After the lecture I sit at home and work. I read reviews,
dissertations, or prepare for the next lecture, and sometimes I write
something. I work with interruptions, since I have to receive visitors.
The bell rings. It is a friend who has come to talk over some business.
He enters with hat and stick. He holds them both in front of him and
says:
“Just a minute, a minute. Sit down, cher confrère. Only a word or two.”
First we try to show each other that we are both extraordinarily polite
and very glad to see each other. I make him sit down in the chair,
and he makes me sit down; and then we touch each other’s waists, and
put our hands on each other’s buttons, as though we were feeling each
other and afraid to burn ourselves. We both laugh, though we say nothing
funny. Sitting down, we bend our heads together and begin to whisper to
each other. We must gild our conversation with such Chinese formalities
as: “You remarked most justly” or “I have already had the occasion to
say.” We must giggle if either of us makes a pun, though it’s a bad
one. When we have finished with the business, my friend gets up with a
rush, waves his hat towards my work, and begins to take his leave. We
feel each other once more and laugh. I accompany him down to the hall.
There I help my friend on with his coat, but he emphatically declines
so great an honour. Then, when Yegor opens the door my friend assures
me that I will catch cold, and I pretend to be ready to follow him into
the street. And when I finally return to my study my face keeps smiling
still, it must be from inertia.
A little later another ring. Someone enters the hall, spends a
long time taking off his coat and coughs. Yegor brings me word
that a student has come. I tell him to show him up. In a minute a
pleasant-faced young man appears. For a year we have been on these
forced terms together. He sends in abominable answers at examinations,
and I mark him gamma. Every year I have about seven of these people
to whom, to use the students’ slang, “I give a plough” or “haul them
through.” Those of them who fail because of stupidity or illness,
usually bear their cross in patience and do not bargain with me; only
sanguine temperaments, “open natures,” bargain with me and come to my
house, people whose appetite is spoiled or who are prevented from going
regularly to the opera by a delay in their examinations. With the first
I am over-indulgent; the second kind I keep on the run for a year.
“Sit down,” I say to my guest. “What was it you wished to say?”
“Forgive me for troubling you, Professor....” he begins, stammering
and never looking me in the face. “I would not venture to trouble you
unless.... I was up for my examination before you for the fifth time
... and I failed. I implore you to be kind, and give me a ‘satis,’
because....”
The defence which all idlers make of themselves is always the same.
They have passed in every other subject with distinction, and failed
only in mine, which is all the more strange because they had always
studied my subject most diligently and know it thoroughly. They failed
through some inconceivable misunderstanding.
“Forgive me, my friend,” I say to my guest. “But I can’t give you a
‘satis’--impossible. Go and read your lectures again, and then come.
Then we’ll see.”
Pause. I get a desire to torment the student a little, because he
prefers beer and the opera to science; and I say with a sigh:
“In my opinion, the best thing for you now is to give up the Faculty of
Medicine altogether. With your abilities, if you find it impossible to
pass the examination, then it seems you have neither the desire nor the
vocation to be a doctor.”
My sanguine friend’s face grows grave.
“Excuse me, Professor,” he smiles, “but it would be strange, to say the
least, on my part. Studying medicine for five years and suddenly--to
throw it over.”
“Yes, but it’s better to waste five years than to spend your whole life
afterwards in an occupation which you dislike.”
Immediately I begin to feel sorry for him and hasten to say:
“Well, do as you please. Read a little and come again.”
“When?” the idler asks, dully.
“Whenever you like. To-morrow, even.”
And I read in his pleasant eyes. “I can come again; but you’ll send me
away again, you beast.”
“Of course,” I say, “you won’t become more learned because you have to
come up to me fifteen times for examination; but this will form your
character. You must be thankful for that.”
Silence. I rise and wait for my guest to leave. But he stands there,
looking at the window, pulling at his little beard and thinking. It
becomes tedious.
My sanguine friend has a pleasant, succulent voice, clever, amusing
eyes, a good-natured face, rather puffed by assiduity to beer and much
resting on the sofa. Evidently he could tell me many interesting things
about the opera, about his love affairs, about the friends he adores;
but, unfortunately, it is not the thing. And I would so eagerly listen!
“On my word of honour, Professor, if you give me a ‘satis’ I’ll....”
As soon as it gets to “my word of honour,” I wave my hands and sit down
to the table. The student thinks for a while and says, dejectedly:
“In that case, good-bye.... Forgive me!”
“Good-bye, my friend.... Good-bye!”
He walks irresolutely into the hall, slowly puts on his coat, and, when
he goes into the street, probably thinks again for a long while; having
excogitated nothing better than “old devil” for me, he goes to a cheap
restaurant to drink beer and dine, and then home to sleep. Peace be to
your ashes, honest labourer!
A third ring. Enters a young doctor in a new black suit, gold-rimmed
spectacles and the inevitable white necktie. He introduces himself.
I ask him to take a seat and inquire his business. The young priest
of science begins to tell me, not without agitation, that he passed
his doctor’s examination this year, and now has only to write his
dissertation. He would like to work with me, under my guidance; and
I would do him a great kindness if I would suggest a subject for his
dissertation.
“I should be delighted to be of use to you, mon cher confrère,” I
say. “But first of all, let us come to an agreement as to what is a
dissertation. Generally we understand by this, work produced as the
result of an independent creative power. Isn’t that so? But a work
written on another’s subject, under another’s guidance, has a different
name.”
The aspirant is silent. I fire up and jump out of my seat. “Why do you
all come to me? I can’t understand,” I cry out angrily. “Do I keep a
shop? I don’t sell theses across the counter. For the one thousandth
time I ask you all to leave me alone. Forgive my rudeness, but I’ve got
tired of it at last!”
The aspirant is silent. Only, a tinge of colour shows on his cheek.
His face expresses his profound respect for my famous name and my
erudition, but I see in his eyes that he despises my voice, my pitiable
figure, my nervous gestures. When I am angry I seem to him a very queer
fellow.
“I do not keep a shop,” I storm. “It’s an amazing business! Why don’t
you want to be independent? Why do you find freedom so objectionable?”
I say a great deal, but he is silent. At last by degrees I grow calm,
and, of course, surrender. The aspirant will receive a valueless
subject from me, will write under my observation a needless thesis,
will pass his tedious disputation _cum laude_ and will get a useless
and learned degree.
The rings follow in endless succession, but here I confine myself
to four. The fourth ring sounds, and I hear the familiar steps, the
rustling dress, the dear voice.
Eighteen years ago my dear friend, the oculist, died and left behind
him a seven year old daughter, Katy, and sixty thousand roubles. By
his will he made me guardian. Katy lived in my family till she was
ten. Afterwards she was sent to College and lived with me only in
her holidays in the summer months. I had no time to attend to her
education. I watched only by fits and starts; so that I can say very
little about her childhood.
The chief thing I remember, the one I love to dwell upon in memory,
is the extraordinary confidence which she had when she entered my
house, when she had to have the doctor,--a confidence which was always
shining in her darling face. She would sit in a corner somewhere
with her face tied up, and would be sure to be absorbed in watching
something. Whether she was watching me write and read books, or my wife
bustling about, or the cook peeling the potatoes in the kitchen or
the dog playing about--her eyes invariably expressed the same thing:
“Everything that goes on in this world,--everything is beautiful and
clever.” She was inquisitive and adored to talk to me. She would sit at
the table opposite me, watching my movements and asking questions. She
is interested to know what I read, what I do at the University, if I’m
not afraid of corpses, what I do with my money.
“Do the students fight at the University?” she would ask.
“They do, my dear.”
“You make them go down on their knees?”
“I do.”
And it seemed funny to her that the students fought and that I made
them go down on their knees, and she laughed. She was a gentle, good,
patient child.
Pretty often I happened to see how something was taken away from her,
or she was unjustly punished, or her curiosity was not satisfied. At
such moments sadness would be added to her permanent expression of
confidence--nothing more. I didn’t know how to take her part, but when
I saw her sadness, I always had the desire to draw her close to me and
comfort her in an old nurse’s voice: “My darling little orphan!”
I remember too she loved to be well dressed and to sprinkle herself
with scents. In this she was like me. I also love good clothes and fine
scents.
I regret that I had neither the time nor the inclination to watch the
beginnings and the growth of the passion which had completely taken
hold of Katy when she was no more than fourteen or fifteen. I mean her
passionate love for the theatre. When she used to come from the College
for her holidays and live with us, nothing gave her such pleasure and
enthusiasm to talk about as plays and actors. She used to tire us
with her incessant conversation about the theatre. I alone hadn’t the
courage to deny her my attention. My wife and children did not listen
to her. When she felt the desire to share her raptures she would come
to my study and coax: “Nicolai Stiepanich, do let me speak to you about
the theatre.”