fully capable of apprehending that a man is not dissected alive. I imagined
that in his derangement he had ceased to be alive ... that is, that he had
died ... that is, I mean to say ... that you don't like me ... and yet I
like you all ... Yes, I like Por ... Porfiry ... I am lowering myself by
speaking like this...."
At that moment Ivan Ilyitch spluttered so that a great dab of saliva flew
on to the tablecloth in a most conspicuous place. Pseldonimov flew to wipe
it off with a table-napkin. This last disaster crushed him completely.
"My friends, this is too much," he cried in despair.
"The man is drunk, your Excellency," Pseldonimov prompted him again.
"Porfiry, I see that you ... all ... yes! I say that I hope ... yes, I call
upon you all to tell me in what way have I lowered myself?"
Ivan Ilyitch was almost crying.
"Your Excellency, good heavens!"
"Porfiry, I appeal to you.... Tell me, when I came ... yes ... yes, to your
wedding, I had an object. I was aiming at moral elevation.... I wanted it
to be felt.... I appeal to all: am I greatly lowered in your eyes or not?"
A deathlike silence. That was just it, a deathlike silence, and to such a
downright question. "They might at least shout at this minute!" flashed
through his Excellency's head. But the guests only looked at one another.
Akim Petrovitch sat more dead than alive, while Pseldonimov, numb with
terror, was repeating to himself the awful question which had occurred to
him more than once already.
"What shall I have to pay for all this to-morrow?"
At this point the young man on the comic paper, who was very drunk but who
had hitherto sat in morose silence, addressed Ivan Ilyitch directly, and
with flashing eyes began answering in the name of the whole company.
"Yes," he said in a loud voice, "yes, you have lowered yourself. Yes, you
are a reactionary ... re-ac-tion-ary!"
"Young man, you are forgetting yourself! To whom are you speaking, so to
express it?" Ivan Ilyitch cried furiously, jumping up from his seat again.
"To you; and secondly, I am not a young man.... You've come to give
yourself airs and try to win popularity."
"Pseldonimov, what does this mean?" cried Ivan Ilyitch.
But Pseldonimov was reduced to such horror that he stood still like a post
and was utterly at a loss what to do. The guests, too, sat mute in their
seats. All but the artist and the schoolboy, who applauded and shouted,
"Bravo, bravo!"
The young man on the comic paper went on shouting with unrestrained
violence:
"Yes, you came to show off your humanity! You've hindered the enjoyment of
every one. You've been drinking champagne without thinking that it is
beyond the means of a clerk at ten roubles a month. And I suspect that you
are one of those high officials who are a little too fond of the young
wives of their clerks! What is more, I am convinced that you support State
monopolies.... Yes, yes, yes!"
"Pseldonimov, Pseldonimov," shouted Ivan Ilyitch, holding out his hands to
him. He felt that every word uttered by the comic young man was a fresh
dagger at his heart.
"Directly, your Excellency; please do not disturb yourself!" Pseldonimov
cried energetically, rushing up to the comic young man, seizing him by the
collar and dragging him away from the table. Such physical strength could
indeed not have been expected from the weakly looking Pseldonimov. But the
comic young man was very drunk, while Pseldonimov was perfectly sober. Then
he gave him two or three cuffs in the back, and thrust him out of the
door.
"You are all scoundrels!" roared the young man of the comic paper. "I will
caricature you all to-morrow in the _Firebrand_."
They all leapt up from their seats.
"Your Excellency, your Excellency!" cried Pseldonimov, his mother and
several others, crowding round the general; "your Excellency, do not be
disturbed!"
"No, no," cried the general, "I am annihilated.... I came... I meant to
bless you, so to speak. And this is how I am paid, for everything,
everything!..."
He sank on to a chair as though unconscious, laid both his arms on the
table, and bowed his head over them, straight into a plate of blancmange.
There is no need to describe the general horror. A minute later he got up,
evidently meaning to go out, gave a lurch, stumbled against the leg of a
chair, fell full length on the floor and snored....
This is what is apt to happen to men who don't drink when they accidentally
take a glass too much. They preserve their consciousness to the last point,
to the last minute, and then fall to the ground as though struck down. Ivan
Ilyitch lay on the floor absolutely unconscious. Pseldonimov clutched at
his hair and sat as though petrified in that position. The guests made
haste to depart, commenting each in his own way on the incident. It was
about three o'clock in the morning.
* * * * *
The worst of it was that Pseldonimov's circumstances were far worse than
could have been imagined, in spite of the unattractiveness of his present
surroundings. And while Ivan Ilyitch is lying on the floor and Pseldonimov
is standing over him tearing his hair in despair, we will break off the
thread of our story and say a few explanatory words about Porfiry
Petrovitch Pseldonimov.
Not more than a month before his wedding he was in a state of hopeless
destitution. He came from a province where his father had served in some
department and where he had died while awaiting his trial on some charge.
When five months before his wedding, Pseldonimov, who had been in hopeless
misery in Petersburg for a whole year before, got his berth at ten roubles
a month, he revived both physically and mentally, but he was soon crushed
by circumstances again. There were only two Pseldonimovs left in the world,
himself and his mother, who had left the province after her husband's
death. The mother and son barely existed in the freezing cold, and
sustained life on the most dubious substances. There were days when
Pseldonimov himself went with a jug to the Fontanka for water to drink.
When he got his place he succeeded in settling with his mother in a
"corner." She took in washing, while for four months he scraped together
every farthing to get himself boots and an overcoat. And what troubles he
had to endure at his office; his superiors approached him with the
question: "How long was it since he had had a bath?" There was a rumour
about him that under the collar of his uniform there were nests of bugs.
But Pseldonimov was a man of strong character. On the surface he was mild
and meek; he had the merest smattering of education, he was practically
never heard to talk of anything. I do not know for certain whether he
thought, made plans and theories, had dreams. But on the other hand there
was being formed within him an instinctive, furtive, unconscious
determination to fight his way out of his wretched circumstances. He had
the persistence of an ant. Destroy an ants' nest, and they will begin at
once re-erecting it; destroy it again, and they will begin again without
wearying. He was a constructive house-building animal. One could see from
his brow that he would make his way, would build his nest, and perhaps even
save for a rainy day. His mother was the only creature in the world who
loved him, and she loved him beyond everything. She was a woman of
resolute character, hard-working and indefatigable, and at the same time
good-natured. So perhaps they might have lived in their corner for five or
six years till their circumstances changed, if they had not come across the
retired titular councillor Mlekopitaev, who had been a clerk in the
treasury and had served at one time in the provinces, but had latterly
settled in Petersburg and had established himself there with his family. He
knew Pseldonimov, and had at one time been under some obligation to his
father. He had a little money, not a large sum, of course, but there it
was; how much it was no one knew, not his wife, nor his elder daughter, nor
his relations. He had two daughters, and as he was an awful bully, a
drunkard, a domestic tyrant, and in addition to that an invalid, he took it
into his head one day to marry one of his daughters to Pseldonimov: "I knew
his father," he would say, "he was a good fellow and his son will be a good
fellow." Mlekopitaev did exactly as he liked, his word was law. He was a
very queer bully. For the most part he spent his time sitting in an
arm-chair, having lost the use of his legs from some disease which did not,
however, prevent him from drinking vodka. For days together he would be
drinking and swearing. He was an ill-natured man. He always wanted to have
some one whom he could be continually tormenting. And for that purpose he
kept several distant relations: his sister, a sickly and peevish woman; two
of his wife's sisters, also ill-natured and very free with their tongues,
and his old aunt, who had through some accident a broken rib; he kept
another dependent also, a Russianised German, for the sake of her talent
for entertaining him with stories from the _Arabian Nights_. His sole
gratification consisted in jeering at all these unfortunate women and
abusing them every minute with all his energies; though the latter, not
excepting his wife, who had been born with toothache, dared not utter a
word in his presence. He set them at loggerheads at one another, inventing
and fostering spiteful backbiting and dissensions among them, and then
laughed and rejoiced seeing how they were ready to tear one another to
pieces. He was very much delighted when his elder daughter, who had lived
in great poverty for ten years with her husband, an officer of some sort,
and was at last left a widow, came to live with him with three little
sickly children. He could not endure her children, but as her arrival had
increased the material upon which he could work his daily experiments, the
old man was very much pleased. All these ill-natured women and sickly
children, together with their tormentor, were crowded together in a wooden
house on Petersburg Side, and did not get enough to eat because the old man
was stingy and gave out to them money a farthing at a time, though he did
not grudge himself vodka; they did not get enough sleep because the old man
suffered from sleeplessness and insisted on being amused. In short, they
all were in misery and cursed their fate. It was at that time that
Mlekopitaev's eye fell upon Pseldonimov. He was struck by his long nose and
submissive air. His weakly and unprepossessing younger daughter had just
reached the age of seventeen. Though she had at one time attended a German
school, she had acquired scarcely anything but the alphabet. Then she grew
up rickety and anæmic in fear of her crippled drunken father's crutch, in a
Bedlam of domestic backbiting, eavesdropping and scolding. She had never
had any friends or any brains. She had for a long time been eager to be
married. In company she sat mute, but at home with her mother and the women
of the household she was spiteful and cantankerous. She was particularly
fond of pinching and smacking her sister's children, telling tales of their
pilfering bread and sugar, and this led to endless and implacable strife
with her elder sister. Her old father himself offered her to Pseldonimov.
Miserable as the latter's position was, he yet asked for a little time to
consider. His mother and he hesitated for a long time. But with the young
lady there was to come as dowry a house, and though it was a nasty little
wooden house of one storey, yet it was property of a kind. Moreover, they
would give with her four hundred roubles, and how long it would take him to
save it up himself! "What am I taking the man into my house for?" shouted
the drunken bully. "In the first place because you are all females, and I
am sick of female society. I want Pseldonimov, too, to dance to my piping.
For I am his benefactor. And in the second place I am doing it because you
are all cross and don't want it, so I'll do it to spite you. What I have
said, I have said! And you beat her, Porfiry, when she is your wife; she
has been possessed of seven devils ever since she was born. You beat them
out of her, and I'll get the stick ready."
Pseldonimov made no answer, but he was already decided. Before the wedding
his mother and he were taken into the house, washed, clothed, provided with
boots and money for the wedding. The old man took them under his protection
possibly just because the whole family was prejudiced against them. He
positively liked Pseldonimov's mother, so that he actually restrained
himself and did not jeer at her. On the other hand, he made Pseldonimov
dance the Cossack dance a week before the wedding.
"Well, that's enough. I only wanted to see whether you remembered your
position before me or not," he said at the end of the dance. He allowed
just enough money for the wedding, with nothing to spare, and invited all
his relations and acquaintances. On Pseldonimov's side there was no one but
the young man who wrote for the _Firebrand_, and Akim Petrovitch, the guest
of honour. Pseldonimov was perfectly aware that his bride cherished an
aversion for him, and that she was set upon marrying the officer instead of
him. But he put up with everything, he had made a compact with his mother
to do so. The old father had been drunk and abusive and foul-tongued the
whole of the wedding day and during the party in the evening. The whole
family took refuge in the back rooms and were crowded there to suffocation.
The front rooms were devoted to the dance and the supper. At last when the
old man fell asleep dead drunk at eleven o'clock, the bride's mother, who
had been particularly displeased with Pseldonimov's mother that day, made
up her mind to lay aside her wrath, become gracious and join the company.
Ivan Ilyitch's arrival had turned everything upside down. Madame
Mlekopitaev was overcome with embarrassment, and began grumbling that she
had not been told that the general had been invited. She was assured that
he had come uninvited, but was so stupid as to refuse to believe it.
Champagne had to be got. Pseldonimov's mother had only one rouble, while
Pseldonimov himself had not one farthing. He had to grovel before his
ill-natured mother-in-law, to beg for the money for one bottle and then for
another. They pleaded for the sake of his future position in the service,
for his career, they tried to persuade her. She did at last give from her
own purse, but she forced Pseldonimov to swallow such a cupful of gall and
bitterness that more than once he ran into the room where the nuptial couch
had been prepared, and madly clutching at his hair and trembling all over
with impotent rage, he buried his head in the bed destined for the joys of
paradise. No, indeed, Ivan Ilyitch had no notion of the price paid for the
two bottles of Jackson he had drunk that evening. What was the horror, the
misery and even the despair of Pseldonimov when Ivan Ilyitch's visit ended
in this unexpected way. He had a prospect again of no end of misery, and
perhaps a night of tears and outcries from his peevish bride, and
upbraidings from her unreasonable relations. Even apart from this his head
ached already, and there was dizziness and mist before his eyes. And here
Ivan Ilyitch needed looking after, at three o'clock at night he had to
hunt for a doctor or a carriage to take him home, and a carriage it must
be, for it would be impossible to let an ordinary cabby take him home in
that condition. And where could he get the money even for a carriage?
Madame Mlekopitaev, furious that the general had not addressed two words to
her, and had not even looked at her at supper, declared that she had not a
farthing. Possibly she really had not a farthing. Where could he get it?
What was he to do? Yes, indeed, he had good cause to tear his hair.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Ivan Ilyitch was moved to a little leather sofa that stood in the
dining-room. While they were clearing the tables and putting them away,
Pseldonimov was rushing all over the place to borrow money, he even tried
to get it from the servants, but it appeared that nobody had any. He even
ventured to trouble Akim Petrovitch who had stayed after the other guests.
But good-natured as he was, the latter was reduced to such bewilderment and
even alarm at the mention of money that he uttered the most unexpected and
foolish phrases:
"Another time, with pleasure," he muttered, "but now ... you really must
excuse me...."
And taking his cap, he ran as fast as he could out of the house. Only the
good-natured youth who had talked about the dream book was any use at all;
and even that came to nothing. He, too, stayed after the others, showing
genuine sympathy with Pseldonimov's misfortunes. At last Pseldonimov,
together with his mother and the young man, decided in consultation not to
send for a doctor, but rather to fetch a carriage and take the invalid
home, and meantime to try certain domestic remedies till the carriage
arrived, such as moistening his temples and his head with cold water,
putting ice on his head, and so on. Pseldonimov's mother undertook this
task. The friendly youth flew off in search of a carriage. As there were
not even ordinary cabs to be found on the Petersburg Side at that hour, he
went off to some livery stables at a distance to wake up the coachmen. They
began bargaining, and declared that five roubles would be little to ask for
a carriage at that time of night. They agreed to come, however, for three.
When at last, just before five o'clock, the young man arrived at
Pseldonimov's with the carriage, they had changed their minds. It appeared
that Ivan Ilyitch, who was still unconscious, had become so seriously
unwell, was moaning and tossing so terribly, that to move him and take him
home in such a condition was impossible and actually unsafe. "What will it
lead to next?" said Pseldonimov, utterly disheartened. What was to be done?
A new problem arose: if the invalid remained in the house, where should he
be moved and where could they put him? There were only two bedsteads in the
house: one large double bed in which old Mlekopitaev and his wife slept,
and another double bed of imitation walnut which had just been purchased
and was destined for the newly married couple. All the other inhabitants of
the house slept on the floor side by side on feather beds, for the most
part in bad condition and stuffy, anything but presentable in fact, and
even of these the supply was insufficient; there was not one to spare.
Where could the invalid be put? A feather bed might perhaps have been
found--it might in the last resort have been pulled from under some one,
but where and on what could a bed have been made up? It seemed that the bed
must be made up in the drawing-room, for that room was the furthest from
the bosom of the family and had a door into the passage. But on what could
the bed be made? Surely not upon chairs. We all know that beds can only be
made up on chairs for schoolboys when they come home for the week end, and
it would be terribly lacking in respect to make up a bed in that way for a
personage like Ivan Ilyitch. What would be said next morning when he found
himself lying on chairs? Pseldonimov would not hear of that. The only
alternative was to put him on the bridal couch. This bridal couch, as we
have mentioned already, was in a little room that opened out of the
dining-room, on the bedstead was a double mattress actually newly bought
first-hand, clean sheets, four pillows in pink calico covered with frilled
muslin cases. The quilt was of pink satin, and it was quilted in patterns.
Muslin curtains hung down from a golden ring overhead, in fact it was all
just as it should be, and the guests who had all visited the bridal chamber
had admired the decoration of it; though the bride could not endure
Pseldonimov, she had several times in the course of the evening run in to
have a look at it on the sly. What was her indignation, her wrath, when she
learned that they meant to move an invalid, suffering from something not
unlike a mild attack of cholera, to her bridal couch! The bride's mother
took her part, broke into abuse and vowed she would complain to her husband
next day, but Pseldonimov asserted himself and insisted: Ivan Ilyitch was
moved into the bridal chamber, and a bed was made up on chairs for the
young people. The bride whimpered, would have liked to pinch him, but dared
not disobey; her papa had a crutch with which she was very familiar, and
she knew that her papa would call her to account next day. To console her
they carried the pink satin quilt and the pillows in muslin cases into the
drawing-room. At that moment the youth arrived with the carriage, and was
horribly alarmed that the carriage was not wanted. He was left to pay for
it himself, and he never had as much as a ten-kopeck piece. Pseldonimov
explained that he was utterly bankrupt. They tried to parley with the
driver. But he began to be noisy and even to batter on the shutters. How it
ended I don't know exactly. I believe the youth was carried off to Peski by
way of a hostage to Fourth Rozhdensky Street, where he hoped to rouse a
student who was spending the night at a friend's, and to try whether he
had any money. It was going on for six o'clock in the morning when the
young people were left alone and shut up in the drawing-room. Pseldonimov's
mother spent the whole night by the bedside of the sufferer. She installed
herself on a rug on the floor and covered herself with an old coat, but
could not sleep because she had to get up every minute: Ivan Ilyitch had a
terrible attack of colic. Madame Pseldonimov, a woman of courage and
greatness of soul, undressed him with her own hands, took off all his
things, looked after him as if he were her own son, and spent the whole
night carrying basins, etc., from the bedroom across the passage and
bringing them back again empty. And yet the misfortunes of that night were
not yet over.
* * * * *
Not more than ten minutes after the young people had been shut up alone in
the drawing-room, a piercing shriek was suddenly heard, not a cry of joy,
but a shriek of the most sinister kind. The screams were followed by a
noise, a crash, as though of the falling of chairs, and instantly there
burst into the still dark room a perfect crowd of exclaiming and frightened
women, attired in every kind of _déshabillé_. These women were the bride's
mother, her elder sister, abandoning for the moment the sick children, and
her three aunts, even the one with a broken rib dragged herself in. Even
the cook was there, and the German lady who told stories, whose own feather
bed, the best in the house, and her only property, had been forcibly
dragged from under her for the young couple, trailed in together with the
others. All these respectable and sharp-eyed ladies had, a quarter of an
hour before, made their way on tiptoe from the kitchen across the passage,
and were listening in the ante-room, devoured by unaccountable curiosity.
Meanwhile some one lighted a candle, and a surprising spectacle met the
eyes of all. The chairs supporting the broad feather bed only at the sides
had parted under the weight, and the feather bed had fallen between them on
the floor. The bride was sobbing with anger, this time she was mortally
offended. Pseldonimov, morally shattered, stood like a criminal caught in a
crime. He did not even attempt to defend himself. Shrieks and exclamations
sounded on all sides. Pseldonimov's mother ran up at the noise, but the
bride's mamma on this occasion got the upper hand. She began by showering
strange and for the most part quite undeserved reproaches, such as: "A nice
husband you are, after this. What are you good for after such a disgrace?"
and so on; and at last carried her daughter away from her husband,
undertaking to bear the full responsibility for doing so with her ferocious
husband, who would demand an explanation. All the others followed her out
exclaiming and shaking their heads. No one remained with Pseldonimov except
his mother, who tried to comfort him. But he sent her away at once.