About ten o’clock of a dark September evening the Zemstvo doctor
Kirilov’s only son, six-year-old Andrey, died of diphtheria. As the
doctor’s wife dropped on to her knees before the dead child’s cot and
the first paroxysm of despair took hold of her, the bell rang sharply
in the hall.
When the diphtheria came all the servants were sent away from the
house, that very morning. Kirilov himself went to the door, just as he
was, in his shirt-sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned, without wiping
his wet face or hands, which had been burnt with carbolic acid. It was
dark in the hall, and of the person who entered could be distinguished
only his middle height, a white scarf and a big, extraordinarily pale
face, so pale that it seemed as though its appearance made the hall
brighter....
“Is the doctor in?” the visitor asked abruptly.
“I’m at home,” answered Kirilov. “What do you want?”
“Oh, you’re the doctor? I’m so glad!” The visitor was overjoyed and
began to seek for the doctor’s hand in the darkness. He found it
and squeezed it hard in his own. “I’m very ... very glad! We were
introduced ... I am Aboguin ... had the pleasure of meeting you this
summer at Mr. Gnouchev’s. I am very glad to have found you at home....
For God’s sake, don’t say you won’t come with me immediately.... My
wife has been taken dangerously ill.... I have the carriage with me....”
From the visitor’s voice and movements it was evident that he had
been in a state of violent agitation. Exactly as though he had been
frightened by a fire or a mad dog, he could hardly restrain his hurried
breathing, and he spoke quickly in a trembling voice. In his speech
there sounded a note of real sincerity, of childish fright. Like all
men who are frightened and dazed, he spoke in short, abrupt phrases and
uttered many superfluous, quite unnecessary, words.
“I was afraid I shouldn’t find you at home,” he continued. “While I was
coming to you I suffered terribly.... Dress yourself and let us go, for
God’s sake.... It happened like this. Papchinsky came to me--Alexander
Siemionovich, you know him.... We were chatting.... Then we sat down to
tea. Suddenly my wife cries out, presses her hands to her heart, and
falls back in her chair. We carried her off to her bed and ... and I
rubbed her forehead with sal-volatile, and splashed her with water....
She lies like a corpse.... I’m afraid that her heart’s failed.... Let
us go.... Her father too died of heart-failure.”
Kirilov listened in silence as though he did not understand the Russian
language.
When Aboguin once more mentioned Papchinsky and his wife’s father, and
once more began to seek for the doctor’s hand in the darkness, the
doctor shook his head and said, drawling each word listlessly:
“Excuse me, but I can’t go.... Five minutes ago my ... my son died.”
“Is that true?” Aboguin whispered, stepping back. “My God, what an
awful moment to come! It’s a terribly fated day ... terribly! What a
coincidence ... and it might have been on purpose!”
Aboguin took hold of the door handle and drooped his head in
meditation. Evidently he was hesitating, not knowing whether to go
away, or to ask the doctor once more.
“Listen,” he said eagerly, seizing Kirilov by the sleeve. “I fully
understand your state! God knows I’m ashamed to try to hold your
attention at such a moment, but what can I do? Think yourself--who can
I go to? There isn’t another doctor here besides you. For heaven’s sake
come. I’m not asking for myself. It’s not I that’s ill!”
Silence began. Kirilov turned his back to Aboguin, stood still for a
while and slowly went out of the hall into the drawing-room. To judge
by his uncertain, machine-like movement, and by the attentiveness
with which he arranged the hanging shade on the unlighted lamp in the
drawing-room and consulted a thick book which lay on the table--at
such a moment he had neither purpose nor desire, nor did he think of
anything, and probably had already forgotten that there was a stranger
standing in his hall. The gloom and the quiet of the drawing-room
apparently increased his insanity. As he went from the drawing-room to
his study he raised his right foot higher than he need, felt with his
hands for the door-posts, and then one felt a certain perplexity in
his whole figure, as though he had entered a strange house by chance,
or for the first time in his life had got drunk, and now was giving
himself up in bewilderment to the new sensation. A wide line of light
stretched across the bookshelves on one wall of the study; this light,
together with the heavy stifling smell of carbolic acid and ether
came from the door ajar that led from the study into the bed-room....
The doctor sank into a chair before the table; for a while he looked
drowsily at the shining books, then rose and went into the bed-room.
Here, in the bed-room, dead quiet reigned. Everything, down to the
last trifle, spoke eloquently of the tempest undergone, of weariness,
and everything rested. The candle which stood among a close crowd of
phials, boxes and jars on the stool and the big lamp on the chest of
drawers brightly lit the room. On the bed, by the window, the boy lay
open-eyed, with a look of wonder on his face. He did not move, but it
seemed that his open eyes became darker and darker every second and
sank into his skull. Having laid her hands on his body and hid her face
in the folds of the bed-clothes, the mother now was on her knees before
the bed. Like the boy she did not move, but how much living movement
was felt in the coil of her body and in her hands! She was pressing
close to the bed with her whole being, with eager vehemence, as though
she were afraid to violate the quiet and comfortable pose which she had
found at last for her weary body. Blankets, cloths, basins, splashes on
the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle of
lime-water, the stifling heavy air itself--everything died away, and as
it were plunged into quietude.
The doctor stopped by his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser
pockets and bending his head on one side looked fixedly at his son. His
face showed indifference; only the drops which glistened on his beard
revealed that he had been lately weeping.
The repulsive terror of which we think when we speak of death was
absent from the bed-room. In the pervading dumbness, in the mother’s
pose, in the indifference of the doctor’s face was something attractive
that touched the heart, the subtle and elusive beauty of human grief,
which it will take men long to understand and describe, and only
music, it seems, is able to express. Beauty too was felt in the stern
stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and did not weep, as
though they confessed all the poetry of their condition. As once the
season of their youth passed away, so now in this boy their right to
bear children had passed away, alas! for ever to eternity. The doctor
is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his
faded sick wife is thirty-five. Audrey was not merely the only son but
the last.
In contrast to his wife the doctor’s nature belonged to those which
feel the necessity of movement when their soul is in pain. After
standing by his wife for about five minutes, he passed from the
bed-room, lifting his right foot too high, into a little room half
filled with a big broad divan. From there he went to the kitchen. After
wandering about the fireplace and the cook’s bed, he stooped through a
little door and came into the hall.
Here he saw the white scarf and the pale face again.
“At last,” sighed Aboguin, seizing the doorhandle. “Let us go, please.”
The doctor shuddered, glanced at him and remembered.
“Listen. I’ve told you already that I can’t go,” he said, livening.
“What a strange idea!”
“Doctor, I’m made of flesh and blood, too. I fully understand your
condition. I sympathise with you,” Aboguin said in an imploring voice,
putting his hand to his scarf. “But I am not asking for myself. My wife
is dying. If you had heard her cry, if you’d seen her face, you would
understand my insistence! My God--and I thought that you’d gone to
dress yourself. The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you.”
“I can’t come,” Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his
drawing-room.
Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve.
“You’re in sorrow. I understand. But I’m not asking you to cure a
toothache, or to give expert evidence,--but to save a human life.” He
went on imploring like a beggar. “This life is more than any personal
grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed--in the name of
humanity.”
“Humanity cuts both ways,” Kirilov said irritably. “In the name of the
same humanity I ask you not to take me away. My God, what a strange
idea! I can hardly stand on my feet and you frighten me with humanity.
I’m not fit for anything now. I won’t go for anything. With whom shall
I leave my wife? No, no....”
Kirilov flung out his open hands and drew back.
“And ... and don’t ask me,” he continued, disturbed. “I’m sorry....
Under the Laws, Volume XIII., I’m obliged to go and you have the right
to drag me by the neck.... Well, drag me, but ... I’m not fit.... I’m
not even able to speak. Excuse me.”
“It’s quite unfair to speak to me in that tone, Doctor,” said Aboguin,
again taking the doctor by the sleeve. “The thirteenth volume be
damned! I have no right to do violence to your will. If you want to,
come; if you don’t, then God be with you; but it’s not to your will
that I apply, but to your feelings. A young woman is dying! You say
your son died just now. Who could understand my terror better than you?”
Aboguin’s voice trembled with agitation. His tremor and his tone were
much more convincing than his words. Aboguin was sincere, but it is
remarkable that every phrase he used came out stilted, soulless,
inopportunely florid, and as it were insulted the atmosphere of the
doctor’s house and the woman who was dying. He felt it himself, and
in his fear of being misunderstood he exerted himself to the utmost
to make his voice soft and tender so as to convince by the sincerity
of his tone at least, if not by his words. As a rule, however deep
and beautiful the words they affect only the unconcerned. They
cannot always satisfy those who are happy or distressed because the
highest expression of happiness or distress is most often silence.
Lovers understand each other best when they are silent, and a fervent
passionate speech at the graveside affects only outsiders. To the widow
and children it seems cold and trivial.
Kirilov stood still and was silent. When Aboguin uttered some more
words on the higher vocation of a doctor, and self-sacrifice, the
doctor sternly asked:
“Is it far?”
“Thirteen or fourteen versts. I’ve got good horses, doctor. I give you
my word of honour that I’ll take you there and back in an hour. Only an
hour.”
The last words impressed the doctor more strongly than the references
to humanity or the doctor’s vocation. He thought for a while and said
with a sigh.
“Well, let us go!”
He went off quickly, with a step that was now sure, to his study
and soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced
impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied
him out of the house.
Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the hall. Now in the darkness
the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the
long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face
Aboguin’s big face could now be seen and a little student’s cap which
hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in
front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.
“Believe me, I’m able to appreciate your magnanimity,” murmured
Aboguin, as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. “We’ll
whirl away. Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!”
The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings,
which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save
that at the end of the yard a bright light from someone’s window broke
through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the
separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove
into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the
whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began
to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they
knew that the doctor’s son was dead and Aboguin’s wife ill. Then began
to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big
black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now
the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it
became completely still.
Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once
Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured.
“It’s terrible pain. One never loves his nearest so much as when there
is the risk of losing them.”
And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov
gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him,
and he began to move impatiently.
“Let me go,” he said in anguish. “I’ll come to you later. I only want
to send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone.”
Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattling against the
stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss
about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in
the scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank
disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth
and boundless as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim
lights were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel
with the road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on
the hill a big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a
mist, and surrounded with fine clouds which seemed to be gazing upon it
from every side, and guarding it, lest it should disappear.
In all nature one felt something hopeless and sick. Like a fallen
woman who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think of her past,
the earth languished with reminiscence of spring and summer and waited
in apathy for ineluctable winter. Wherever one’s glance turned nature
showed everywhere like a dark, cold, bottomless pit, whence neither
Kirilov nor Aboguin nor the red half-moon could escape....
The nearer the carriage approached the destination the more impatient
did Aboguin become. He moved about, jumped up and stared over the
driver’s shoulder in front of him. And when at last the carriage drew
up at the foot of the grand staircase, nicely covered with a striped
linen awning and he looked up at the lighted windows of the first floor
one could hear his breath trembling.
“If anything happens ... I shan’t survive it,” he said entering the
hall with the doctor and slowly rubbing his hands in his agitation.
“But I can’t hear any noise. That means it’s all right so far,” he
added, listening to the stillness.
No voices or steps were heard in the hall. For all the bright
illumination the whole house seemed asleep. Now the doctor and Aboguin
who had been in darkness up till now could examine each other. The
doctor was tall, with a stoop, slovenly dressed, and his face was
plain. There was something unpleasantly sharp, ungracious, and severe
in his thick negro lips, his aquiline nose and his faded, indifferent
look. His tangled hair, his sunken temples, the early grey in his long
thin beard, that showed his shining chin, his pale grey complexion
and the slipshod awkwardness of his manners--the hardness of it all
suggested to the mind bad times undergone, an unjust lot and weariness
of life and men. To look at the hard figure of the man, you could not
believe that he had a wife and could weep over his child. Aboguin
revealed something different. He was robust, solid and fair-haired,
with a big head and large, yet soft, features, exquisitely dressed in
the latest fashion. In his carriage, his tight-buttoned coat and his
mane of hair you felt something noble and leonine. He walked with his
head straight and his chest prominent, he spoke in a pleasant baritone,
and in his manner of removing his scarf or arranging his hair there
appeared a subtle, almost feminine, elegance. Even his pallor and
childish fear as he glanced upwards to the staircase while taking off
his coat, did not disturb his carriage or take from the satisfaction,
the health and aplomb which his figure breathed.
“There’s no one about, nothing I can hear,” he said walking upstairs.
“No commotion. May God be good!”
He accompanied the doctor through the hall to a large salon, where a
big piano showed dark and a lustre hung in a white cover. Thence they
both passed into a small and beautiful drawing-room, very cosy, filled
with a pleasant, rosy half-darkness.
“Please sit here a moment, Doctor,” said Aboguin, “I ... I won’t be a
second. I’ll just have a look and tell them.”
Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the drawing-room, the pleasant
half-darkness, even his presence in a stranger’s unfamiliar house
evidently did not move him. He sat in a chair looking at his hands
burnt with carbolic acid. He had no more than a glimpse of the bright
red lampshade, the cello case, and when he looked sideways across the
room to where the clock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid
and satisfied as Aboguin himself.
It was still.... Somewhere far away in the other rooms someone uttered
a loud “Ah!” A glass door, probably a cupboard door, rang, and again
everything was still. After five minutes had passed, Kirilov did not
look at his hands any more. He raised his eyes to the door through
which Aboguin had disappeared.
Aboguin was standing on the threshold, but not the same man as went
out. The expression of satisfaction and subtle elegance had disappeared
from him. His face and hands, the attitude of his body were distorted
with a disgusting expression either of horror or of tormenting physical
pain. His nose, lips, moustache, all his features were moving and as it
were trying to tear themselves away from his face, but the eyes were as
though laughing from pain.
Aboguin took a long heavy step into the middle of the room, stooped,
moaned, and shook his fists.
“Deceived!” he cried, emphasising the syllable _cei._ “She deceived me!
She’s gone! She fell ill and sent me for the doctor only to run away
with this fool Papchinsky. My God!” Aboguin stepped heavily towards
the doctor, thrust his white soft fists before his face, and went on
wailing, shaking his fists the while.
“She’s gone off! She’s deceived me! But why this lie? My God, my God!
Why this dirty, foul trick, this devilish, serpent’s game? What have I
done to her? She’s gone off.” Tears gushed from his eyes. He turned on
his heel and began to pace the drawing-room. Now in his short jacket
and his fashionable narrow trousers in which his legs seemed too thin
for his body, he was extraordinarily like a lion. Curiosity kindled in
the doctor’s impassive face. He rose and eyed Aboguin.
“Well, where’s the patient?”
“The patient, the patient,” cried Aboguin, laughing, weeping, and still
shaking his fists. “She’s not ill, but accursed. Vile--dastardly. The
Devil himself couldn’t have planned a fouler trick. She sent me so that
she could run away with a fool, an utter clown, an Alphonse! My God,
far better she should have died. I’ll not bear it. I shall not bear it.”
The doctor stood up straight. His eyes began to blink, filled with
tears; his thin beard began to move with his jaw right and left.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking curiously about. “My child’s dead.
My wife in anguish, alone in all the house.... I can hardly stand on
my feet, I haven’t slept for three nights ... and I’m made to play in
a vulgar comedy, to play the part of a stage property! I don’t ... I
don’t understand it!”
Aboguin opened one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor and trod on
it, as upon an insect he wished to crush.
“And I didn’t see ... didn’t understand,” he said through his set
teeth, brandishing one fist round his head, with an expression as
though someone had trod on a corn. “I didn’t notice how he came to see
us every day. I didn’t notice that he came in a carriage to-day! What
was the carriage for? And I didn’t see! Innocent!”
“I don’t ... I don’t understand,” the doctor murmured. “What’s it all
mean? It’s jeering at a man, laughing at a man’s suffering! That’s
impossible.... I’ve never seen it in my life before!”
With the dull bewilderment of a man who has just begun to understand
that someone has bitterly offended him, the doctor shrugged his
shoulders, waved his hands and not knowing what to say or do, dropped
exhausted into a chair.
“Well, she didn’t love me any more. She loved another man. Very well.
But why the deceit, why this foul treachery?” Aboguin spoke with tears
in his voice. “Why, why? What have I done to you? Listen, doctor,” he
said passionately approaching Kirilov. “You were the unwilling witness
of my misfortune, and I am not going to hide the truth from you. I
swear I loved this woman. I loved her with devotion, like a slave. I
sacrificed everything for her. I broke with my family, I gave up the
service and my music. I forgave her things I could not have forgiven
my mother and sister.... I never once gave her an angry look ... I
never gave her any cause. Why this lie then? I do not demand love, but
why this abominable deceit? If you don’t love any more then speak out
honestly, above all when you know what I feel about this matter....”
With tears in his eyes and trembling in all his bones, Aboguin was
pouring out his soul to the doctor. He spoke passionately, pressing
both hands to his heart. He revealed all the family secrets without
hesitation, as though he were glad that these secrets were being torn
from his heart. Had he spoken thus for an hour or two and poured out
all his soul, he would surely have been easier.
Who can say whether, had the doctor listened and given him friendly
sympathy, he would not, as so often happens, have been reconciled to
his grief unprotesting, without turning to unprofitable follies? But
it happened otherwise. While Aboguin was speaking the offended doctor
changed countenance visibly. The indifference and amazement in his face
gradually gave way to an expression of bitter outrage, indignation, and
anger. His features became still sharper, harder, and more forbidding.
When Aboguin put before his eyes the photograph of his young wife,
with a pretty, but dry, inexpressive face like a nun’s, and asked if
it were possible to look at that face and grant that it could express
a lie, the doctor suddenly started away, with flashing eyes, and said,
coarsely forging out each several word:
“Why do you tell me all this? I do not want to hear! I don’t want
to,” he cried and banged his fist upon the table. “I don’t want your
trivial vulgar secrets--to Hell with them. You dare not tell me such
trivialities. Or do you think I have not yet been insulted enough! That
I’m a lackey to whom you can give the last insult? Yes?”
Aboguin drew back from Kirilov and stared at him in surprise.
“Why did you bring me here?” the doctor went on, shaking his beard.
“You marry out of high spirits, get angry out of high spirits, and
make a melodrama--but where do I come in? What have I got to do with
your romances? Leave me alone! Get on with your noble grabbing,
parade your humane ideas, play--” the doctor gave a side-glance at the
cello-case--“the double-bass and the trombone, stuff yourselves like
capons, but don’t dare to jeer at a real man! If you can’t respect him,
then you can at least spare him your attentions.”
“What does all this mean?” Aboguin asked, blushing.
“It means that it’s vile and foul to play with a man! I’m a doctor.
You consider doctors and all men who work and don’t reek of scent and
harlotry, your footmen, your _mauvais tons._ Very well, but no one gave
you the right to turn a man who suffers into a property.”
“How dare you say that?” Aboguin asked quietly. Again his face began to
twist about, this time in visible anger.
“How dare _you_ bring me here to listen to trivial rubbish, when you
know that I’m in sorrow?” the doctor cried and banged his fists on the
table once more. “Who gave you the right to jeer at another’s grief?”
“You’re mad,” cried Aboguin. “You’re ungenerous. I too am deeply
unhappy and ... and ...”
“Unhappy”--the doctor gave a sneering laugh--“Don’t touch the word,
it’s got nothing to do with you. Wasters who can’t get money on a bill
call themselves unhappy too. A capon’s unhappy, oppressed with all its
superfluous fat. You worthless lot!”
“Sir, you’re forgetting yourself,” Aboguin gave a piercing scream. “For
words like those, people are beaten. Do you understand?”
Aboguin thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book,
found two notes and flung them on the table.
“There’s your fee,” he said, and his nostrils trembled. “You’re paid.”
“You dare not offer me money,” said the doctor, and brushed the notes
from the table to the floor. “You don’t settle an insult with money.”
Aboguin and the doctor stood face to face, heaping each other with
undeserved insults. Never in their lives, even in a frenzy, had
they said so much that was unjust and cruel and absurd. In both the
selfishness of the unhappy is violently manifest. Unhappy men are
selfish, wicked, unjust, and less able to understand each other than
fools. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them; and just
where one would imagine that people should be united by the community
of grief, there is more injustice and cruelty done than among the
comparatively contented.
“Send me home, please,” the doctor cried, out of breath.
Aboguin rang the bell violently. Nobody came. He rang once more; then
flung the bell angrily to the floor. It struck dully on the carpet and
gave out a mournful sound like a death-moan. The footman appeared.
“Where have you been hiding, damn you?” The master sprang upon him with
clenched fists. “Where have you been just now? Go away and tell them to
send the carriage round for this gentleman, and get the brougham ready
for me. Wait,” he called out as the footman turned to go. “Not a single
traitor remains to-morrow. Pack off all of you! I will engage new ones
... Rabble!”
While they waited Aboguin and the doctor were silent. Already the
expression of satisfaction and the subtle elegance had returned to
the former. He paced the drawing-room, shook his head elegantly and
evidently was planning something. His anger was not yet cool, but he
tried to make as if he did not notice his enemy.... The doctor stood
with one hand on the edge of the table, looking at Aboguin with that
deep, rather cynical, ugly contempt with which only grief and an unjust
lot can look, when they see satiety and elegance before them.
A little later, when the doctor took his seat in the carriage and drove
away, his eyes still glanced contemptuously. It was dark, much darker
than an hour ago. The red half-moon had now disappeared behind the
little hill, and the clouds which watched it lay in dark spots round
the stars. The brougham with the red lamps began to rattle on the road
and passed the doctor. It was Aboguin on his way to protest, to commit
all manner of folly.
All the way the doctor thought not of his wife or Andrey, but only of
Aboguin and those who lived in the house he just left. His thoughts
were unjust, inhuman, and cruel. He passed sentence on Aboguin, his
wife, Papchinsky, and all those who live in rosy semi-darkness and
smell of scent. All the way he hated them, and his heart ached with his
contempt for them. The conviction he formed about them would last his
life long.
Time will pass and Kirilov’s sorrow, but this conviction, unjust and
unworthy of the human heart, will not pass, but will remain in the
doctor’s mind until the grave.