The summer comes and life changes.
One fine morning Liza comes in to me and says in a joking tone:
“Come, Your Excellency. It’s all ready.”
They lead My Excellency into the street, put me into a cab and drive me
away. For want of occupation I read the signboards backwards as I go.
The word “Tavern” becomes “Nrevat.” That would do for a baron’s name:
Baroness Nrevat. Beyond, I drive across the field by the cemetery,
which produces no impression upon me whatever, though I’ll soon
lie there. After a two hours’ drive, My Excellency is led into the
ground-floor of the bungalow, and put into a small, lively room with a
light-blue paper.
Insomnia at night as before, but I am no more wakeful in the morning
and don’t listen to my wife, but lie in bed. I don’t sleep, but I
am in a sleepy state, half-forgetfulness, when you know you are not
asleep, but have dreams. I get up in the afternoon, and sit down at
the table by force of habit, but now I don’t work any more but amuse
myself with French yellow-backs sent me by Katy. Of course it would
be more patriotic to read Russian authors, but to tell the truth I’m
not particularly disposed to them. Leaving out two or three old ones,
all the modern literature doesn’t seem to me to be literature but a
unique home industry which exists only to be encouraged, but the goods
are bought with reluctance. The best of these homemade goods can’t be
called remarkable and it’s impossible to praise it sincerely without a
saving “but”; and the same must be said of all the literary novelties
I’ve read during the last ten or fifteen years. Not one remarkable,
and you can’t dispense with “but.” They have cleverness, nobility, and
no talent; talent, nobility and no cleverness; or finally, talent,
cleverness, but no nobility.
I would not say that French books have talent, cleverness, and
nobility. Nor do they satisfy me. But they are not so boring as the
Russian; and it is not rare to find in them the chief constituent
of creative genius--the sense of personal freedom, which is lacking
to Russian authors. I do not recall one single new book in which
from the very first page the author did not try to tie himself up in
all manner of conventions and contracts with his conscience. One is
frightened to speak of the naked body, another is bound hand and foot
by psychological analysis, a third must have “a kindly attitude to
his fellow-men,” the fourth heaps up whole pages with descriptions of
nature on purpose to avoid any suspicion of a tendency.... One desires
to be in his books a bourgeois at all costs, another at all costs an
aristocrat. Deliberation, cautiousness, cunning: but no freedom, no
courage to write as one likes, and therefore no creative genius.
All this refers to _belles-lettres,_ so-called.
As for serious articles in Russian, on sociology, for instance, or
art and so forth, I don’t read them, simply out of timidity. For
some reason in my childhood and youth I had a fear of porters and
theatre attendants, and this fear has remained with me up till now.
Even now I am afraid of them. It is said that only that which one
cannot understand seems terrible. And indeed it is very difficult to
understand why hall-porters and theatre attendants are so pompous
and haughty and importantly polite. When I read serious articles, I
have exactly the same indefinable fear. Their portentous gravity,
their playfulness, like an archbishop’s, their over-familiar
attitude to foreign authors, their capacity for talking dignified
nonsense--“filling a vacuum with emptiness”--it is all inconceivable
to me and terrifying, and quite unlike the modesty and the calm and
gentlemanly tone to which I am accustomed when reading our writers on
medicine and the natural sciences. Not only articles; I have difficulty
also in reading translations even when they are edited by serious
Russians. The presumptuous benevolence of the prefaces, the abundance
of notes by the translator (which prevents one from concentrating), the
parenthetical queries and _sics,_ which are so liberally scattered
over the book or the article by the translator--seem to me an assault
on the author’s person, as well as on my independence as a reader.
Once I was invited as an expert to the High Court. In the interval
one of my fellow-experts called my attention to the rude behaviour
of the public prosecutor to the prisoners, among whom were two women
intellectuals. I don’t think I exaggerated at all when I replied to
my colleague that he was not behaving more rudely than authors of
serious articles behave to one another. Indeed their behaviour is so
rude that one speaks of them with bitterness. They behave to each other
or to the writers whom they criticise either with too much deference,
careless of their own dignity, or, on the other hand, they treat them
much worse than I have treated Gnekker, my future son-in-law, in
these notes and thoughts of mine. Accusations of irresponsibility, of
impure intentions, of any kind of crime even, are the usual adornment
of serious articles. And this, as our young medicos love to say in
their little articles--quite _ultima ratio._ Such an attitude must
necessarily be reflected in the character of the young generation of
writers, and therefore I’m not at all surprised that in the new books
which have been added to our _belles lettres_ in the last ten or
fifteen years, the heroes drink a great deal of vodka and the heroines
are not sufficiently chaste.
I read French books and look out of the window, which is open--I see
the pointed palings of my little garden, two or three skinny trees,
and there, beyond the garden, the road, fields, then a wide strip of
young pine-forest. I often delight in watching a little boy and girl,
both white-haired and ragged, climb on the garden fence and laugh at
my baldness. In their shining little eyes I read, “Come out, thou
bald-head.” These are almost the only people who don’t care a bit about
my reputation or my title.
I don’t have visitors everyday now. I’ll mention only the visits of
Nicolas and Piotr Ignatievich. Nicolas comes to me usually on holidays,
pretending to come on business, but really to see me. He is very
hilarious, a thing which never happens to him in the winter.
“Well, what have you got to say?” I ask him, coming out into the
passage.
“Your Excellency!” he says, pressing his hand to his heart and looking
at me with a lover’s rapture. “Your Excellency! So help me God! God
strike me where I stand! _Gaudeamus igitur juvenestus._”
And he kisses me eagerly on the shoulders, on my sleeves, and buttons.
“Is everything all right over there?” I ask.
“Your Excellency! I swear to God....”
He never stops swearing, quite unnecessarily, and I soon get bored, and
send him to the kitchen, where they give him dinner. Piotr Ignatievich
also comes on holidays specially to visit me and communicate his
thoughts to me. He usually sits by the table in my room, modest,
clean, judicious, without daring to cross his legs or lean his elbows
on the table, all the while telling me in a quiet, even voice what
he considers very piquant items of news gathered from journals and
pamphlets.
These items are all alike and can be reduced to the following type: A
Frenchman made a discovery. Another--a German--exposed him by showing
that this discovery had been made as long ago as 1870 by some American.
Then a third--also a German--outwitted them both by showing that
both of them had been confused, by taking spherules of air under a
microscope for dark pigment. Even when he wants to make me laugh, Piotr
Ignatievich tells his story at great length, very much as though he
were defending a thesis, enumerating his literary sources in detail,
with every effort to avoid mistakes in the dates, the particular number
of the journal and the names. Moreover, he does not say Petit simply
but inevitably, Jean Jacques Petit. If he happens to stay to dinner, he
will tell the same sort of piquant stories and drive all the company
to despondency. If Gnekker and Liza begin to speak of fugues and
counter-fugues in his presence he modestly lowers his eyes, and his
face falls. He is ashamed that such trivialities should be spoken of in
the presence of such serious men as him and me.
In my present state of mind five minutes are enough for him to bore
me as though I had seen and listened to him for a whole eternity. I
hate the poor man. I wither away beneath his quiet, even voice and
his bookish language. His stories make me stupid.... He cherishes the
kindliest feelings towards me and talks to me only to give me pleasure.
I reward him by staring at his face as if I wanted to hypnotise him,
and thinking “Go away. Go, go....” But he is proof against my mental
suggestion and sits, sits, sits....
While he sits with me I cannot rid myself of the idea: “When I die,
it’s quite possible that he will be appointed in my place.” Then my
poor audience appears to me as an oasis where the stream has dried,
up, and I am unkind to Piotr Ignatievich, and silent and morose as if
he were guilty of such thoughts and not I myself. When he begins, as
usual, to glorify the German scholars, I no longer jest good-naturedly,
but murmur sternly:
“They’re fools, your Germans....”
It’s like the late Professor Nikita Krylov when he was bathing with
Pirogov at Reval. He got angry with the water, which was very cold,
and swore about “These scoundrelly Germans.” I behave badly to Piotr
Ignatievich; and it’s only when he is going away and I see through the
window his grey hat disappearing behind the garden fence, that I want
to call him back and say: “Forgive me, my dear fellow.”
The dinner goes yet more wearily than in winter. The same Gnekker,
whom I now hate and despise, dines with me every day. Before, I
used to suffer his presence in silence, but now I say biting things
to him, which make my wife and Liza blush. Carried away by an evil
feeling, I often say things that are merely foolish, and don’t know
why I say them. Thus it happened once that after looking at Gnekker
contemptuously for a long while, I suddenly fired off, for no reason at
all:
“Eagles than barnyard-fowls may lower bend;
But fowls shall never to the heav’ns ascend.”
More’s the pity that the fowl Gnekker shows himself more clever than
the eagle professor. Knowing my wife and daughter are on his side he
maintains these tactics. He replies to my shafts with a condescending
silence (“The old man’s off his head.... What’s the good of talking to
him?”), or makes good-humoured fun of me. It is amazing to what depths
of pettiness a man may descend. During the whole dinner I can dream how
Gnekker will be shown to be an adventurer, how Liza and my wife will
realise their mistake, and I will tease them--ridiculous dreams like
these at a time when I have one foot in the grave.
Now there occur misunderstandings, of a kind which I formerly knew only
by hearsay. Though it is painful I will describe one which occurred
after dinner the other day. I sit in my room smoking a little pipe.
Enters my wife, as usual, sits down and begins to talk. What a good
idea it would be to go to Kharkov now while the weather is warm and
there is the time, and inquire what kind of man our Gnekker is.
“Very well. I’ll go,” I agree.
My wife gets up, pleased with me, and walks to the door; but
immediately returns:
“By-the bye, I’ve one more favour to ask. I know you’ll be angry;
but it’s my duty to warn you.... Forgive me, Nicolai,--but all
our neighbours have begun to talk about the way you go to Katy’s
continually. I don’t deny that she’s clever and educated. It’s pleasant
to spend the time with her. But at your age and in your position it’s
rather strange to find pleasure in her society.... Besides she has a
reputation enough to....”
All my blood rushes instantly from my brain. My eyes flash fire. I
catch hold of my hair, and stamp and cry, in a voice that is not mine:
“Leave me alone, leave me, leave me....”
My face is probably terrible, and my voice strange, for my wife
suddenly gets pale, and calls aloud, with a despairing voice, also not
her own. At our cries rush in Liza and Gnekker, then Yegor.
My feet grow numb, as though they did not exist. I feel that I am
falling into somebody’s arms. Then I hear crying for a little while
and sink into a faint which lasts for two or three hours.
Now for Katy. She comes to see me before evening every day, which of
course must be noticed by my neighbours and my friends. After a minute
she takes me with her for a drive. She has her own horse and a new
buggy she bought this summer. Generally she lives like a princess. She
has taken an expensive detached bungalow with a big garden, and put
into it all her town furniture. She has two maids and a coachman. I
often ask her:
“Katy, what will you live on when you’ve spent all your father’s money?”
“We’ll see, then,” she answers.
“But this money deserves to be treated more seriously, my dear. It was
earned by a good man and honest labour.”
“You’ve told me that before. I know.”
First we drive by the field, then by a young pine forest, which you
can see from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as she used,
although the devil whispers to me that all these pines and firs, the
birds and white clouds in the sky will not notice my absence in three
or four months when I am dead. Katy likes to take the reins, and it is
good that the weather is fine and I am sitting by her side. She is in a
happy mood, and does not say bitter things.
“You’re a very good man, Nicolai,” she says. “You are a rare bird.
There’s no actor who could play your part. Mine or Mikhail’s, for
instance--even a bad actor could manage, but yours--there’s nobody. I
envy you, envy you terribly! What am I? What?”
She thinks for a moment, and asks:
“I’m a negative phenomenon, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“H’m ... what’s to be done then?”
What answer can I give? It’s easy to say “Work,” or “Give your property
to the poor,” or “Know yourself,” and because it’s so easy to say this
I don’t know what to answer.
My therapeutist colleagues, when teaching methods of cure, advise one
“to individualise each particular case.” This advice must be followed
in order to convince one’s self that the remedies recommended in the
text-books as the best and most thoroughly suitable as a general
rule, are quite unsuitable in particular cases. It applies to moral
affections as well. But I must answer something. So I say:
“You’ve too much time on your hands, my dear. You must take up
something.... In fact, why shouldn’t you go on the stage again, if you
have a vocation.”
“I can’t.”
“You have the manner and tone of a victim. I don’t like it, my dear.
You have yourself to blame. Remember, you began by getting angry with
people and things in general; but you never did anything to improve
either of them. You didn’t put up a struggle against the evil. You got
tired. You’re not a victim of the struggle but of your own weakness.
Certainly you were young then and inexperienced. But now everything can
be different. Come on, be an actress. You will work; you will serve in
the temple of art.”...
“Don’t be so clever, Nicolai,” she interrupts. “Let’s agree once for
all: let’s speak about actors, actresses, writers, but let us leave art
out of it. You’re a rare and excellent man. But you don’t understand
enough about art to consider it truly sacred. You have no _flair,_ no
ear for art. You’ve been busy all your life, and you never had time to
acquire the _flair._ Really ... I don’t love these conversations about
art!” she continues nervously. “I don’t love them. They’ve vulgarised
it enough already, thank you.”
“Who’s vulgarised it?”
“_They_ vulgarised it by their drunkenness, newspapers by their
over-familiarity, clever people by philosophy.”
“What’s philosophy got to do with it?”
“A great deal. If a man philosophises, it means he doesn’t understand.”
So that it should not come to bitter words, I hasten to change the
subject, and then keep silence for a long while. It’s not till we come
out of the forest and drive towards Katy’s bungalow, I return to the
subject and ask:
“Still, you haven’t answered me why you don’t want to go on the stage?”
“Really, it’s cruel,” she cries out, and suddenly blushes all over.
“You want me to tell you the truth outright. Very well if ... if you
will have it! I’ve no talent! No talent and ... much ambition! There
you are!”
After this confession, she turns her face away from me, and to hide the
trembling of her hands, tugs at the reins.
As we approach her bungalow, from a distance we see Mikhail already,
walking about by the gate, impatiently awaiting us.
“This Fiodorovich again,” Katy says with annoyance. “Please take him
away from me. I’m sick of him. He’s flat.... Let him go to the deuce.”
Mikhail Fiodorovich ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he has
postponed his departure every week. There have been some changes in him
lately. He’s suddenly got thin, begun to be affected by drink--a thing
that never happened to him before, and his black eyebrows have begun
to get grey. When our buggy stops at the gate he cannot hide his joy
and impatience. Anxiously he helps Katy and me from the buggy, hastily
asks us questions, laughs, slowly rubs his hands, and that gentle,
prayerful, pure something that I used to notice only in his eyes is now
poured over all his face. He is happy and at the same time ashamed of
his happiness, ashamed of his habit of coming to Katy’s every evening,
and he finds it necessary to give a reason for his coming, some
obvious absurdity, like: “I was passing on business, and I thought I’d
just drop in for a second.”
All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends,
the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of
cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of
conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the
winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre--all of
them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more
close. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter,
but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the
accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the
unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: “He, he, he!”
V
There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and
wind, which the peasants call “sparrow-nights.” There was one such
sparrow-night in my own personal life....
I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems
to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there
is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but
a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge,
ill-boding fire in the sky.
I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the
decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The
air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of
my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road,
the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky
and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that
everything is looking at me and listening for me to die.
Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my
pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin,
my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing
comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred,
and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them.
What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my
wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.
I hide my head under the pillow, shut my eyes and wait, wait.... My
spine is cold. It almost contracts within me. And I feel that death
will approach me only from behind, very quietly.
“Kivi, kivi.” A squeak sounds in the stillness of the night. I do not
know whether it is in my heart or in the street.
God, how awful! I would drink some more water; but now I dread opening
my eyes, and fear to raise my head. The terror is unaccountable,
animal. I cannot understand why I am afraid. Is it because I want to
live, or because a new and unknown pain awaits me?
Upstairs, above the ceiling, a moan, then a laugh ... I listen. A
little after steps sound on the staircase. Someone hurries down, then
up again. In a minute steps sound downstairs again. Someone stops by my
door and listens.
“Who’s there?” I call.
The door opens. I open my eyes boldly and see my wife. Her face is pale
and her eyes red with weeping.
“You’re not asleep, Nicolai Stiepanovich?” she asks.
“What is it?”
“For God’s sake go down to Liza. Something is wrong with her.”
“Very well ... with pleasure,” I murmur, very glad that I am not alone.
“Very well ... immediately.”
As I follow my wife I hear what she tells me, and from agitation
understand not a word. Bright spots from her candle dance over the
steps of the stairs; our long shadows tremble; my feet catch in the
skirts of my dressing-gown. My breath goes, and it seems to me that
someone is chasing me, trying to seize my back. “I shall die here on
the staircase, this second,” I think, “this second.” But we have passed
the staircase, the dark hall with the Italian window and we go into
Liza’s room. She sits in bed in her chemise; her bare legs hang down
and she moans.
“Oh, my God ... oh, my God!” she murmurs, half shutting her eyes from
our candles. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Liza, my child,” I say, “what’s the matter?”
Seeing me, she calls out and falls on my neck.
“Papa darling,” she sobs. “Papa dearest ... my sweet. I don’t know what
it is.... It hurts.”
She embraces me, kisses me and lisps endearments which I heard her lisp
when she was still a baby.
“Be calm, my child. God’s with you,” I say. “You mustn’t cry. Something
hurts me too.”
I try to cover her with the bedclothes; my wife gives her to drink; and
both of us jostle in confusion round the bed. My shoulders push into
hers, and at that moment I remember how we used to bathe our children.
“But help her, help her!” my wife implores. “Do something!” And what
can I do? Nothing. There is some weight on the girl’s soul; but I
understand nothing, know nothing and can only murmur:
“It’s nothing, nothing.... It will pass.... Sleep, sleep.”
As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and
irresolute, then aloud, in two voices. I never put any value on such
signs as dogs’ whining or screeching owls; but now my heart contracts
painfully, and I hasten to explain the howling.
“Nonsense,” I think. “It’s the influence of one organism on another.
My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to
the dog. That’s all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and
previsions.”
A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for
Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels
heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For
a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering
what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are
silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still.
There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings
in one’s ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the
windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed.... The
dawn is still far away.
But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from
the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” I hear a whisper. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!”
I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window,
close against the wall stands a woman in a black dress. She is brightly
lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale,
stern and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles.
“It is I....” she says, “I ... Katy!”
In the moon all women’s eyes are big and black, people are taller and
paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the
first moment.
“What’s the matter?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “I suddenly felt so dreary ... I could not bear
it. So I came here. There’s a light in your window ... and I decided to
knock.... Forgive me.... Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are
you doing now?”
“Nothing. Insomnia.”
Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is
illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of
confidence.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” she says imploringly, stretching out both her
hands to me. “Dear, I beg you ... I implore.... If you do not despise
my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you.”
“What is it?”
“Take my money.”
“What next? What’s the good of your money to me?”
“You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will
take it? Yes? Dear ... Yes?”
She looks into my face eagerly and repeats:
“Yes? You will take it?”
“No, my dear, I won’t take it....”, I say. “Thank you.”
She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my
refusal would not allow any further talk of money.
“Go home to sleep,” I say. “I’ll see you to-morrow.”
“It means, you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks sadly.
“I don’t say that. But your money is no good to me.”
“Forgive me,” she says lowering her voice by a full octave. “I
understand you. To be obliged to a person like me ... a retired
actress... But good-bye.”
And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say
“Good-bye.”