I
A regiment of cuirassiers was quartered in 1829 in the village of
Kirilovo, in the K--- province. That village, with its huts and
hay-stacks, its green hemp-patches, and gaunt willows, looked from a
distance like an island in a boundless sea of ploughed, black-earth
fields. In the middle of the village was a small pond, invariably
covered with goose feathers, with muddy, indented banks; a hundred paces
from the pond, on the other side of the road, rose the wooden
manor-house, long, empty, and mournfully slanting on one side. Behind
the house stretched the deserted garden; in the garden grew old
apple-trees that bore no fruit, and tall birch-trees, full of rooks'
nests. At the end of the principal garden-walk, in a little house, once
the bath-house, lived a decrepit old steward. Every morning, gasping and
groaning, he would, from years of habit, drag himself across the garden
to the seignorial apartments, though there was nothing to take care of
in them except a dozen white arm-chairs, upholstered in faded stuff, two
podgy chests on carved legs with copper handles, four pictures with
holes in them, and one black alabaster Arab with a broken nose. The
owner of the house, a careless young man, lived partly at Petersburg,
partly abroad, and had completely forgotten his estate. It had come to
him eight years before, from a very old uncle, once noted all over the
countryside for his excellent liqueurs. The empty, dark-green bottles
are to this day lying about in the storeroom, in company with rubbish of
all sorts, old manuscript books in parti-coloured covers, scantily
filled with writing, old-fashioned glass lustres, a nobleman's uniform
of the Catherine period, a rusty sabre with a steel handle and so forth.
In one of the lodges of the great house the colonel himself took up his
abode. He was a married man, tall, sparing of his words, grim and
sleepy. In another lodge lived the regimental adjutant, an emotional
person of fine sentiments and many perfumes, fond of flowers and female
society. The social life of the officers of this regiment did not differ
from any other kind of society. Among their number were good people and
bad, clever and silly.... One of them, a certain Avdey Ivanovitch
Lutchkov, staff captain, had a reputation as a duellist. Lutchkov was a
short and not thick-set man; he had a small, yellowish, dry face, lank,
black hair, unnoticeable features, and dark, little eyes. He had early
been left an orphan, and had grown up among privations and hardships.
For weeks together he would be quiet enough,... and then all at once--as
though he were possessed by some devil--he would let no one alone,
annoying everybody, staring every one insolently in the face; trying, in
fact, to pick a quarrel. Avdey Ivanovitch did not, however, hold aloof
from intercourse with his comrades, but he was not on intimate terms
with any one but the perfumed adjutant. He did not play cards, and did
not drink spirits.
In the May of 1829, not long before the beginning of the manoeuvres,
there joined the regiment a young cornet, Fyodor Fedorovitch Kister, a
Russian nobleman of German extraction, very fair-haired and very modest,
cultivated and well read. He had lived up to his twentieth year in the
home of his fathers, under the wings of his mother, his grandmother, and
his two aunts. He was going into the army in deference solely to the
wishes of his grandmother, who even in her old age could not see a white
plumed helmet without emotion.... He served with no special enthusiasm
but with energy, as it were conscientiously doing his duty. He was not a
dandy, but was always cleanly dressed and in good taste. On the day of
his arrival Fyodor Fedoritch paid his respects to his superior officers,
and then proceeded to arrange his quarters. He had brought with him some
cheap furniture, rugs, shelves, and so forth. He papered all the walls
and the doors, put up some screens, had the yard cleaned, fixed up a
stable, and a kitchen, even arranged a place for a bath.... For a whole
week he was busily at work; but it was a pleasure afterwards to go into
his room. Before the window stood a neat table, covered with various
little things; in one corner was a set of shelves for books, with busts
of Schiller and Goethe; on the walls hung maps, four Grevedon heads, and
guns; near the table was an elegant row of pipes with clean mouthpieces;
there was a rug in the outer room; all the doors shut and locked; the
windows were hung with curtains. Everything in Fyodor Fedoritch's room
had a look of cleanliness and order.
It was quite a different thing in his comrades' quarters. Often one
could scarcely make one's way across the muddy yard; in the outer room,
behind a canvas screen, with its covering peeling off it, would lie
stretched the snoring orderly; on the floor rotten straw; on the stove,
boots and a broken jam-pot full of blacking; in the room itself a warped
card-table, marked with chalk; on the table, glasses, half-full of cold,
dark-brown tea; against the wall, a wide, rickety, greasy sofa; on the
window-sills, tobacco-ash.... In a podgy, clumsy arm-chair one would
find the master of the place in a grass-green dressing-gown with crimson
plush facings and an embroidered smoking-cap of Asiatic extraction, and
a hideously fat, unpleasant dog in a stinking brass collar would be
snoring at his side.... All the doors always ajar....
Fyodor Fedoritch made a favourable impression on his new comrades. They
liked him for his good-nature, modesty, warm-heartedness, and natural
inclination for everything beautiful, for everything, in fact, which in
another officer they might, very likely, have thought out of place. They
called Kister a young lady, and were kind and gentle in their manners
with him. Avdey Ivanovitch was the only one who eyed him dubiously. One
day after drill Lutchkov went up to him, slightly pursing up his lips
and inflating his nostrils:
'Good-morning, Mr. Knaster.'
Kister looked at him in some perplexity.
'A very good day to you, Mr. Knaster,' repeated Lutchkov.
'My name's Kister, sir.'
'You don't say so, Mr. Knaster.'
Fyodor Fedoritch turned his back on him and went homewards. Lutchkov
looked after him with a grin.
Next day, directly after drill he went up to Kister again.
'Well, how are you getting on, Mr. Kinderbalsam?'
Kister was angry, and looked him straight in the face. Avdey
Ivanovitch's little bilious eyes were gleaming with malignant glee.
'I'm addressing you, Mr. Kinderbalsam!'
'Sir,' Fyodor Fedoritch replied, 'I consider your joke stupid and
ill-bred--do you hear?--stupid and ill-bred.'
'When shall we fight?' Lutchkov responded composedly.
'When you like,... to-morrow.'
Next morning they fought a duel. Lutchkov wounded Kister slightly, and
to the extreme astonishment of the seconds went up to the wounded man,
took him by the hand and begged his pardon. Kister had to keep indoors
for a fortnight. Avdey Ivanovitch came several times to ask after him
and on Fyodor Fedoritch's recovery made friends with him. Whether he was
pleased by the young officer's pluck, or whether a feeling akin to
remorse was roused in his soul--it's hard to say... but from the time of
his duel with Kister, Avdey Ivanovitch scarcely left his side, and
called him first Fyodor, and afterwards simply Fedya. In his presence he
became quite another man and--strange to say!--the change was not in his
favour. It did not suit him to be gentle and soft. Sympathy he could not
call forth in any one anyhow; such was his destiny! He belonged to that
class of persons to whom has somehow been granted the privilege of
authority over others; but nature had denied him the gifts essential for
the justification of such a privilege. Having received no education, not
being distinguished by intelligence, he ought not to have revealed
himself; possibly his malignancy had its origin in his consciousness of
the defects of his bringing up, in the desire to conceal himself
altogether under one unchanging mask. Avdey Ivanovitch had at first
forced himself to despise people, then he began to notice that it was
not a difficult matter to intimidate them, and he began to despise them
in reality. Lutchkov enjoyed cutting short by his very approach all but
the most vulgar conversation. 'I know nothing, and have learned nothing,
and I have no talents,' he said to himself; 'and so you too shall know
nothing and not show off your talents before me....' Kister, perhaps,
had made Lutchkov abandon the part he had taken up--just because before
his acquaintance with him, the bully had never met any one genuinely
idealistic, that is to say, unselfishly and simple-heartedly absorbed in
dreams, and so, indulgent to others, and not full of himself.
Avdey Ivanovitch would come sometimes to Kister, light a pipe and
quietly sit down in an arm-chair. Lutchkov was not in Kister's company
abashed by his own ignorance; he relied--and with good reason--on his
German modesty.
'Well,' he would begin, 'what did you do yesterday? Been reading, I'll
bet, eh?'
'Yes, I read....'
'Well, and what did you read? Come, tell away, old man, tell away.'
Avdey Ivanovitch kept up his bantering tone to the end.
'I read Kleist's _Idyll_. Ah, what a fine thing it is! If you don't
mind, I'll translate you a few lines....' And Kister translated with
fervour, while Lutchkov, wrinkling up his forehead and compressing his
lips, listened attentively.... 'Yes, yes,' he would repeat hurriedly,
with a disagreeable smile,'it's fine... very fine... I remember, I've
read it... very fine.'
'Tell me, please,' he added affectedly, and as it were reluctantly,
'what's your view of Louis the Fourteenth?'
And Kister would proceed to discourse upon Louis the Fourteenth, while
Lutchkov listened, totally failing to understand a great deal,
misunderstanding a part... and at last venturing to make a remark....
This threw him into a cold sweat; 'now, if I'm making a fool of myself,'
he thought. And as a fact he often did make a fool of himself. But
Kister was never off-hand in his replies; the good-hearted youth was
inwardly rejoicing that, as he thought, the desire for enlightenment was
awakened in a fellow-creature. Alas! it was from no desire for
enlightenment that Avdey Ivanovitch questioned Kister; God knows why he
did! Possibly he wished to ascertain for himself what sort of head he,
Lutchkov, had, whether it was really dull, or simply untrained. 'So I
really am stupid,' he said to himself more than once with a bitter
smile; and he would draw himself up instantly and look rudely and
insolently about him, and smile malignantly to himself if he caught some
comrade dropping his eyes before his glance. 'All right, my man, you're
so learned and well educated,...' he would mutter between his teeth.
'I'll show you... that's all....'
The officers did not long discuss the sudden friendship of Kister and
Lutchkov; they were used to the duellist's queer ways. 'The devil's made
friends with the baby,' they said.... Kister was warm in his praises of
his friend on all hands; no one disputed his opinion, because they were
afraid of Lutchkov; Lutchkov himself never mentioned Kister's name
before the others, but he dropped his intimacy with the perfumed
adjutant.