Lectures on Russian literature

by Vladimir Nabokov

  " 'I say, grandfather,' a mower called from outside the gates, as though teasing him, 'pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather.'

  "

  On the next page Grigori realizes the silver rubles are false and gives them to Aksinia to throw away, but she uses them to pay the mowers. "You mischievous woman," cries Grigori, dumbfounded and alarmed. "Why did you marry me into this family?" Lipa asks her mother. There is a certain gap in time after chapter 5.

  One of the most striking passages in the story occurs in chapter 6, when absolutely and divinely indifferent to what is happening around her (the deserved fate of her idiotic husband and the terrible snake-evil coming from Aksinia), absolutely and divinely indifferent to all this evil, Lipa is engrossed in her child and proceeds to promise her little pinched baby her own most vivid vision, her only knowledge of life. She tosses him up and down and in rhythm with the tossing says in singsong tones : "You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You will be a man, we shall work together! We shall wash floors together!" Just as her own most vivid childhood memories are linked up with washing floors. " 'Why do I love him so much, Mamen'ka? Why do I feel so sorry for him!' she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. 'Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him, I love him as if he were a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I always know what his darling eyes tell me he wants.' "

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  This chapter ends with the news that Anisim is to get six years of hard labor in Siberia. Then a nice touch is added; says old Grigori:

  " 'I am worried about the money. Do you remember before his wedding Anisim's bringing me some new rubles and half-rubles? One parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money. When my uncle Dmitri Filatych—the kingdom of Heaven be his—was alive, he used to go to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods, used to take up with other men. They had half a dozen children. And when uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say, "I never can make out," he used to say, "which are my children and which are other people's." An easy-going disposition, to be sure; and now I can't tell which are genuine rubles and which are false ones. And they all seem false to me. ... I buy a ticket at the station, I give the man three rubles, and I keep fancying they are counterfeit. And I am frightened. I must be ill.' "

  From that moment he is mentally deranged and is redeemed, in a sense.

  "He opened the door and crooking his finger, beckoned to Lipa. She went up to him with the baby in her arms.

  ' 'If there is anything you want, Lipynka, you ask for it,' he said. 'And eat anything you like, we don't grudge it, so long as it does you good. . . .' He made the sign of the cross over the baby. 'And take care of my grandchild. My son is gone, but my grandson is left.'

  "Tears rolled down his cheeks; he gave a sob and went away. Soon afterwards he went to bed and slept soundly after seven sleepless nights."

  This was poor Lipa's happiest night —before the awful events that were to follow.

  Grigori makes arrangements to give the land at Butyokino, which Aksinia wants for a brickyard, to his grandson. Aksinia is in a fury.

  " 'Hey! Stepan,' she called to the deaf man, 'let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and mother; I don't want to live with convicts. Get ready!'

  "Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them across the deaf man's stretched arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard where the linen hung, tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and trampled upon.

  " 'Holy Saints, stop her,' moaned Varvara. 'What a woman! Give her Butyokino! Give it to her, for Christ's sake.' "

  We come now to the climax.

  "Aksinia ran into the kitchen where laundering was being done. Lipa was washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes. Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron near the stove, and the air in the kitchen was close and thick with vapor. On the floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little red legs, lay on a bench near them, so that if he fell he should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinia went in Lipa took the former's shirt out of the heap and put it into the trough, and was just stretching out her hand to a big panlike dipper full of boiling water which was standing on the table.

  'Give it here,' said Aksinia, looking at her with hatred, and snatching the shirt out of the trough; 'it is not your business to touch my linen! You are a convict's wife, and ought to know your place and who you are!'

  "Lipa gazed at her in utter bewilderment; she did not understand, but suddenly she caught the look Aksinia turned upon the child, and at once she understood and went numb all over.

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  'You've taken my land, so here you are!' Saying this Aksinia snatched up the dipper with the boiling water and splashed it over Nikifor.

  Pages from Nabokov's teaching copy of "In the Gully."

  "There followed a scream such as had never been heard before in Ukleyevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly quiet in the yard. Aksinia walked into the house in silence with the old naive smile on her lips. . . . The deaf man kept moving about the yard with his arms full of linen, then be began hanging it up again, silently, without haste. And until the cook came back from the river no one ventured into the kitchen to see what had happened there."

  The enemy is destroyed, Aksinia smiles once more; automatically the land is hers now. The deaf man hanging up the linen again is a stroke of genius on Chekhov's part.

  The child theme is continued when Lipa comes on foot the long long way back from the hospital. Her baby has died; she carries his little body wrapped in a blanket.

  "Lipa went down the road, and before reaching the hamlet sat down by a small pond. A woman brought a horse to water but the horse would not drink. 'What more do you want?' the woman said to it softly, in perplexity. 'What more do you want?'

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  "A boy in a red shirt, sitting at the water's edge, was washing his father's jack boots. And not another soul was in sight, either in the village or on the hill. 'Doesn't drink,' said Lipa, looking at the horse."

  This little group should be noted. The boy, not her boy. All of it is emblematic of the simple family happiness that might have been hers. Notice the unobtrusive symbolism of Chekhov.

  "Then the woman with the horse and the boy with the boots walked away, and there was no one left at all. The sun went to sleep, covering itself with a skeined cloth of gold, and long clouds, red and lilac, stretched across the sky, guarded its rest.

  Somewhere far away a bittern boomed, a hollow, melancholy sound as that made by a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields, the nightingales were singing their heads off. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting and one could even make out the words: 'That's what you are! That's what you are!' What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once." Among European writers you may distinguish the bad one from the good one by the simple fact that the bad one has generally one nightingale at a time, as happens in conventional poetry, while the good one has several of them sing together, as they really do in nature.

  The men Lipa meets on the road are probably bootleggers but Lipa sees them other
wise in the moonlight.

  " 'Are you holy men?' Lipa asked the old man.

  " 'No. We are from Firsanovo.'

  " 'You looked at me just now and my heart was softened. [An almost Biblical intonation in the Russian text.] And the lad is so gentle. I thought you must be holy men.'

  " 'Have you far to go?'

  " 'To Ukleyevo.'

  " 'Get in, we will give you a lift as far as Kuzmenki, then you go straight on and we turn off to the left.'

  "Vavila [the young man] got into the cart with the barrel and the old man and Lipa got into the other. They moved at a walking pace, Vavila in front.

  " 'My baby was in torment all day,' said Lipa. 'He looked at me with his little eyes and said nothing; he wanted to speak and could not. Lord God! Queen of Heaven! In my grief I kept falling down on the floor; I would be standing there and then I would fall down by the bedside. And tell me, grandfather, why should a little one be tormented before his death? When a grown-up person, a man or woman, is in torment, his sins are forgiven, but why a little one, when he has no sins? Why?'

  " 'Who can tell?' answered the old man.

  "They drove on for half an hour in silence.

  " 'We can't know everything, how and why,' said the old man. 'A bird is given not four wings but two because it is able to fly with two; and so man is not permitted to know everything but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows.' . . .

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  " 'Never mind,' he repeated. 'Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is long, there is good and bad yet to come, there is everything to come. Great is mother Russia,' he said, and looked round on either side of him. 'I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a messenger from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altay Mountains and I emigrated to Siberia; I worked the land there, then I got homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. . . .And when I got home, as the saying is, there was neither stick nor stone; I had a wife, but I left her behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am a hired man now. And I tell you: since then I have had it good as well as bad. I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our mother Russia!' and again he gazed on either side and looked back. . . .

  "When Lipa reached home the cattle had not yet been driven out; everyone was asleep. She sat down on the steps and waited. The old man was the first to come out; he understood what had happened from the first glance at her, and for a long time he could not utter a word, but only smacked his lips.

  " 'Oh Lipa,' he said, 'you did not take care of my grandchild. . . .'

  Varvara was awakened. She struck her hands together and broke into sobs, and immediately began laying out the baby.

  " 'And he was such a pretty child . . .' she said. 'Oh dear, dear. . . . You had the one child, and you did not take enough care of him, you silly thing. '

  In her innocence Lipa never thought of telling people it was Aksinia who had killed her baby. Apparently the family believed that Lipa had just been careless and had accidentally scalded the child by overturning a pot of hot water.

  After the requiem service "Lipa waited at table, and the priest, lifting his fork on which there was a salted mushroom, said to her: 'Don't grieve for the babe. For such is the kingdom of Heaven.'

  "And only when they had all left Lipa realized fully that there was no Nikifor and never would be, she realized it and broke into sobs. And she did not know what room to go into to sob, for she felt that now her child was dead there was no place for her in the house, that she had no reason to be there, that she was in the way; and the others felt it, too.

  " 'Now what are you bellowing for?' Aksinia shouted, suddenly appearing in the doorway; because of the funeral she was dressed up in new clothes and had powdered her face. 'Shut up!'

  "Lipa tried to stop but could not, and sobbed louder than ever.

  " 'Do you hear?' shouted Aksinia, and stamped her foot in violent anger. 'Who is it I am speaking to? Get out of the house and don't set foot here again, you convict. Get out.'

  " 'There, there, there,' the old man put in fussily. 'Aksinia, don't make such an outcry, my dear. . . . She is crying, it is only natural . . . her child is dead.

  " 'It's only natural,' Aksinia mimicked him. 'Let her stay the night here, and don't let me see a trace of her tomorrow! "It's only natural" . . .' she mimicked him again, and, laughing, went into the shop."

  Lipa has lost the frail link that connected her to the household and leaves the house for ever.

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  In all cases, except Aksinia's, the truth gradually comes out.*

  The mechanical quality of Varvara's virtues is nicely exemplified by the jams she keeps making; there is too much of it, it goes sugary and uneatable. We recall that poor Lipa had been so fond of it. The jam turned against Varvara.

  The letters from Anisim still come in that beautiful hand—evidently his friend Samorodov is doing time with him in the mines of Siberia, so that here too the truth comes out. "I am ill here all the time; I am wretched, for Christ's sake help me!"

  Old Grigori, half-crazy, wretched, unloved, is the most vivid representative here of truth coming into its own.

  "One fine autumn day toward evening old Grigori was sitting near the church gates, with the collar of his fur coat turned up and nothing of him could be seen but his nose and the peak of his cap. At the other end of the long bench sat Yelizarov the contractor, and beside him Yakov the school watchman, a toothless old man of seventy. Crutch and the watchman were talking.

  " 'Children ought to give food and drink to the old. . . . Honor thy father and mother . . .' Yakov was saying with irritation,

  'while she, this woman [Aksinia] has turned her father-in-law out of his own house; the old man has neither food nor drink, where is he to go? He has not had a morsel these three days.'

  " 'Three days!' said Crutch, amazed.

  ' 'Here he sits and does not say a word. He has grown feeble. And why be silent? He ought to prosecute her, they wouldn't praise her in court.'

  " 'Who praised whom in court?' asked Crutch, who was hard of hearing.

  " 'What?' from the watchman.

  " 'The woman's all right,' said Crutch, 'she does her best. In their line of business they can't get on without that . . . without cheating, I mean. . . .'

  " 'Kicked out of his own house!' Yakov went on with irritation. 'Save up and buy your own house, then turn people out of it!

  She is a nice one, to be sure! A pla-ague!'

  "Grigori listened and did not stir. . . .

  " 'Whether it is your own house or others' it makes no difference so long as it is warm and the women don't scold . . .' said Crutch, and he laughed. 'When I was young I was very fond of my Nastasya. She was a quiet woman. And she used to be always at it: "Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a horse, Makarych!" She was dying and yet she kept on saying, "Buy yourself a racing droshky, Makarych, so that you don't have to walk." And all I did was to buy her gingerbread.'

  "'Her husband's deaf and stupid,' Yakov went on, not listening to Crutch; 'a regular fool, just like a goose. He can't understand anything. Hit a goose on the head with a stick and even then it does not understand.'

  "Crutch got up to go home. Yakov also got up, and both of them went off together, still talking. When they had gone fifty paces old Grigori got up, too, and walked after them, stepping uncertainly as though on slippery ice."

  *

  VN prefaces this section by the following remark to his class : "There is again a time gap between chapters 8 and 9. You will observe the delightful Chekhovian detail when the Khrymins, one of whom, if not all, is or are on intimate terms with his wife have 'p
resented the deaf man with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out and putting it to his ear.' " Ed.

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  In this last chapter the introduction of a new character in the toothless old watchman is another stroke of genius on the part of Chekhov, suggesting the continuity of existence, even though this is the conclusion of the story—but the story will go on with old and new characters, it will flow on as life flows on.

  Note the synthesis at the end of this tale: "The village was already sinking in the dusk of evening and the sun only gleamed on the upper part of the road which ran wriggling like a snake up the slope." The brilliant, snakelike trail, an emblem of Aksinia, fades and vanishes in the serene bliss of the night. "Old women were coming back from the woods and children with them; they were bringing baskets of mushrooms. Peasant women and girls came in a crowd from the station where they had been loading the cars with bricks, whose red dust had settled upon their skin under their eyes. They were singing.

  Ahead of them was Lipa, with her eyes turned toward the sky, she was singing in a high voice, carolling away as though exulting in the fact that at last the day was over and one might rest. Among the crowd, holding by the knot something tied up in a kerchief, breathless as usual, walked Praskovya, her mother, who still went out to work by the day.

  "'Good evening, Makarych!' cried Lipa, seeing Crutch. 'Good evening, dear!'

  "'Good evening, Lipynka,' cried Crutch delighted. 'Girls,

  women, love the rich carpenter! Ho-ho! My little children,

  my little children. (Crutch gave a sob.) My dear little