " Call yourself an angler !" said Kostyakoff meanwhile, setting his hooks in order, and looking angrily at Alexandr from time to time; how are you going to catch fish ? You'd better catch mice sitting at home on your sofa ; but come to really catching fish ! How are you going to catch it, now it's slipped out of your hands ; it was almost in your mouth all but cooked. It's a wonder your fish don't slip off your plate."

  " Do you get many bites ? " asked the old man.

  " Well, you see here," answered Kostyakoff, " here on my six hooks scarcely a wretched gremille has bitten in mockery; but there meanwhile with his one ordinary line, a pike of ten pounds or so, and then he let it slip. Well, they say the game runs to meet the sportsman. But it's not so; if it had broken away from me, I should have caught it in the water; but there's the pike hiding in the stream while we're asleep—and call himself an angler. What sort of angler's that ? are anglers generally like that ? No, a real angler would have fallen on it like a cannon-ball, he would have stopped to look at it. And that an angler! You'll never catch fish !"

  The young girl meanwhile had time to observe that Alexandr was altogether a different kind of person from Kostyakoff. Alexandr's dress was not like KostyakorFs, nor his figure, nor his age, nor his manners, nor anything. She quickly noticed signs of education in him; she read thoughtfulness in his face; even the shade of melancholy did not escape her.

  " But why has he run away!" she thought; "it's a strange thing. I didn't think I was the sort of person to run away from."

  She drew herself up haughtily, and dropped her eyelids, then raising them she gazed with no friendly expression at Alexandr. Already she was offended. She drew her father away, and haughtily came near Adouev. The old man again greeted Alexandr; but the daughter did not vouchsafe him even a glance.

  " Let him understand that people aren't paying the leas
t attention to him !" she thought with a sidelong glance to see whether Adouev was looking.

  Though' Alexandr was not looking at her, he involuntarily assumed a rather more becoming attitude.

  " Why! he isn't even looking !" thought the young girl; " what impertinence!"

  The next day Kostyakoff took Alexandr fishing again, and in that way incurred damnation through his own curse.

  For two days nothing disturbed their solitude. Alexandr had at first looked about him, almost with apprehension; but seeing no one he grew easy again. The second day he pulled up a huge perch. Kostyakoff was half reconciled to him.

  " But still it's not the pike !" he said with a sigh; " you had luck in your hands, and did not know how to profit by it; that won't happen twice. And again I have nothing! six hooks set, and nothing!"

  " But why don't you ring the bells ? " said a peasant, who had stopped as he passed to look how the fishing progressed; "perhaps the fish will think it's time to go to church!"

  Kostyakoff looked angrily at him.

  " Hold your tongue, you ignorant man!" he said, " you boor!"

  The peasant walked away.

  " Blockhead!" Kostyakoff called after him; "a brute, yes, a brute he is. He'd have his joke with me, damn him ! a brute, I tell you, a boor!"

  It's a serious matter to provoke a sportsman at the moment of failure!

  The third day, while they were fishing in silence, their eyes bent fixedly on the water, a noise was heard behind

  them. Alexandr turned round and started as if a mosquito had stung him. The old man and the young girl were there.

  AdoueY, bending sideways towards them, made only the slightest response to the old man's greetings, but he seemed to have been expecting this meeting. As a rule he went fishing in a very slovenly attire; but this time he had put on a new great-coat, and had tied a blue cravat smartly round his throat; he had arranged his hair and even seemed to be posing a little as the idyllic angler. After remaining only as long as politeness required, he went away and sat down under the tree!