Again summer. By the doctor's orders Kovrin returned to the country.
He had recovered his health, and no longer saw the Black Monk. It only
remained for him to recruit his physical strength. He lived with his
father-in-law, drank much milk, worked only two hours a day, never
touched wine, and gave up smoking.
On the evening of the 19th June, before Elijah's day, a vesper service
was held in the house. When the priest took the censor from the sexton,
and the vast hall began to smell like a church, Kovrin felt tired. He
went into the garden. Taking no notice of the gorgeous blossoms around
him he walked up and down, sat for a while on a bench, and then walked
through the park. He descended the sloping bank to the margin of the
river, and stood still, looking questioningly at the water. The great
pines, with their shaggy roots, which a year before had seen him so
young, so joyous, so active, no longer whispered, but stood silent
and motionless, as if not recognising him.... And, indeed, with his
short-dipped hair, his feeble walk, and his changed face, so heavy and
pale and changed since last year, he would hardly have been recognised
anywhere.
He crossed the stream. In the field, last year covered with rye, lay
rows of reaped oats. The sun had set, and on the horizon flamed a
broad, red afterglow, fore-telling stormy weather. All was quiet; and,
gazing towards the point at which a year before he had first seen the
Black Monk, Kovrin stood twenty minutes watching the crimson fade. When
he returned to the house, tired and unsatisfied, Yegor Semiónovitch and
Tánya were sitting on the steps of the terrace, drinking tea. They were
talking together, and, seeing Kovrin, stopped. But Kovrin knew by their
faces that they had been speaking of him.
"It is time for you to have your milk," said Tánya to her husband.
"No, not yet," he answered, sitting down on the lowest step. "You drink
it. I do not want it." Tánya timidly exchanged glances with her father,
and said in a guilty voice:
"You know very well that the milk does you good."
"Yes, any amount of good," laughed Kovrin. "I congratulate you, I have
gained a pound in weight since last Friday." He pressed his hands to
his head and said in a pained voice: "Why ... why have you cured me?
Bromide mixtures, idleness, warm baths, watching in trivial terror
over every mouthful, every step ... all this in the end will drive me
to idiocy. I had gone out of my mind ... I had the mania of greatness.
... But for all that I was bright, active, and even happy.... I was
interesting and original. Now I have become rational and solid, just
like the rest of the world. I am a mediocrity, and it is tiresome for
me to live.... Oh, how cruelly... how cruelly you have treated me! I
had hallucinations ... but what harm did that cause to anyone? I ask
you what harm?"
"God only knows what you mean!" sighed Yegor Semiónovitch. "It is
stupid even to listen to you."
"Then you need not listen."
The presence of others, especially of Yegor Semiónovitch, now irritated
Kovrin; he answered his father-in-law drily, coldly, even rudely,
and could not look on him without contempt and hatred. And Yegor
Semiónovitch felt confused, and coughed guiltily, although he could not
see how he was in the wrong. Unable to understand the cause of such a
sudden reversal of their former hearty relations, Tánya leaned against
her father, and looked with alarm into his eyes. It was becoming plain
to her that their relations every day grew worse and worse, that her
father had aged greatly, and that her husband had become irritable,
capricious, excitable, and uninteresting. She no longer laughed and
sang, she ate nothing, and whole nights never slept, but lived under
the weight of some impending terror, torturing herself so much that
she lay insensible from dinner-time till evening. When the service was
being held, it had seemed to her that her father was crying; and now as
she sat on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.
"How happy were Buddha and Mahomet and Shakespeare that their
kind-hearted kinsmen and doctors did not cure them of ecstacy and
inspiration!" said Kovrin. "If Mahomet had taken potassium bromide
for his nerves, worked only two hours a day, and drunk milk, that
astonishing man would have left as little behind him as his dog.
Doctors and kind-hearted relatives only do their best to make humanity
stupid, and the time will come when mediocrity will be considered
genius, and humanity will perish. If you only had some idea," concluded
Kovrin peevishly, "if you only had some idea how grateful I am!" He
felt strong irritation, and to prevent himself saying too much, rose
and went into the house. It was a windless night, and into the window
was borne the smell of tobacco plants and jalap. Through the windows of
the great dark hall, on the floor and on the piano, fell the moonrays.
Kovrin recalled the raptures of the summer before, when the air, as
now, was full of the smell of jalap and the moonrays poured through the
window.... To awaken the mood of last year he went to his room, lighted
a strong cigar, and ordered the servant to bring him wine. But now the
cigar was bitter and distasteful, and the wine had lost its flavour
of the year before. How much it means to get out of practice! From a
single cigar, and two sips of wine, his head went round, and he was
obliged to take bromide of potassium.
Before going to bed Tánya said to him:
"Listen. Father worships you, but you are annoyed with him about
something, and that is killing him. Look at his face; he is growing
old, not by days but by hours! I implore you, Andrusha, for the love of
Christ, for the sake of your own dead father, for the sake of my peace
of mind--be kind to him again!"
"I cannot, and I do not want to."
"But why?" Tánya trembled all over. "Explain to me why!"
"Because I do not like him; that is all," answered Kovrin carelessly,
shrugging his shoulders. "But better not talk of that; he is your
father."
"I cannot, cannot understand," said Tánya. She pressed her hands to
her forehead and fixed her eyes on one point. "Something terrible,
something incomprehensible is going on in this house. You, Ahdrusha,
have changed; you are no longer yourself.... You--a clever, an
exceptional man--get irritated over trifles. ... You are annoyed by
such little things that at any other time you yourself would have
refused to believe it. No ... do not be angry, do not be angry," she
continued, kissing his hands, and frightened by her own words. "You are
clever, good, and noble. You will be just to father. He is so good."
"He is not good, but merely good-humoured. These vaudeville uncles--of
your father's type--with well-fed, easy-going faces, are characters in
their way, and once used to amuse me, whether in novels, in comedies,
or in life. But they are now hateful to me. They are egoists to the
marrow of their bones.... Most disgusting of all is their satiety, and
this stomachic, purely bovine--or swinish--optimism."
Tánya sat on the bed, and laid her head on a pillow. "This is torture!"
she said; and from her voice it was plain that she was utterly weary
and found it hard to speak. "Since last winter not a moment of rest.
... It is terrible, my God! I suffer ..."
"Yes, of course! I am Herod, and you and your papa the massacred
infants. Of course!"
His face seemed to Tánya ugly and disagreeable. The expression of
hatred and contempt did not suit it. She even observed that something
was lacking in his face; ever since his hair had been cut off, it
seemed changed. She felt an almost irresistible desire to say something
insulting, but restrained herself in time, and overcome with terror,
went out of the bedroom.