Early in April in the year 1870, my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow
of a lieutenant, received a letter from her brother Ivan, a privy
councillor in St. Petersburg. Among other things the letter said:
“An affection of the liver obliges me to spend every summer abroad, but
as I have no funds this year with which to go to Marienbad, it is very
probable that I may spend the coming summer with you at Kotchneffka,
dear sister——”
My mother turned pale and trembled from head to foot as she perused this
epistle, and an expression both smiling and tearful came into her face.
She began to weep and to laugh. This conflict between laughter and tears
always reminds me of the glitter and shimmer that follow when water is
spilled on a brightly burning candle. Having read the letter through
twice, my mother summoned her whole household together, and in a voice
quivering with excitement began explaining to them that there had been
four brothers in the Gundasoff family; one had died when he was a baby;
a second had been a soldier, and had also died; a third, she meant no
offence to him in saying it, had become an actor, and a fourth——
“The fourth brother is not of our world,” sobbed my mother. “He is my
own brother, we grew up together, and yet I am trembling all over at the
thought of him. He is a privy councillor, a general! How can I meet my
darling? What can a poor, uneducated woman like me find to talk to him
about? It is fifteen years since I saw him last. Andrusha, darling!”
cried my mother turning to me. “Rejoice little stupid, it is for your
sake that God is sending him here!”
When we had all heard the history of the Gundasoff family down to the
smallest detail, there arose an uproar on the farm such as I had not
been accustomed to hearing except before weddings. Only the vault of
heaven, and the water in the river escaped; everything else was
subjected to a process of cleaning, scrubbing, and painting. If the sky
had been smaller and lower, and the river had not been so swift, they
too would have been scalded with boiling water and polished with cloths.
The walls were white as snow already, but they were whitewashed again.
The floors shone and glistened, but they were scrubbed every day.
Bobtail, the cat (so-called because I had chopped off a good portion of
his tail with a carving-knife when I was a baby), was taken from the
house into the kitchen and put in charge of Anfisa. Fedia was told that
if the dogs came anywhere near the front porch, “God would punish him.”
But nothing caught it so cruelly as did the unfortunate sofas and
carpets and chairs! Never before had they been so unmercifully beaten
with sticks as they now were in expectation of our guest’s arrival.
Hearing the blows, my doves fluttered anxiously about, and at last flew
away straight up into the very sky.
From Novostroevka came Spiridon, the only tailor in the district who
ventured to sew for the gentry. He was a sober, hard-working,
intelligent man, not without some imagination and feeling for the
plastic arts, but he sewed abominably nevertheless. His doubts always
spoiled everything, for the idea that his clothes were not fashionable
enough made him cut everything over five times at least. He used to go
all the way to the city on foot on purpose to see how the young dandies
were dressed, and then decked us in costumes that even a caricaturist
would have called an exaggeration and a joke. We sported impossibly
tight trousers, and coats so short that we always felt embarrassed
whenever any young ladies were present.
Spiridon slowly took my measurements. He measured me lengthways and
crossways as if he were going to fit me with barrel hoops, then wrote at
length upon a sheet of paper with a very thick pencil, and at last
marked his yardstick from end to end with little triangular notches.
Having finished with me, he began upon my tutor Gregory Pobedimski. This
unforgettable tutor of mine was just at the age when men anxiously watch
the growth of their moustaches, and are critical about their attire, so
that you may imagine with what holy terror Spiridon approached his
person! Pobedimski was made to throw his head back, and spread himself
apart like a V upside down, now raising, now lowering his arms. Spiridon
measured him several times, circling about him as a love-sick pigeon
circles about his mate; then he fell down on one knee, and bent himself
into the form of a hook. My mother, weary and worn with all this bustle
and faint from the heat of her irons in the laundry, said as she watched
all these endless proceedings:
“Take care, Spiridon, God will call you to account if you spoil the
cloth! And you will be an unlucky man if you don’t hit the mark this
time!”
My mother’s words first threw Spiridon into a sweat and then into a
fever, for he was very sure that he would not hit the mark. He asked one
rouble and twenty copecks for making my suit, and two roubles for making
my tutor’s. The cloth, the buttons, and the linings were supplied by us.
This cannot but seem cheap enough, especially when you consider that
Novostroevka was six miles away, and that he came to try on the clothes
four different times. At these fittings, as we pulled on our tight
trousers and coats all streaked with white basting threads, my mother
would look at our clothes, knit her brows with dissatisfaction and
exclaim:
“Goodness knows we have queer fashions these days! I am almost ashamed
to look at you! If my brother did not live in St. Petersburg I declare I
wouldn’t have you dressed in the fashion!”
Spiridon, delighted that the fashions and not he were catching the
blame, would shrug his shoulders, and sigh, as much as to say:
“There is nothing to be done about it; it is the spirit of the times!”
The trepidation with which we awaited the arrival of our guest can only
be compared to the excitement that prevails among spiritualists when
they are awaiting the appearance of a spirit. My mother had a headache,
and burst into tears every minute. I lost my appetite and my sleep, and
did not study my lessons. Even in my dreams I was devoured by my longing
to see a general, a man with epaulettes, an embroidered collar reaching
to his ears, and a naked sword in his hand; in short, a person exactly
like the general I saw hanging over the sofa in our drawing-room glaring
so balefully with his terrible black eyes at any one who ventured to
look at him. Pobedimski alone felt at ease. He neither trembled nor
rejoiced, and all he said as he listened to my mother’s stories of the
Gundasoff family was:
“Yes, it will be pleasant to talk with somebody new.”
My tutor was considered a very exceptional person on our farm. He was a
young man of twenty or thereabouts, pimply, ragged, with a low forehead,
and an uncommonly long nose. In fact, this nose of his was so long that
if he wanted to look at anything closely he had to put his head on one
side like a bird. He had gone through the six grades of the high-school,
and had then entered the Veterinary College, from which he had been
expelled in less than six months. By carefully concealing the reason of
his expulsion, my tutor gave every one who wished it an opportunity for
considering him a much-enduring and rather mysterious person. He talked
little, and when he did it was always on learned subjects; he ate meat
on fast-days, and looked upon the life about him in a high and mighty,
contemptuous fashion, which, however, did not prevent him from accepting
presents from my mother in the shape of suits of clothes, or from
painting funny faces with red teeth on my kites. My mother did not like
him on account of his “pride,” but she had a deep respect for his
learning.
We had not long to wait for our guest. Early in May two wagons piled
with huge trunks arrived from the station. These trunks looked so
majestic that the coachman unconsciously took off his hat as he unloaded
them from the wagons.
“They must be full of uniforms and gunpowder!” thought I.
Why gunpowder? Probably because in my mind the idea of a general was
closely connected with powder and cannon.
When my nurse woke me on the morning of the tenth of May, she announced
in a whisper that my “uncle had come!” I dressed hastily, washing anyhow
and forgetting my prayers, and scampered out of my room. In the hall I
ran straight into a tall, stout gentleman with fashionable side-whiskers
and an elegant overcoat. Swooning with horror, I drew myself up before
him, and remembering the ceremonial taught me by my mother, I bowed
deeply and attempted to kiss his hand. But the gentleman would not give
me his hand to kiss, and stated that he was not my uncle, but only
Peter, my uncle’s valet. The sight of this Peter, dressed a great deal
better than Pobedimski and myself, filled me with the profoundest
astonishment which, to tell the truth, has not left me to this day. Is
it possible that such grave, respectable men as he, with such stern,
intelligent faces can be servants? Why should they be?
Peter told me that my uncle and mother were in the garden, and I rushed
thither as fast as my legs could carry me.
Not knowing the history of the Gundasoff family and my uncle’s rank,
Nature felt a great deal freer and less constrained than I did. There
was an activity in the garden such as one only sees at a country fair.
Countless magpies were cleaving the air and hopping along the garden
paths, chasing the mayflies with noisy cries. A flock of crows was
swarming in the lilac bushes that thrust their delicate, fragrant
blossoms into my very face. From all sides came the songs of orioles and
the pipings of finches and blackbirds. At any other time I should have
darted off after the grasshoppers or thrown stones at a crow that was
sitting on a low haycock under a wasp’s nest turning its blunt bill from
side to side. But this was no time for play. My heart was hammering and
shivers were running up and down my back. I was about to see a man with
epaulettes, a naked sword, and terrible eyes!
Imagine, then, my disappointment! A slender little dandy in a white silk
shirt and a white military cap was walking through the garden at my
mother’s side. Every now and then he would run on ahead and, with his
hands in his pockets and his head thrown back, he looked like quite a
young man. There was so much life and vivacity in his whole figure that
the treachery of old age only became apparent to me as I approached from
behind, and, peeping under his cap, saw the white hairs glistening
beneath the brim. Instead of a stolid, autocratic gravity I saw in him
an almost boyish nimbleness, and instead of a collar to the ears he wore
an ordinary light blue necktie. My mother and uncle were walking up and
down the path, chatting together. I crept up softly from behind and
waited for one of them to turn round and see me.
“What an enchanting place you have here, Klavdia!” my uncle exclaimed.
“How sweet and lovely it all is! If I had known how beautiful it was
nothing could have taken me abroad all these years!”
My uncle stooped abruptly, and put his nose to a tulip. Everything he
saw was a source of curiosity and delight to him, as if he had never
seen a garden, or a sunny day before in his life. The strange little man
moved as if on springs and chattered incessantly, not giving my mother a
chance to put in a word. All at once Pobedimski stepped out from behind
an elder bush at a turn of the path. His appearance was so unexpected
that my uncle started and fell back a step. My tutor was dressed in his
gala overcoat with a cape, in which he looked exactly like a windmill,
especially from behind. His mien was majestic and triumphant. With his
hat held close to his chest in Spanish fashion he took a step toward my
uncle, and bowed forward and slightly sideways like a marquis in a
melodrama.
“I have the honour to present myself to your worshipful highness,” he
said in a loud voice. “I am a pedagogue, the instructor of your nephew,
and a former student at the Veterinary College. My name is Gregory
Pobedimski, Esquire.”
My tutor’s beautiful manners pleased my mother immensely. She smiled and
fluttered with the sweet expectation of his next brilliant sally, but my
tutor was waiting for my uncle to respond to his lofty bearing with
something equally lofty, and thought that two fingers would be offered
him with a “h’m—” befitting a general. In consequence, he lost all his
presence of mind and was completely embarrassed when my uncle smiled
cordially and heartily pressed his hand. Murmuring some incoherent
phrases, my tutor coughed and retired.
“Ha! Ha! Isn’t that beautiful?” laughed my uncle. “Look at him. He has
put on his wings, and is thinking what a clever fellow he is! I like
that, upon my word and honour, I do! What youthful aplomb, what life
there is in those silly wings! And who is this boy?” he asked, suddenly
turning round and catching sight of me.
“This is my little Andrusha,” said my mother blushing. “The comfort of
my life.”