We happened once to go into the hut of a peasant-woman who had just lost
her only, passionately loved son, and to our considerable astonishment
we found her perfectly calm, almost cheerful. ‘Let her be,’ said her
husband, to whom probably our astonishment was apparent, ‘she is gone
numb now.’ And Litvinov had in the same way ‘gone numb.’ The same sort
of calm came over him during the first few hours of the journey. Utterly
crushed, hopelessly wretched as he was, still he was at rest, at rest
after the agonies and sufferings of the last few weeks, after all the
blows which had fallen one after another upon his head. They had been
the more shattering for him that he was little fitted by nature for such
tempests. Now he really hoped for nothing, and tried not to remember,
above all not to remember. He was going to Russia ... he had to go
somewhere; but he was making no kind of plans regarding his own
personality. He did not recognise himself, he did not comprehend his
own actions, he had positively lost his real identity, and, in fact, he
took very little interest in his own identity. Sometimes it seemed to
him that he was taking his own corpse home, and only the bitter spasms
of irremediable spiritual pain passing over him from time to time
brought him back to a sense of still being alive. At times it struck him
as incomprehensible that a man--a man!--could let a woman, let love,
have such power over him ... ‘Ignominious weakness!’ he muttered, and
shook back his cloak, and sat up more squarely; as though to say, the
past is over, let’s begin fresh ... a moment, and he could only smile
bitterly and wonder at himself. He fell to looking out of the window. It
was grey and damp; there was no rain, but the fog still hung about; and
low clouds trailed across the sky. The wind blew facing the train;
whitish clouds of steam, some singly, others mingled with other darker
clouds of smoke, whirled in endless file past the window at which
Litvinov was sitting. He began to watch this steam, this smoke.
Incessantly mounting, rising and falling, twisting and hooking on to the
grass, to the bushes as though in sportive antics, lengthening out, and
hiding away, clouds upon clouds flew by ... they were for ever changing
and stayed still the same in their monotonous, hurrying, wearisome
sport! Sometimes the wind changed, the line bent to right or left, and
suddenly the whole mass vanished, and at once reappeared at the opposite
window; then again the huge tail was flung out, and again it veiled
Litvinov’s view of the vast plain of the Rhine. He gazed and gazed, and
a strange reverie came over him.... He was alone in the compartment;
there was no one to disturb him. ‘Smoke, smoke,’ he repeated several
times; and suddenly it all seemed as smoke to him, everything, his own
life, Russian life--everything human, especially everything Russian. All
smoke and steam, he thought; all seems for ever changing, on all sides
new forms, phantoms flying after phantoms, while in reality it is all
the same and the same again; everything hurrying, flying towards
something, and everything vanishing without a trace, attaining to
nothing; another wind blows, and all is dashing in the opposite
direction, and there again the same untiring, restless--and useless
gambols! He remembered much that had taken place with clamour and
flourish before his eyes in the last few years ... ‘Smoke,’ he
whispered, ‘smoke’; he remembered the hot disputes, the wrangling, the
clamour at Gubaryov’s, and in other sets of men, of high and low
degree, advanced and reactionist, old and young ... ‘Smoke,’ he
repeated, ‘smoke and steam’; he remembered, too, the fashionable picnic,
and he remembered various opinions and speeches of other political
personages--even all Potugin’s sermonising ... ‘Smoke, smoke, nothing
but smoke.’ And what of his own struggles and passions and agonies and
dreams? He could only reply with a gesture of despair.
And meanwhile the train dashed on and on; by now Rastadt, Carlsruhe, and
Bruchsal had long been left far behind; the mountains on the right side
of the line swerved aside, retreated into the distance, then moved up
again, but not so high, and more thinly covered with trees.... The train
made a sharp turn ... and there was Heidelberg. The carriage rolled in
under the cover of the station; there was the shouting of
newspaper-boys, selling papers of all sorts, even Russian; passengers
began bustling in their seats, getting out on to the platform, but
Litvinov did not leave his corner, and still sat on with downcast head.
Suddenly some one called him by name; he raised his eyes; Bindasov’s
ugly phiz was thrust in at the window; and behind him--or was he
dreaming, no, it was really so--all the familiar Baden faces; there was
Madame Suhantchikov, there was Voroshilov, and Bambaev too; they all
rushed up to him, while Bindasov bellowed:
‘But where’s Pishtchalkin? We were expecting him; but it’s all the same,
hop out, and we’ll be off to Gubaryov’s.’
‘Yes, my boy, yes, Gubaryov’s expecting us,’ Bambaev confirmed, making
way for him, ‘hop out.’
Litvinov would have flown into a rage, but for a dead load lying on his
heart. He glanced at Bindasov and turned away without speaking.
‘I tell you Gubaryov’s here,’ shrieked Madame Suhantchikov, her eyes
fairly starting out of her head.
Litvinov did not stir a muscle.
‘Come, do listen, Litvinov,’ Bambaev began at last, ‘there’s not only
Gubaryov here, there’s a whole phalanx here of the most splendid, most
intellectual young fellows, Russians--and all studying the natural
sciences, all of the noblest convictions! Really you must stop here, if
it’s only for them. Here, for instance, there’s a certain ... there,
I’ve forgotten his surname, but he’s a genius! simply!’
‘Oh, let him be, let him be, Rostislav Ardalionovitch,’ interposed
Madame Suhantchikov, ‘let him be! You see what sort of a fellow he is;
and all his family are the same. He has an aunt; at first she struck me
as a sensible woman, but the day before yesterday I went to see her
here--she had only just before gone to Baden and was back here again
before you could look round--well, I went to see her; began questioning
her.... Would you believe me, I couldn’t get a word out of the stuck-up
thing. Horrid aristocrat!’
Poor Kapitolina Markovna an aristocrat! Could she ever have anticipated
such a humiliation?
But Litvinov still held his peace, turned away, and pulled his cap over
his eyes. The train started at last.
‘Well, say something at parting at least, you stonyhearted man!’ shouted
Bambaev, ‘this is really too much!’
‘Rotten milksop!’ yelled Bindasov. The carriages were moving more and
more rapidly, and he could vent his abuse with impunity. ‘Niggardly
stick-in-the-mud.’
Whether Bindasov invented this last appellation on the spot, or whether
it had come to him second-hand, it apparently gave great satisfaction to
two of the noble young fellows studying natural science, who happened to
be standing by, for only a few days later it appeared in the Russian
periodical sheet, published at that time at Heidelberg under the title:
_A tout venant je crache!_[2] or, ‘We don’t care a hang for anybody!’
Footnote 2: A historical fact.
But Litvinov repeated again, ‘Smoke, smoke, smoke! Here,’ he thought,
‘in Heidelberg now are over a hundred Russian students; they’re all
studying chemistry, physics, physiology--they won’t even hear of
anything else ... but in five or six years’ time there won’t be fifteen
at the lectures by the same celebrated professors; the wind will change,
the smoke will be blowing ... in another quarter ... smoke ...
smoke...!’[3]
Footnote 3: Litvinov’s presentiments came true. In 1866 there were
in Heidelberg thirteen Russian students entered for the summer, and
twelve for the winter session.
[Illustration: _Heidelberg._]
Towards nightfall he passed by Cassel. With the darkness intolerable
anguish pounced like a hawk upon him, and he wept, burying himself in
the corner of the carriage. For a long time his tears flowed, not easing
his heart, but torturing him with a sort of gnawing bitterness; while at
the same time, in one of the hotels of Cassel, Tatyana was lying in bed
feverishly ill.
Kapitolina Markovna was sitting beside her. ‘Tanya,’ she was saying,
‘for God’s sake, let me send a telegram to Grigory Mihalitch, do let
me, Tanya!’
‘No, aunt,’ she answered; ‘you mustn’t; don’t be frightened, give me
some water; it will soon pass.’
And a week later she did, in fact, recover, and the two friends
continued their journey.