“Whose house is that, brother?” he said, throwing his expensive fur coat open slightly, just enough so that the policeman could notice the important decoration on his neck.
“The clerk Pseldonymov’s, a legistrar,”12 the policeman, who instantly managed to make out the decoration, replied, straightening up.
“Pseldonymov? Hah! Pseldonymov!… What’s he doing, getting married?”
“Getting married, Your Honor, to a titular councillor’s daughter. Mlekopitaev,13 a titular councillor… served on the board. That house comes with the bride, sir.”
“So it’s already Pseldonymov’s house, not Mlekopitaev’s?”
“Pseldonymov’s, Your Honor. Used to be Mlekopitaev’s, and now it’s Pseldonymov’s.”
“Hm. I’m asking, brother, because I’m his superior. I’m general over the place where Pseldonymov works.”
“Right, Your Excellency.” The policeman drew himself all the way up, but Ivan Ilyich seemed to have lapsed into thought. He was standing and reflecting …
Yes, Pseldonymov actually was from his department, from his own office; he recalled that. He was a petty clerk, with a salary of about ten roubles a month. Since Mr. Pralinsky had taken over his office still very recently, he might not have remembered all his subordinates in too much detail, but Pseldonymov he did remember, precisely apropos of his last name. It had leaped out at him from the very first, so that he had been curious right then to have a closer look at the owner of such a name. He now recalled a man still very young, with a long, hooked nose, with blond and wispy hair, skinny and malnourished, in an impossible uniform, and unmentionables impossible even to the point of indecency. He remembered how the thought had flashed in him right then: should he not award the wretch some ten roubles to fix himself up for the holiday? But since the wretch’s face was all too lenten, and had an extremely unpleasant look, even causing disgust, the good thought somehow evaporated of itself, and so Pseldonymov remained without a bonus. The greater was his amazement when this same Pseldonymov, not more than a week ago, put in a request to get married.14 Ivan Ilyich remembered that he had somehow had no time to occupy himself with the matter more thoroughly, so that the matter of the wedding had been decided lightly, hastily. But all the same he remembered with precision that Pseldonymov was taking his bride together with a wooden house and four hundred roubles in cash; this circumstance had surprised him then; he remembered even cracking a light joke about the encounter of the names Pseldonymov and Mlekopitaev. He clearly recalled it all.
As he went on recollecting, he fell to thinking more and more. It is known that whole trains of thought sometimes pass instantly through our heads, in the form of certain feelings, without translation into human language, still less literary language. But we shall attempt to translate all these feelings of our hero’s and present the reader if only with the essence of these feelings, with what, so to speak, was most necessary and plausible in them. Because many of our feelings, when translated into ordinary language, will seem perfectly implausible. That is why they never come into the world, and yet everybody has them. Naturally, Ivan Ilyich’s feelings and thoughts were a bit incoherent. But you know the reason why.
“What then!” flashed in his head. “So we all talk and talk, but once it gets to business, only a fig comes out. Here’s an example, this very same Pseldonymov: he’s just come from the church, all excited, all hopeful, expecting to taste… This is one of the most blissful days of his life… Now he’s busy with the guests, giving a feast—modest, poor, but merry, joyful, sincere… What, then, if he knew that at this very moment I, I, his superior, his chief superior, am standing right here by his house and listening to his music! But how, in fact, would it be with him? No, how would it be with him if I should suddenly up and walk in now? hm… Naturally, he’d be frightened at first, numb with bewilderment. I’d be interfering with him, I’d probably upset everything… Yes, that’s how it would be if any other general walked in, but not I… Here’s the thing, that any other, only not I…
“Yes, Stepan Nikiforovich! You didn’t understand me just now, but here’s a ready example for you.
“Yes, sir. We all shout about humaneness, but heroism, a great deed, that we’re not capable of.
“What kind of heroism? This kind. Just consider: given the present-day relations between all members of society, for me, for me to come after midnight to the wedding of my subordinate, a registrar, who makes ten roubles—after all, this is bewilderment, this is a turnabout of ideas, the last day of Pompeii,15 bedlam! No one will understand it. Stepan Nikiforovich would die before he understood it. Didn’t he say: we won’t hold out. Yes, but that’s you old people, people of paralysis and stagnation, but I will hold out! I’ll turn the last day of Pompeii into the sweetest day for my subordinate, and a wild act into a normal, patriarchal, lofty and e-thi-cal one. How? Like this. Be so good as to listen …
“Well… here I am, suppose, going in: they’re amazed, interrupt their dancing, stare wildly, back away. Right, sir, but here I show myself: I go straight to the frightened Pseldonymov and, with the tenderest smile, in the simplest words possible, say: ‘Thus and so,’ I say, ‘I was visiting His Excellency Stepan Nikiforovich. I suppose you know, it’s here in the neighborhood …’ Here I tell, lightly, in some amusing way, the adventure with Trifon. From Trifon I pass on to how I went by foot… ‘Well—I hear music, I ask a policeman, and find out that you, brother, are getting married. Why don’t I stop at my subordinate’s, I think, to see how my clerks make merry and… get married. Now, you’re not going to drive me out, I suppose!’ Drive out! What a phrase for a subordinate. The devil he’ll drive me out! I think he’ll lose his mind, he’ll rush headlong to sit me in an armchair, he’ll tremble with delight, he won’t even know what to make of it at first!…
“Well, what could be simpler, more gracious, than such an act! Why did I come? That’s another question! That’s, so to speak, the moral side of the matter. There’s where the juice is!
“Hm… What was I thinking about? Ah, yes!
“So then, of course, they’ll seat me next to the most important guest, some titular councillor, or a relative, a retired staff captain with a red nose… Gogol described these originals nicely. So, naturally, I make the acquaintance of the bride, praise her, encourage the guests. I beg them not to be embarrassed, to make merry, to go on dancing, I joke, I laugh, in short—I’m amiable and charming. I’m always amiable and charming when I’m pleased with myself. Hm… the thing is that I still seem to be a bit… that is, not drunk, but just…
“… Naturally, being a gentleman, I’m on an equal footing with them and by no means demand any special tokens… But morally, morally it’s another matter: they’ll understand and appreciate… My act will resurrect in them all the nobility of… And so I sit there for half an hour… Even an hour. I’ll leave, naturally, just before supper, otherwise they’ll start bustling about, baking, frying, they’ll bow low before me, but I’ll just drink a glass, congratulate them, and decline supper. I’ll say: business. And as soon as I pronounce ‘business,’ their faces will all become respectfully stern at once. By this I’ll delicately give a reminder that they and I are—different, sirs. Earth and sky. Not that I’d want to impose it, but it’s needed… even in the moral sense it’s necessary, whatever you say. However, I’ll smile at once, even laugh, perhaps, and everyone will instantly cheer up… I’ll joke once more with the bride; hm… and even this: I’ll hint that I’ll come again in exactly nine months as a godfather, heh, heh! And she’ll certainly give birth by then. Because they multiply like rabbits. So everyone bursts out laughing, the bride blushes; I kiss her on the forehead with feeling, even bless her, and… tomorrow my deed is already known in the office. Tomorrow I’m stern again, tomorrow I’m demanding again, even implacable, but by now they all know who I am. They know my soul, they know my essence: ‘He’s stern as a superior, but as a man he’s an angel!’ And so I’m victorious; I’ve caught them with some one
small act that wouldn’t even occur to you; they’re mine now; I’m the father, they’re the children… Go on, Stepan Nikiforovich, Your Excellency, try doing something like that…
“… But do you know, do you understand, that Pseldonymov will recall for his children how the general himself feasted and even drank at his wedding! And those children will tell their children, and they will tell their grandchildren, like a sacred anecdote, that a dignitary, a statesman (and I’ll be all that by then) deigned… etc., etc. But I’ll raise the humiliated one morally, I’ll restore him to himself… He gets a salary of ten roubles a month! But if I were to repeat this or some such thing five or ten times, I’d win popularity everywhere… I’d be impressed on everybody’s heart, and the devil alone knows what might come of it later, this popularity!…”
Thus or almost thus reasoned Ivan Ilyich (gentlemen, a man sometimes says all sorts of things to himself, and in a somewhat peculiar state besides). All this reasoning flashed through his head in about half a minute, and, of course, he might have limited himself to these little dreams and, having mentally shamed Stepan Nikiforovich, gone quite calmly home and to bed. And it would have been well if he had! But the whole trouble was that the moment was a peculiar one.
As if on purpose, suddenly, at that very instant, his susceptible imagination pictured the complacent faces of Stepan Nikiforovich and Semyon Ivanovich.
“We won’t hold out!” Stepan Nikiforovich repeated, smiling superciliously.
“Hee, hee, hee!” echoed Semyon Ivanovich with his nastiest smile.
“And now let’s see how we won’t hold out!” Ivan Ilyich said resolutely, and his face even flushed hotly. He stepped off the planks and with firm tread went straight across the street to the house of his subordinate, the registrar Pseldonymov.
His star drew him on. He walked briskly through the open gate and in disdain shoved aside with his foot the hoarse, shaggy little cur that, more for decency’s sake than meaning any business, rushed at his legs with a rasping bark. By a wooden boardwalk he reached a covered porch, jutting like a booth into the yard, and by three decrepit wooden steps he went up to a tiny entryway. Though a tallow candle-end or something like a lamp was burning somewhere in a corner, that did not prevent Ivan Ilyich, just as he was, in galoshes, from stepping with his left foot into a galantine set out to cool. Ivan Ilyich bent down and, looking with curiosity, saw standing there two more dishes of some sort of aspic, as well as two molds, obviously of blancmange. The squashed galantine embarrassed him a bit, and for one tiny instant the thought flitted through him: shouldn’t I slip away right now? But he considered it too low. Reasoning that no one had seen and that no one was going to suspect him, he quickly wiped off the galosh, so as to conceal all traces, groped for the felt-upholstered door, opened it, and found himself in the tiniest of anterooms. One half of it was literally heaped with overcoats, caftans, cloaks, bonnets, scarves, and galoshes. In the other half the musicians had settled: two fiddles, a flute, and a string bass, four men in all, brought in, naturally, from the street. They were sitting by an unpainted wooden table, with one tallow candle, and sawing away for all they were worth at the last figure of a quadrille. Through the open door to the main room people could be seen dancing, in dust, smoke, and haze. It was somehow furiously merry. Guffaws, shouts, and ladies’ shrieks were heard. The cavaliers were stomping like a squadron of horses. Above this whole pandemonium sounded the commands of the master of ceremonies, probably an extremely unconstrained and even unbuttoned man: “Cavaliers, step out, chaîne de dames, balancez!”16 and so on and so forth. Ivan Ilyich, in some slight agitation, threw off his fur coat and galoshes and, holding his hat, entered the room. Anyhow, he was no longer reasoning …
For the first moment no one noticed him: they were all finishing the end of the dance. Ivan Ilyich stood as if stunned and could make out nothing of this porridge in detail. Ladies’ dresses, cavaliers with cigarettes in their teeth flashed by… some lady’s light blue scarf flashed by and brushed his nose. After her, in furious ecstasy, a medical student swept, his tousled hair all in a whirl, and shoved him hard on his way. Before him also flashed, long as a milepost, an officer of some regiment. Someone shouted in an unnaturally shrill voice as he flew by, stomping, with everyone else: “E-e-eh, Pseldonymushka!” There was something sticky under Ivan Ilyich’s feet: the floor must have been waxed. In the room, not a small one incidentally, there were upward of thirty guests.
But a minute later the quadrille was over, and almost at once the very thing took place which Ivan Ilyich had imagined as he was dreaming on the plank sidewalk. Some sort of hum, some sort of extraordinary whisper passed through the guests and dancers, who had not yet had time to catch their breath and wipe the sweat from their faces. All eyes, all faces quickly began to turn to the newly entered guest. Then at once everyone started slowly retreating and backing away. Those who had not noticed were pulled by the clothes and brought to reason. They would look around and at once start backing away along with the others. Ivan Ilyich went on standing by the door, not taking one step forward, and the open space between him and the guests, the floor strewn with countless candy wrappers, tickets, and cigarette butts, was growing wider and wider. Suddenly a young man in a uniform, with wispy blond hair and a hooked nose, timidly stepped into this space. He moved forward, bending, and looked at the unexpected guest in exactly the same way as a dog looks at its master who has called it in order to give it a kick.
“Hello, Pseldonymov, recognize me?…” said Ivan Ilyich, and in that same instant felt that he had said it terribly awkwardly; he also felt that at that moment he was, perhaps, committing the most frightful foolishness.
“Y-Y-Your Ex-cellency!…” mumbled Pseldonymov.
“Well, so there. I stopped entirely by chance, brother, as you can probably imagine…”
But Pseldonymov obviously could not imagine anything. He stood, goggle-eyed, in terrible bewilderment.
“You won’t drive me out, I suppose… Glad or not, welcome the guest!…” Ivan Ilyich went on, feeling that he was abashed to the point of indecent weakness, that he wished to smile but no longer could; that the humorous story about Stepan Nikiforovich and Trifon was becoming more and more impossible. But Pseldonymov, as if on purpose, would not come out of his stupor and went on staring at him with an utterly foolish look. Ivan Ilyich cringed, he felt that another minute like this and an incredible bedlam would break out.
“Maybe I’ve interfered with something… I’ll go!” he barely uttered, and some nerve twitched at the right corner of his mouth …
But Pseldonymov recovered himself…
“Your Excellency, good heavens, sir… The honor…” he was mumbling, bowing hurriedly, “deign to sit down, sir…” And, still more recovered, he showed him with both hands to the sofa, from which the table had been moved aside for the dancing …
Ivan Ilyich felt relieved and lowered himself onto the sofa; someone rushed at once to move the table back. He glanced around cursorily and noticed that he alone was sitting down, while all the others were standing, even the ladies. A bad sign. But it was not yet time to remind and encourage. The guests still kept backing away, and before him, bent double, there still stood Pseldonymov alone, who still understood nothing and was far from smiling. It was nasty; in short: during this moment our hero endured such anguish that his Harun-al-Rashidian17 invasion of his subordinate, for the sake of principle, could actually have been considered a great deed. But suddenly some little figure turned up beside Pseldonymov and started bowing. To his inexpressible pleasure and even happiness, Ivan Ilyich at once recognized him as a chief clerk from his office, Akim Petrovich Zubikov, with whom he was not, of course, acquainted, but whom he knew to be an efficient and uncomplaining official. He immediately rose and proffered Akim Petrovich his hand, the whole hand, not just two fingers. The man received it in both of his palms with the deepest reverence. The general was triumphant; all was saved.
And actually Pseldonymov
was now, so to speak, not the second, but the third person. He could turn directly to the chief clerk with his story, necessarily taking him as an acquaintance and even a close one, and Pseldonymov meanwhile could simply keep silent and tremble with awe. Consequently, decency was observed. And the story was necessary; Ivan Ilyich felt it; he saw that all the guests were expecting something, that even all the domestics were crowding both doorways, almost climbing on one another in order to see and hear him. The nasty thing was that the chief clerk, in his stupidity, still would not sit down.
“Come, come!” said Ivan Ilyich, awkwardly indicating the place beside him on the sofa.
“Good heavens, sir… here’s fine, sir…” and Akim Petrovich quickly sat down on a chair, offered him almost in flight by Pseldonymov, who stubbornly remained on his feet.
“Can you imagine what’s happened,” Ivan Ilyich began, addressing Akim Petrovich exclusively, in a somewhat trembling but now casual voice. He even drew out and separated the words, emphasized their syllables, began to pronounce the letter a somehow like ah—in short, he himself felt and was aware that he was being affected, but was no longer able to control himself; some external force was at work. He was painfully aware of terribly much at that moment.
“Can you imagine, I’m only just coming from Stepan Nikiforovich Nikiforov’s—you’ve heard of him, perhaps, a privy councillor. Well… on that commission…”
Akim Petrovich leaned his whole body forward deferentially, as if to say: “How could I have not heard, sir.”
“He’s your neighbor now,” Ivan Ilyich went on, momentarily addressing Pseldonymov, for the sake of propriety and naturalness, but quickly turning away, seeing at once from Pseldonymov’s eyes that it made decidedly no difference to him.
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 4