clouds had gathered from all sides, and drops of rain were already
falling,--these unassuming days always wind up with a downpour.... An
old man in spectacles, who was ploughing near the village, said that
only the young countess was at home, but they drove up never the less.
The young fellow pulled a long coat over his shoulders, and satisfied
with the fact that the horses were resting, was calmly getting soaked
under the rain upon the driver’s seat of the _tarantass_, which had
been drawn up in the middle of the dirty yard, near a stone trough that
had sunk into the ground, which ground was all trampled over by the
hoofs of cattle. He was inspecting his boots, was adjusting with his
whip-stock the breech-band of the shaft-horse; while Ivlev sat in the
drawing room, which was darkening from the rain. He was chatting with
the countess and awaiting tea. There was already a smell of shavings
burning; the thick green smoke of the samovar, which a barefooted wench
on the steps was stuffing with bundles of brightly burning sticks,
pouring kerosene over them, floated past the window. The countess was
in a capacious pink dressing gown, which showed her powdered bosom;
she smoked, inhaling deeply; she patted her hair frequently, baring
her firm and rounded arms to the shoulders; inhaling the smoke and
laughing, she kept on leading the talk around to love, and, among other
things told him about her near neighbour, the land-owner Khvoshchinsky,
who, as Ivlev had known ever since childhood, had all his life long
been a maniac over his love for his chambermaid Lushka, who had died in
early youth. “Ah, this legendary Lushka!” Ivlev had remarked jestingly,
slightly confused over his confession. “Because this queer fellow had
made a divinity of her, had dedicated all his life to insane dreams
of her, I, in my youth, was almost in love with her: I fancied, in
thinking of her, God knows what; although, they do say, she was not
at all good-looking.” “Yes?” said the countess, without listening.
“Why, he died this winter, you know. And Pisarev,--the only one whose
visits he tolerated, because of their old friendship,--affirms that in
everything else he was not in the least insane, and I believe it,--he
was simply different from the run of the men of to-day....” Finally the
barefooted wench with unusual carefullness served him with a glass of
strong gray tea out of a teapot, and with a small basket of fly-specked
tea cookies.
When they started off again, the rain had set in in earnest. It was
necessary to raise the top, to cover up with the calcined, shrunken
apron, to sit all hunched up. The horses clattered their muffled bells;
little streams ran over their dark and glistening haunches; the grasses
swished succulently under their wheels as they passed some boundary
or other, among the fields of grain, through which the young fellow
had driven in the hope of shortening the way; the warm rye-scented
air gathered underneath the top, blending with the odour of the old
_tarantass_.... “So that’s how things are,--Khvoshchinsky has died,”
Ivlev was thinking. “I absolutely must drive up, just to have a glance
at this deserted sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka.... But what sort
of a man was this Khvoshchinsky? A madman, or simply some sort of an
overwhelmed soul, all centred in one thing?” To judge by the stories
of old land-owners, who were of the same age as Khvoshchinsky, he
had at one time passed for an extraordinarily clever fellow in this
province. And suddenly there fell upon him this love, this Lushka; then
her unexpected death came,--and everything went to rack and ruin. He
locked himself up in the house, in that room where Lushka had lived and
died, and had sat there through more than twenty years,--not only not
going out anywhere, but not showing himself to anybody even on his own
estate. He had sat a hole through and through the mattress on Lushka’s
bed, and ascribed literally everything that took place in the world to
Lushka’s influence: if there were a thunderstorm,--it was Lushka who
sent it; if a war were declared,--it meant that Lushka had so decided;
if the harvest happened to be bad,--the peasants had not succeeded in
pleasing Lushka....
“You’re driving to Khvoshchinsky’s, aren’t you?” called out Ivlev,
putting his head out in the rain.
“To Khvoshchinsky’s,” came from the lad, indistinctly through the noise
of the rain; water was running down from his drooping cap by this time.
“Going up Pisarev’s hill....”
Ivlev did not know any such road. The settlements were constantly
becoming poorer and farther away from the world. The boundary came to
an end, the horses were going at a walk, and brought the careening
_tarantass_ through a washed-out hollow to the bottom of a little
hill, into some still unmown meadows, the green declivities of which
stood out mournfully against the low-lying clouds. Then the road, now
disappearing, now finding itself anew, began to wind in and out, along
the bottoms of gullies, through ravines filled with alder bushes and
branching osiers. They came upon somebody’s little apiary--several
small logs standing upon a slope, among tall grass with wild
strawberries glimmering red through it.... They made a detour of some
old dam, sunk among nettles, and a pond long since dried up--a deep
hollow, grown over with burdocks taller than a man in height.... A pair
of black snipe with a mournful cry darted out of them towards the rainy
sky.... But upon the dam, amidst the nettles, an old, big bush was
blossoming out with little pale pink flowers,--that charming little
tree which is called God’s Own Tree,[6]--and Ivlev suddenly recalled
the localities, recalled that he had ridden through here more than once
on horseback in his youth, with a gun slung over his shoulders....
[6] Abrotanum; southern wood. _Trans._
“They do say that she drowned herself right here,” said the young
fellow unexpectedly.
“You’re talking about the mistress of Khvoshchinsky, aren’t you?” asked
Ivlev. “That isn’t so; she didn’t even think of drowning.”
“No,--she did drown herself,” said the lad, “only, they think that he
went mad from his poverty, most likely, and not on account of her....”
And after a silence, he roughly added:
“Well, we ought to be driving on again.... For this same Khvoshchinskoë
now.... Look at how petered out them horses be!”
“Suit yourself,” said Ivlev.
Upon the hillock whither the road (now lead-coloured from the rain)
led, upon a clearing from which the trees had been carried away,
among the wet, rotting chips and leaves, among the stumps and young
aspen growths, with their bitter and fresh scent, a solitary hut
was standing. There was never a soul around,--only the singing
green-finches, sitting under the rain upon tall flowers, rang
through the entire thin forest that stretched upward beyond the
hut. But when the _troika_, splashing through the mud, had come
abreast of its threshold, a whole pack of huge hounds dashed out from
somewhere,--black, chocolate, and smoke-coloured,--and with ferocious
baying swirled around the horses, jumping up to their very muzzles,
turning head over heels as they ran, and even spinning up to the very
top of the _tarantass_. At the same time, and just as unexpectedly,
the sky over the _tarantass_ was split by a deafening peal of thunder,
which had not sounded once during the day, while the young fellow began
in a rage to lash the dogs with his whip, and the horses dashed away at
a gallop among the aspen trunks that began flashing before the eyes....
The village of Khvoshchinskoë could already be seen beyond the forest.
The hounds lost ground and at once grew quiet, trotting back in a
business-like manner; the forest gave way and again fields opened up
ahead. Evening was coming on, and one could not determine now whether
the storm-clouds, on three sides, were dispersing or encroaching. On
the left was one almost black, with blue openings through which light
showed; on the right, a hoary one, rumbling with ceaseless thunder;
while toward the west, from Khvoshchinsky’s estate, from beyond the
sloping hills over the river valley, was a turbidly blue one, with
dusty streaks of rain through which could be seen the roseate mountains
of clouds piled in the distance. But the rain was abating about the
_tarantass_, and Ivlev, standing up, all bespattered with mud, threw
back with pleasure the top, now grown heavy, and freely breathed in the
fragrant dampness of the field.
He was looking at the approaching estate, was beholding, at last, that
of which he had heard so much; but, even as formerly, it seemed to
him that Lushka had lived and died not twenty years ago, but almost
in times immemorial. Looking out over the bottom-land, all trace of
the shallow little river was lost in the lush vegetation, over which
a white king-fisher was soaring. Further on, on a mound, lay rows of
hay, grown dark from the rain; among them, far apart from one another,
were spread out ancient silvery poplars. The house, rather a large one
and at one time white, with its wet roof glistening, stood upon an
absolutely bare spot. There was neither garden, nor any outbuildings
around it,--only two pillars of brick in lieu of gates, and with
burdocks growing in the ditches. When the horses had crossed the little
river by a ford and had gone up the hill, some woman, in a man’s summer
overcoat with its pockets hanging down, was driving a few turkey hens
through the burdocks. The _façade_ of the house was unusually bleak;
it had few windows, and all of them were small, and set within thick
walls. But then, the sombre front entrances were enormous. From one of
them a young man in the gray blouse of a high-school student, belted
with a broad strap, was looking with wonder at the arrivals; he was
black-haired, with handsome eyes, and of very pleasing appearance,
although his face was pale, and as spotted with freckles as a bird’s
egg.
It was necessary to explain the visit in some way. Having climbed up to
the entrance and given his name, Ivlev said that he wanted to see, and
perhaps to buy, the library that, so the countess had said, had been
left by the deceased. And the young man, flushing deeply and pulling
down his blouse from behind, at once led him into the house. “So this,
then, is the son of the famous Lushka!” reflected Ivlev, throwing a
rapid glance at everything that met his eyes. He looked back frequently
and said anything that came to mind first, just so as to have an
additional glance at the master of the house, who appeared too youthful
for his years. The latter answered hurriedly, but monosyllabically; he
was evidently confused both by his bashfulness and his greed. That he
was fearfully glad over the possibility of selling the books, and that
he had conceived the notion of not parting with them at a cheap price,
was apparent from his very first words, from that awkward hastiness
with which he announced that books such as those in his possession
could not be gotten for any amount of money. Through the half-dark
entry, which was spread with straw rusty from dampness, he led Ivlev
into a large ante-room.
“So this is where your father lived?” asked Ivlev, entering and taking
off his hat.
“Yes, yes,--here,” the young man hastened to answer. “That is, of
course, not just here ... for they used to sit in the bedroom most of
all ... but, of course, they came here also....”
“Yes, I know,--for he was ill,” said Ivlev.
The young man flared up.
“That is, ill in what way?” he said, and manlier notes sounded in his
voice. “That’s all gossip; he was not at all ailing mentally.... he
simply read all the time, and did not go out anywhere, that is all....
But no, don’t you take your hat off, please,--it’s very cold here, for
we don’t live in this half of the building....”
True, it was far chillier in the house than it was out in the air. In
the dismal ante-room, its walls pasted with newspapers, upon the sill
of a window, dismal from the storm clouds, was standing a quail cage
made out of bast. A little gray bag was hopping over the floor of its
own volition. Bending down, the young man captured it and put it down
on a bench, and Ivlev understood that there was a quail imprisoned in
the little bag. They next entered the parlour. This room, with its
windows toward the west and toward the north, took up almost half the
entire house. Through one window, against the gold of the evening glow
that showed through the clearing clouds, could be seen a century-old
weeping birch tree, all black; through the remaining window, a tall,
withering acacia tree. The front corner was taken up by a shrine
without glass, with images standing and hanging within it; among them
stood out, both by its great size and its antiquity, one trimmed with
silver, and upon this image, their wax gleaming yellow like dead flesh,
were lying wedding candles tied with pale-green bows.
“Pardon me, please,” Ivlev was about to ask, overcoming his scruples,
“but, did your father really....”
“No, that’s just so,” mumbled the young man, instantly grasping his
meaning. “He bought these candles after her death already.... And he
even wore a wedding ring all the time.”
The furniture in this parlour was crude. But then, in the spaces
between the windows stood exquisite what-nots, crowded from top to
bottom with porcelain knick-knacks, crystal, tea china, and goblets
rimmed with gold. As for the floor, it was entirely strewn over with
dead bees, that crackled under foot. The empty parlour, as well,
was strewed with the bees. Having traversed it, and also some other
sombre room with a sleeping ledge built against the side of a stove,
the young man came to a stop before a low little door and took a big
key out of his trousers’-pocket. Having turned it with difficulty in
the rusty key-hole, he threw open the door, mumbling something,--and
Ivlev saw a cubby-hole with two windows: against one wall stood a bare
iron cot without any bedding; against another--two little bookcases of
bird’s-eye birch.
“So this is the library?” asked Ivlev, walking up to one of these.
And the young man, having hastened to answer in the affirmative,
helped him to open the little book-case, and began to follow his hands
covetously.
The strangest of books did this library consist of! Ivlev would open
the thick bindings, would turn over a rough, gray page, and would read:
_The Forbidden Ground_.... _The Morning Star and Fight Dæmons_....
_Reflections on the Mysteries of Creation_.... _A Marvellous Journey
into a Magick Region_.... _The Latest Dream Book_.... And yet his hands
would persist in trembling slightly. So this was what that lonely
soul, which had secluded itself forever from the world in this little
room and had but lately quitted it, had nurtured itself upon? ... But
perhaps this soul had not really been insane, after all?
“‘There is a state....’” The lines of Baratynsky came into Ivlev’s mind:
There is a state,--
But what name shall it be given?
’Tis neither dream nor waking, wavering twixt both;
And comprehending it within him, man
To frenzy’s verge is driven....
It had cleared up in the west; gold was peeping out from behind the
beautiful lavender-coloured clouds and strangely illumined this humble
sanctuary of love,--a love beyond understanding, which had transformed
into some ecstatic existence a whole life that perhaps was destined
to be a most commonplace one had there not happened to be a certain
Lushka, mysterious in her enchantment....
Taking a little foot-stool from under the cot, Ivlev sat down before
the cabinet and took out his cigarettes, imperceptibly scrutinizing and
memorizing the room.
“Do you smoke?” he asked the young man who was bending over him.
The latter again blushed. “I do,” he mumbled, and tried to smile. “That
is, I don’t exactly smoke,--rather, I try to jolly myself.... But,
however, if I may,--very much obliged to you....”
And, having clumsily taken a cigarette, he lit it with his hands
trembling, walked over to the window-sill and sat down upon it, barring
out the yellow light of the evening glow.
“And what is this?” asked Ivlev, bending down to the third shelf, upon
which lay only a single volume, very small, resembling a prayer-book,
and where also stood a casket whose corners were trimmed with silver,
grown black with time.
“That’s just ... the necklace of my late mother,” answered the young
man, after a confused hesitation, but trying to speak negligently.
“May I have a look?”
“If you please ... although it really is very simple ... it won’t
interest you....”
And opening the casket, Ivlev saw a much worn bit of cord, a string of
very cheap little round blue globules, resembling stone ones. And such
emotion possessed him upon glancing at these globules, which had at one
time lain upon the neck of her whose lot it was to be so beloved, and
whose dim image could no longer be anything but beautiful, that his
eyes grew dim from the beating of his heart.... Having looked his fill,
Ivlev carefully put the casket back in its place; he then took up the
little book. This was a tiny, beautifully made _Grammar of Love, or the
Art of Loving and of Being Loved in Return_, published almost a hundred
years ago.
“This book, to my regret, I cannot sell,” said the young man with
difficulty. “It’s very valuable.... He even put it under his pillow.”
“But perhaps you will let me have just a look at it?” said Ivlev.
“If you please,” said the young man in a whisper.
And, overcoming his compunctions, vaguely oppressed by the young man’s
gaze, Ivlev began slowly turning the leaves of _The Grammar of Love_.
It was all divided into short chapters: _Of Beauty_, _Of the Heart_,
_Of the Mind_, _Of Deportment_, _Of Love’s Signs_, _Of Attack and
Defense_, _Of Falling Out and Reconciliation_, _Of Platonic Love_....
Each chapter consisted of very brief, elegant, at times very subtle,
sentences, and some of them were very lightly marked by a pen in red
ink. “Love is not a mere episode in our Life,” Ivlev read. “Our Reason
contradicts the Heart and doth not convince the latter.” “Women are
never so strong as when they arm themselves with Weakness.” “We adore
Woman because she holds sovereign sway over our Ideal Dream.” “Vanity
chooses; True Love,--never.” “A Woman of Beauty must take second place;
the first belongs to the Woman of Charm. It is the latter that becomes
the Sovereign of our Heart: before we have rendered our Heart an
account of Her, our Heart becomes a Captive to Love for Eternity....”
Then followed _An Explanation of the Language of Flowers_, and again
here and there were marked passages:
_Wild Poppy_--Sadness.
_Priest’s Cap_--Thy alluring beauty is imprinted on my heart.
_Periwinkle_--Sweet Remembrances.
_The Mournful Geranium_--Melancholy.
_Worm-wood_--Eternal Bitterness.
While upon a blank page at the very end, in tiny, bead-like characters,
was a stanza of eight lines, written in the same ink. The young man
stretched out his neck as he peeped into _The Grammar of Love_, and
said with a forced smile:
“He wrote that himself.”
Half an hour later, Ivlev bade him good-bye with relief. Out of all
the books he had bought only this small volume at a high price. The
turbidly-golden evening glow was fading in the clouds beyond the
fields, yellowly reflected in the puddles; the fields were wet and
green. The lad was not in any hurry, but Ivlev did not spur him on.
The young fellow was saying that that woman who had been driving the
turkey hens through the burdocks before was the deacon’s wife; that
young Khvoshchinsky has been living with her for a long time now, that
he already has children. Ivlev was not listening. He was constantly
thinking of Lushka; of her necklace, which had left a complex feeling
within him, resembling that which he had once experienced in a little
Italian town upon beholding the relics of a female saint. “She has come
into my life forever!” he reflected. And, taking _The Grammar of Love_
out of his pocket, he slowly read over, by the light of the evening
glow, the verses written upon its last page:
We were assigned a thorny wreath
In this world, where all evils be;
The love I bore was unto death,--
It died with me.
But--“Live thou in legends of Love’s bliss!”
Shall greet it hearts that with Love strove;
And to their grandchildren shall show this
_Grammar of Love_.
_1915._
A NIGHT CONVERSATION
I
The sky had been silvery with stars all night long, the fields
beyond the garden and the threshing floor was darkling evenly, and
the wind-mill, with the two horns of its wings, showed sharply black
against the clear horizon. But the stars gave out sparks, trembling,
frequently cutting the sky with narrow green streaks; the garden was
fitfully murmurous, and already chill autumn could be heard in its
murmurings. From the direction of the mill, from the sloping plain,
from the desolated stubble-field, a strong wind was blowing.
The farm hands had sated themselves at supper,--it was the holiday of
the Assumption of the Holy Virgin,--and had avidly smoked their fill on
their way through the garden to the threshing barn. Having thrown on
their long great coats, tight at the waist, and falling in folds over
their short sheepskin coats, they were going there to sleep, to guard
the heaps of grain. Following behind the farm hands, dragging a pillow,
walked the master’s son, a tall high-school student, with three white
_borzoi_ hounds running at his heels. Upon the threshing floor, in the
fresh wind, there was a pleasant smell of chaff, of new rye straw.
They all lay down comfortably in it, in the very biggest stack of all,
as near as possible to the piles of grain and the corn kiln. The dogs
fussed about, rustled for a while at the feet of the workers, and also
quieted down.
Over the heads of the recumbent men the broad Milky Way, dividing into
two smokily-translucent branches, glimmered whitely and faintly, filled
with the fine star dust suspended within them. It was quiet and warm in
the straw. But a north-east wind, again and again, ran disquietingly
through the brushwood that was darkling along the ditch to the left,
with its rampart of earth; and increasing, it neared with an inimical
noise. Then a cool breath would reach the face, the hands, together
with a bad odour from the lanes between the heaps of grain. And over
the horizon, beyond the irregular black blotches of the brushwood, icy
diamonds vividly flared up; the Capella was bursting into vari-coloured
fires.
Having settled down, they all shut their eyes, after a yawning spell.
The wind was dreamily rustling the prickling straws that stuck out
above their heads. But its coolness reached their faces, and they all
felt that they did not want to sleep as yet,--they had slept their
fill after dinner. The high-school student alone was languishing from
a sweet longing for sleep. But the fleas would not let him sleep. He
started scratching, let his thoughts run on wenches, on the widow
through whom he, with the help of the farm hand Pashka, had lost his
innocence that very summer, and he also became broad awake.
This student was a thin, awkward stripling with an unusually soft
colouring--his face was so white that even sunburn had no effect upon
it; he was blue-eyed, with outrageously big hands and feet, with a
big Adam’s-apple. He had not parted company with the farm hands all
summer,--at first he had carted manure, then the sheaves; he put in
order the piles of grain, he smoked an atrocious cheap tobacco, he
imitated the _moujiks_ in speech and in his roughness with wenches, who
always started laughing at him in chorus, greeting him with catcalls
and cries of “Veretenkin! Veretenkin!”[7]--a stupid nickname invented
by Ivan, who was a helper at the threshing machine. He passed his
nights now at the threshing floor, now in the horse stable; he did not
change his linen and his canvas clothes for weeks at a time, nor would
he take off his tarred boots; he raised blood-blisters on his feet,
unaccustomed to coarse foot-cloths; he lost all the buttons on his
summer uniform overcoat, which had been soiled by wheels and manure,
had broken the letters and the little silver leaves on his uniform cap.
[7] “Spindle-Shanks! Spindle-Shanks!” _Trans._