certain; how everyone was shouting, racing and driving along, and the
light, the light! And what was this? A huge glass window, and through the
window a tree reaching up to the ceiling; it was a fir tree, and on it were
ever so many lights, gold papers and apples and little dolls and horses;
and there were children clean and dressed in their best running about the
room, laughing and playing and eating and drinking something. And then a
little girl began dancing with one of the boys, what a pretty little girl!
And he could hear the music through the window. The boy looked and wondered
and laughed, though his toes were aching with the cold and his fingers were
red and stiff so that it hurt him to move them. And all at once the boy
remembered how his toes and fingers hurt him, and began crying, and ran on;
and again through another window-pane he saw another Christmas tree, and on
a table cakes of all sorts--almond cakes, red cakes and yellow cakes, and
three grand young ladies were sitting there, and they gave the cakes to any
one who went up to them, and the door kept opening, lots of gentlemen and
ladies went in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door
and went in. Oh, how they shouted at him and waved him back! One lady went
up to him hurriedly and slipped a kopeck into his hand, and with her own
hands opened the door into the street for him! How frightened he was. And
the kopeck rolled away and clinked upon the steps; he could not bend his
red fingers to hold it tight. The boy ran away and went on, where he did
not know. He was ready to cry again but he was afraid, and ran on and on
and blew his fingers. And he was miserable because he felt suddenly so
lonely and terrified, and all at once, mercy on us! What was this again?
People were standing in a crowd admiring. Behind a glass window there were
three little dolls, dressed in red and green dresses, and exactly, exactly
as though they were alive. One was a little old man sitting and playing a
big violin, the two others were standing close by and playing little
violins and nodding in time, and looking at one another, and their lips
moved, they were speaking, actually speaking, only one couldn't hear
through the glass. And at first the boy thought they were alive, and when
he grasped that they were dolls he laughed. He had never seen such dolls
before, and had no idea there were such dolls! And he wanted to cry, but
he felt amused, amused by the dolls. All at once he fancied that some one
caught at his smock behind: a wicked big boy was standing beside him and
suddenly hit him on the head, snatched off his cap and tripped him up. The
boy fell down on the ground, at once there was a shout, he was numb with
fright, he jumped up and ran away. He ran, and not knowing where he was
going, ran in at the gate of some one's courtyard, and sat down behind a
stack of wood: "They won't find me here, besides it's dark!"
He sat huddled up and was breathless from fright, and all at once, quite
suddenly, he felt so happy: his hands and feet suddenly left off aching and
grew so warm, as warm as though he were on a stove; then he shivered all
over, then he gave a start, why, he must have been asleep. How nice to have
a sleep here! "I'll sit here a little and go and look at the dolls again,"
said the boy, and smiled thinking of them. "Just as though they were
alive!..." And suddenly he heard his mother singing over him. "Mammy, I am
asleep; how nice it is to sleep here!"
"Come to my Christmas tree, little one," a soft voice suddenly whispered
over his head.
He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it was not she. Who it
was calling him, he could not see, but some one bent over and embraced him
in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and ... and all at
once--oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! And yet it was
not a fir tree, he had never seen a tree like that! Where was he now?
Everything was bright and shining, and all round him were dolls; but no,
they were not dolls, they were little boys and girls, only so bright and
shining. They all came flying round him, they all kissed him, took him and
carried him along with them, and he was flying himself, and he saw that his
mother was looking at him and laughing joyfully. "Mammy, Mammy; oh, how
nice it is here, Mammy!" And again he kissed the children and wanted to
tell them at once of those dolls in the shop window. "Who are you, boys?
Who are you, girls?" he asked, laughing and admiring them.
"This is Christ's Christmas tree," they answered. "Christ always has a
Christmas tree on this day, for the little children who have no tree of
their own...." And he found out that all these little boys and girls were
children just like himself; that some had been frozen in the baskets in
which they had as babies been laid on the doorsteps of well-to-do
Petersburg people, others had been boarded out with Finnish women by the
Foundling and had been suffocated, others had died at their starved
mother's breasts (in the Samara famine), others had died in the third-class
railway carriages from the foul air; and yet they were all here, they were
all like angels about Christ, and He was in the midst of them and held out
His hands to them and blessed them and their sinful mothers.... And the
mothers of these children stood on one side weeping; each one knew her boy
or girl, and the children flew up to them and kissed them and wiped away
their tears with their little hands, and begged them not to weep because
they were so happy.
And down below in the morning the porter found the little dead body of the
frozen child on the woodstack; they sought out his mother too.... She had
died before him. They met before the Lord God in heaven.
Why have I made up such a story, so out of keeping with an ordinary diary,
and a writer's above all? And I promised two stories dealing with real
events! But that is just it, I keep fancying that all this may have
happened really--that is, what took place in the cellar and on the
woodstack; but as for Christ's Christmas tree, I cannot tell you whether
that could have happened or not.
THE PEASANT MAREY
It was the second day in Easter week. The air was warm, the sky was blue,
the sun was high, warm, bright, but my soul was very gloomy. I sauntered
behind the prison barracks. I stared at the palings of the stout prison
fence, counting the movers; but I had no inclination to count them, though
it was my habit to do so. This was the second day of the "holidays" in the
prison; the convicts were not taken out to work, there were numbers of men
drunk, loud abuse and quarrelling was springing up continually in every
corner. There were hideous, disgusting songs and card-parties installed
beside the platform-beds. Several of the convicts who had been sentenced by
their comrades, for special violence, to be beaten till they were half
dead, were lying on the platform-bed, covered with sheepskins till they
should recover and come to themselves again; knives had already been drawn
several times. For these two days of holiday all this had been torturing me
till it made me ill. And indeed I could never endure without repulsion the
noise and disorder of drunken people, and especially in this place. On
these days even the prison officials did not look into the prison, made no
searches, did not look for vodka, understanding that they must allow even
these outcasts to enjoy themselves once a year, and that things would be
even worse if they did not. At last a sudden fury flamed up in my heart. A
political prisoner called M. met me; he looked at me gloomily, his eyes
flashed and his lips quivered. "_Je haïs ces brigands!_" he hissed to me
through his teeth, and walked on. I returned to the prison ward, though
only a quarter of an hour before I had rushed out of it, as though I were
crazy, when six stalwart fellows had all together flung themselves upon
the drunken Tatar Gazin to suppress him and had begun beating him; they
beat him stupidly, a camel might have been killed by such blows, but they
knew that this Hercules was not easy to kill, and so they beat him without
uneasiness. Now on returning I noticed on the bed in the furthest corner of
the room Gazin lying unconscious, almost without sign of life. He lay
covered with a sheepskin, and every one walked round him, without speaking;
though they confidently hoped that he would come to himself next morning,
yet if luck was against him, maybe from a beating like that, the man would
die. I made my way to my own place opposite the window with the iron
grating, and lay on my back with my hands behind my head and my eyes shut.
I liked to lie like that; a sleeping man is not molested, and meanwhile one
can dream and think. But I could not dream, my heart was beating uneasily,
and M.'s words, "_Je haïs ces brigands!_" were echoing in my ears. But why
describe my impressions; I sometimes dream even now of those times at
night, and I have no dreams more agonising. Perhaps it will be noticed that
even to this day I have scarcely once spoken in print of my life in prison.
_The House of the Dead_ I wrote fifteen years ago in the character of an
imaginary person, a criminal who had killed his wife. I may add by the way
that since then, very many persons have supposed, and even now maintain,
that I was sent to penal servitude for the murder of my wife.
Gradually I sank into forgetfulness and by degrees was lost in memories.
During the whole course of my four years in prison I was continually
recalling all my past, and seemed to live over again the whole of my life
in recollection. These memories rose up of themselves, it was not often
that of my own will I summoned them. It would begin from some point, some
little thing, at times unnoticed, and then by degrees there would rise up a
complete picture, some vivid and complete impression. I used to analyse
these impressions, give new features to what had happened long ago, and
best of all, I used to correct it, correct it continually, that was my
great amusement. On this occasion, I suddenly for some reason remembered an
unnoticed moment in my early childhood when I was only nine years old--a
moment which I should have thought I had utterly forgotten; but at that
time I was particularly fond of memories of my early childhood. I
remembered the month of August in our country house: a dry bright day but
rather cold and windy; summer was waning and soon we should have to go to
Moscow to be bored all the winter over French lessons, and I was so sorry
to leave the country. I walked past the threshing-floor and, going down the
ravine, I went up to the dense thicket of bushes that covered the further
side of the ravine as far as the copse. And I plunged right into the midst
of the bushes, and heard a peasant ploughing alone on the clearing about
thirty paces away. I knew that he was ploughing up the steep hill and the
horse was moving with effort, and from time to time the peasant's call
"come up!" floated upwards to me. I knew almost all our peasants, but I did
not know which it was ploughing now, and I did not care who it was, I was
absorbed in my own affairs. I was busy, too; I was breaking off switches
from the nut trees to whip the frogs with. Nut sticks make such fine whips,
but they do not last; while birch twigs are just the opposite. I was
interested, too, in beetles and other insects; I used to collect them, some
were very ornamental. I was very fond, too, of the little nimble red and
yellow lizards with black spots on them, but I was afraid of snakes.
Snakes, however, were much more rare than lizards. There were not many
mushrooms there. To get mushrooms one had to go to the birch wood, and I
was about to set off there. And there was nothing in the world that I loved
so much as the wood with its mushrooms and wild berries, with its beetles
and its birds, its hedgehogs and squirrels, with its damp smell of dead
leaves which I loved so much, and even as I write I smell the fragrance of
our birch wood: these impressions will remain for my whole life. Suddenly
in the midst of the profound stillness I heard a clear and distinct shout,
"Wolf!" I shrieked and, beside myself with terror, calling out at the top
of my voice, ran out into the clearing and straight to the peasant who was
ploughing.
It was our peasant Marey. I don't know if there is such a name, but every
one called him Marey--a thick-set, rather well-grown peasant of fifty, with
a good many grey hairs in his dark brown, spreading beard. I knew him, but
had scarcely ever happened to speak to him till then. He stopped his horse
on hearing my cry, and when, breathless, I caught with one hand at his
plough and with the other at his sleeve, he saw how frightened I was.
"There is a wolf!" I cried, panting.
He flung up his head, and could not help looking round for an instant,
almost believing me.
"Where is the wolf?"
"A shout ... some one shouted: 'wolf' ..." I faltered out.
"Nonsense, nonsense! A wolf? Why, it was your fancy! How could there be a
wolf?" he muttered, reassuring me. But I was trembling all over, and still
kept tight hold of his smock frock, and I must have been quite pale. He
looked at me with an uneasy smile, evidently anxious and troubled over me.
"Why, you have had a fright, _aïe, aïe_!" He shook his head. "There,
dear.... Come, little one, _aïe_!"
He stretched out his hand, and all at once stroked my cheek.
"Come, come, there; Christ be with you! Cross yourself!"
But I did not cross myself. The corners of my mouth were twitching, and I
think that struck him particularly. He put out his thick, black-nailed,
earth-stained finger and softly touched my twitching lips.
"_Aïe_, there, there," he said to me with a slow, almost motherly smile.
"Dear, dear, what is the matter? There; come, come!"
I grasped at last that there was no wolf, and that the shout that I had
heard was my fancy. Yet that shout had been so clear and distinct, but such
shouts (not only about wolves) I had imagined once or twice before, and I
was aware of that. (These hallucinations passed away later as I grew
older.)
"Well, I will go then," I said, looking at him timidly and inquiringly.
"Well, do, and I'll keep watch on you as you go. I won't let the wolf get
at you," he added, still smiling at me with the same motherly expression.
"Well, Christ be with you! Come, run along then," and he made the sign of
the cross over me and then over himself. I walked away, looking back almost
at every tenth step. Marey stood still with his mare as I walked away, and
looked after me and nodded to me every time I looked round. I must own I
felt a little ashamed at having let him see me so frightened, but I was
still very much afraid of the wolf as I walked away, until I reached the
first barn half-way up the slope of the ravine; there my fright vanished
completely, and all at once our yard-dog Voltchok flew to meet me. With
Voltchok I felt quite safe, and I turned round to Marey for the last time;
I could not see his face distinctly, but I felt that he was still nodding
and smiling affectionately to me. I waved to him; he waved back to me and
started his little mare. "Come up!" I heard his call in the distance again,
and the little mare pulled at the plough again.
All this I recalled all at once, I don't know why, but with extraordinary
minuteness of detail. I suddenly roused myself and sat up on the
platform-bed, and, I remember, found myself still smiling quietly at my
memories. I brooded over them for another minute.
When I got home that day I told no one of my "adventure" with Marey. And
indeed it was hardly an adventure. And in fact I soon forgot Marey. When I
met him now and then afterwards, I never even spoke to him about the wolf
or anything else; and all at once now, twenty years afterwards in Siberia,
I remembered this meeting with such distinctness to the smallest detail. So
it must have lain hidden in my soul, though I knew nothing of it, and rose
suddenly to my memory when it was wanted; I remembered the soft motherly
smile of the poor serf, the way he signed me with the cross and shook his
head. "There, there, you have had a fright, little one!" And I remembered
particularly the thick earth-stained finger with which he softly and with
timid tenderness touched my quivering lips. Of course any one would have
reassured a child, but something quite different seemed to have happened in
that solitary meeting; and if I had been his own son, he could not have
looked at me with eyes shining with greater love. And what made him like
that? He was our serf and I was his little master, after all. No one would
know that he had been kind to me and reward him for it. Was he, perhaps,
very fond of little children? Some people are. It was a solitary meeting in
the deserted fields, and only God, perhaps, may have seen from above with
what deep and humane civilised feeling, and with what delicate, almost
feminine tenderness, the heart of a coarse, brutally ignorant Russian serf,
who had as yet no expectation, no idea even of his freedom, may be filled.
Was not this, perhaps, what Konstantin Aksakov meant when he spoke of the
high degree of culture of our peasantry?
And when I got down off the bed and looked around me, I remember I suddenly
felt that I could look at these unhappy creatures with quite different
eyes, and that suddenly by some miracle all hatred and anger had vanished
utterly from my heart. I walked about, looking into the faces that I met.
That shaven peasant, branded on his face as a criminal, bawling his
hoarse, drunken song, may be that very Marey; I cannot look into his heart.
I met M. again that evening. Poor fellow! he could have no memories of
Russian peasants, and no other view of these people but: "_Je haïs ces
brigands!_" Yes, the Polish prisoners had more to bear than I.
THE CROCODILE
AN EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT
_A true story of how a gentleman of a certain age and of
respectable appearance was swallowed alive by the crocodile
in the Arcade, and of the consequences that followed._
Ohé Lambert! Où est Lambert?
As tu vu Lambert?
I
On the thirteenth of January of this present year, 1865, at half-past
twelve in the day, Elena Ivanovna, the wife of my cultured friend Ivan
Matveitch, who is a colleague in the same department, and may be said to be
a distant relation of mine, too, expressed the desire to see the crocodile
now on view at a fixed charge in the Arcade. As Ivan Matveitch had already
in his pocket his ticket for a tour abroad (not so much for the sake of his
health as for the improvement of his mind), and was consequently free from
his official duties and had nothing whatever to do that morning, he offered
no objection to his wife's irresistible fancy, but was positively aflame
with curiosity himself.
"A capital idea!" he said, with the utmost satisfaction. "We'll have a look
at the crocodile! On the eve of visiting Europe it is as well to acquaint
ourselves on the spot with its indigenous inhabitants." And with these
words, taking his wife's arm, he set off with her at once for the Arcade. I
joined them, as I usually do, being an intimate friend of the family. I
have never seen Ivan Matveitch in a more agreeable frame of mind than he
was on that memorable morning--how true it is that we know not beforehand
the fate that awaits us! On entering the Arcade he was at once full of
admiration for the splendours of the building, and when we reached the shop
in which the monster lately arrived in Petersburg was being exhibited, he
volunteered to pay the quarter-rouble for me to the crocodile owner--a
thing which had never happened before. Walking into a little room, we
observed that besides the crocodile there were in it parrots of the species
known as cockatoo, and also a group of monkeys in a special case in a
recess. Near the entrance, along the left wall stood a big tin tank that
looked like a bath covered with a thin iron grating, filled with water to
the depth of two inches. In this shallow pool was kept a huge crocodile,
which lay like a log absolutely motionless and apparently deprived of all
its faculties by our damp climate, so inhospitable to foreign visitors.
This monster at first aroused no special interest in any one of us.
"So this is the crocodile!" said Elena Ivanovna, with a pathetic cadence of
regret. "Why, I thought it was ... something different."
Most probably she thought it was made of diamonds. The owner of the
crocodile, a German, came out and looked at us with an air of extraordinary
pride.
"He has a right to be," Ivan Matveitch whispered to me, "he knows he is the
only man in Russia exhibiting a crocodile."
This quite nonsensical observation I ascribe also to the extremely
good-humoured mood which had overtaken Ivan Matveitch, who was on other
occasions of rather envious disposition.
"I fancy your crocodile is not alive," said Elena Ivanovna, piqued by the
irresponsive stolidity of the proprietor, and addressing him with a
charming smile in order to soften his churlishness--a manoeuvre so
typically feminine.
"Oh, no, madam," the latter replied in broken Russian; and instantly
moving the grating half off the tank, he poked the monster's head with a
stick.
Then the treacherous monster, to show that it was alive, faintly stirred
its paws and tail, raised its snout and emitted something like a prolonged
snuffle.
"Come, don't be cross, Karlchen," said the German caressingly, gratified in
his vanity.
"How horrid that crocodile is! I am really frightened," Elena Ivanovna
twittered, still more coquettishly. "I know I shall dream of him now."
"But he won't bite you if you do dream of him," the German retorted
gallantly, and was the first to laugh at his own jest, but none of us
responded.
"Come, Semyon Semyonitch," said Elena Ivanovna, addressing me exclusively,
"let us go and look at the monkeys. I am awfully fond of monkeys; they are
such darlings ... and the crocodile is horrid."
"Oh, don't be afraid, my dear!" Ivan Matveitch called after us, gallantly
displaying his manly courage to his wife. "This drowsy denison of the
realms of the Pharaohs will do us no harm." And he remained by the tank.
What is more, he took his glove and began tickling the crocodile's nose
with it, wishing, as he said afterwards, to induce him to snort. The
proprietor showed his politeness to a lady by following Elena Ivanovna to
the case of monkeys.
So everything was going well, and nothing could have been foreseen. Elena
Ivanovna was quite skittish in her raptures over the monkeys, and seemed
completely taken up with them. With shrieks of delight she was continually
turning to me, as though determined not to notice the proprietor, and kept
gushing with laughter at the resemblance she detected between these monkeys
and her intimate friends and acquaintances. I, too, was amused, for the
resemblance was unmistakable. The German did not know whether to laugh or
not, and so at last was reduced to frowning. And it was at that moment
that a terrible, I may say unnatural, scream set the room vibrating. Not
knowing what to think, for the first moment I stood still, numb with
horror, but noticing that Elena Ivanovna was screaming too, I quickly
turned round--and what did I behold! I saw--oh, heavens!--I saw the
luckless Ivan Matveitch in the terrible jaws of the crocodile, held by them
round the waist, lifted horizontally in the air and desperately kicking.
Then--one moment, and no trace remained of him. But I must describe it in
detail, for I stood all the while motionless, and had time to watch the
whole process taking place before me with an attention and interest such as
I never remember to have felt before. "What," I thought at that critical
moment, "what if all that had happened to me instead of to Ivan
Matveitch--how unpleasant it would have been for me!"