word, it does not concern you. The spendthrift who cannot raise a loan
calls himself unhappy, too. The capon, sluggish from over-feeding, is
unhappy, too. Worthless people!"
"Sir, you forget yourself," shrieked Abogin. "For saying things like
that . . . people are thrashed! Do you understand?"
Abogin hurriedly felt in his side pocket, pulled out a pocket-book, and
extracting two notes flung them on the table.
"Here is the fee for your visit," he said, his nostrils dilating. "You
are paid."
"How dare you offer me money?" shouted the doctor and he brushed the
notes off the table on to the floor. "An insult cannot be paid for in
money!"
Abogin and the doctor stood face to face, and in their wrath continued
flinging undeserved insults at each other. I believe that never in their
lives, even in delirium, had they uttered so much that was unjust,
cruel, and absurd. The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both.
The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of
understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people
together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people
should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice
and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
"Kindly let me go home!" shouted the doctor, breathing hard.
Abogin rang the bell sharply. When no one came to answer the bell he
rang again and angrily flung the bell on the floor; it fell on the
carpet with a muffled sound, and uttered a plaintive note as though at
the point of death. A footman came in.
"Where have you been hiding yourself, the devil take you?" His master
flew at him, clenching his fists. "Where were you just now? Go and tell
them to bring the victoria round for this gentleman, and order the
closed carriage to be got ready for me. Stay," he cried as the footman
turned to go out. "I won't have a single traitor in the house by to-
morrow! Away with you all! I will engage fresh servants! Reptiles!"
Abogin and the doctor remained in silence waiting for the carriage. The
first regained his expression of sleekness and his refined elegance. He
paced up and down the room, tossed his head elegantly, and was evidently
meditating on something. His anger had not cooled, but he tried to
appear not to notice his enemy. . . . The doctor stood, leaning with one
hand on the edge of the table, and looked at Abogin with that profound
and somewhat cynical, ugly contempt only to be found in the eyes of
sorrow and indigence when they are confronted with well-nourished
comfort and elegance.
When a little later the doctor got into the victoria and drove off there
was still a look of contempt in his eyes. It was dark, much darker than
it had been an hour before. The red half-moon had sunk behind the hill
and the clouds that had been guarding it lay in dark patches near the
stars. The carriage with red lamps rattled along the road and soon
overtook the doctor. It was Abogin driving off to protest, to do absurd
things. . . .
All the way home the doctor thought not of his wife, nor of his Andrey,
but of Abogin and the people in the house he had just left. His thoughts
were unjust and inhumanly cruel. He condemned Abogin and his wife and
Paptchinsky and all who lived in rosy, subdued light among sweet
perfumes, and all the way home he hated and despised them till his head
ached. And a firm conviction concerning those people took shape in his
mind.
Time will pass and Kirilov's sorrow will pass, but that conviction,
unjust and unworthy of the human heart, will not pass, but will remain
in the doctor's mind to the grave.
THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE
A DISTRICT doctor and an examining magistrate were driving one fine
spring day to an inquest. The examining magistrate, a man of five and
thirty, looked dreamily at the horses and said:
"There is a great deal that is enigmatic and obscure in nature; and even
in everyday life, doctor, one must often come upon phenomena which are
absolutely incapable of explanation. I know, for instance, of several
strange, mysterious deaths, the cause of which only spiritualists and
mystics will undertake to explain; a clear-headed man can only lift up
his hands in perplexity. For example, I know of a highly cultured lady
who foretold her own death and died without any apparent reason on the
very day she had predicted. She said that she would die on a certain
day, and she did die."
"There's no effect without a cause," said the doctor. "If there's a
death there must be a cause for it. But as for predicting it there's
nothing very marvellous in that. All our ladies--all our females, in
fact--have a turn for prophecies and presentiments."
"Just so, but my lady, doctor, was quite a special case. There was
nothing like the ladies' or other females' presentiments about her
prediction and her death. She was a young woman, healthy and clever,
with no superstitions of any sort. She had such clear, intelligent,
honest eyes; an open, sensible face with a faint, typically Russian look
of mockery in her eyes and on her lips. There was nothing of the fine
lady or of the female about her, except--if you like-- her beauty! She was
graceful, elegant as that birch tree; she had wonderful hair. That she
may be intelligible to you, I will add, too, that she was a person of
the most infectious gaiety and carelessness and that intelligent, good
sort of frivolity which is only found in good-natured, light-hearted
people with brains. Can one talk of mysticism, spiritualism, a turn for
presentiment, or anything of that sort, in this case? She used to laugh
at all that."
The doctor's chaise stopped by a well. The examining magistrate and the
doctor drank some water, stretched, and waited for the coachman to
finish watering the horses.
"Well, what did the lady die of?" asked the doctor when the chaise was
rolling along the road again.
"She died in a strange way. One fine day her husband went in to her and
said that it wouldn't be amiss to sell their old coach before the spring
and to buy something rather newer and lighter instead, and that it might
be as well to change the left trace horse and to put Bobtchinsky (that
was the name of one of her husband's horses) in the shafts.
"His wife listened to him and said:
"'Do as you think best, but it makes no difference to me now. Before the
summer I shall be in the cemetery.'
"Her husband, of course, shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"'I am not joking,' she said. 'I tell you in earnest that I shall soon
be dead.'
"'What do you mean by soon?'
"'Directly after my confinement. I shall bear my child and die.'
"The husband attached no significance to these words. He did not believe
in presentiments of any sort, and he knew that ladies in an interesting
condition are apt to be fanciful and to give way to gloomy ideas
generally. A day later his wife spoke to him again of dying immediately
after her confinement, and then every day she spoke of it and he laughed
and called her a silly woman, a fortune-teller, a crazy creature. Her
approaching death became an idée fixé with his wife. When her husband
would not listen to her she would go into the kitchen and talk of her
death to the nurse and the cook.
"'I haven't long to live now, nurse,' she would say. 'As soon as my
confinement is over I shall die. I did not want to die so early, but it
seems it's my fate.'
"The nurse and the cook were in tears, of course. Sometimes the priest's
wife or some lady from a neighbouring estate would come and see her and
she would take them aside and open her soul to them, always harping on
the same subject, her approaching death. She spoke gravely with an
unpleasant smile, even with an angry face which would not allow any
contradiction. She had been smart and fashionable in her dress, but now
in view of her approaching death she became slovenly; she did not read,
she did not laugh, she did not dream aloud. What was more she drove with
her aunt to the cemetery and selected a spot for her tomb. Five days
before her confinement she made her will. And all this, bear in mind,
was done in the best of health, without the faintest hint of illness or
danger. A confinement is a difficult affair and sometimes fatal, but in
the case of which I am telling you every indication was favourable, and
there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Her husband was sick of
the whole business at last. He lost his temper one day at dinner and
asked her:
"'Listen, Natasha, when is there going to be an end of this silliness?'
"'It's not silliness, I am in earnest.'
"'Nonsense, I advise you to give over being silly that you may not feel
ashamed of it afterwards.'
"Well, the confinement came. The husband got the very best midwife from
the town. It was his wife's first confinement, but it could not have
gone better. When it was all over she asked to look at her baby. She
looked at it and said:
"'Well, now I can die.'
"She said good-bye, shut her eyes, and half an hour later gave up her
soul to God. She was fully conscious up to the last moment. Anyway when
they gave her milk instead of water she whispered softly:
"'Why are you giving me milk instead of water?'
"So that is what happened. She died as she predicted."
The examining magistrate paused, gave a sigh and said:
"Come, explain why she died. I assure you on my honour, this is not
invented, it's a fact."
The doctor looked at the sky meditatively.
"You ought to have had an inquest on her," he said.
"Why?"
"Why, to find out the cause of her death. She didn't die because she had
predicted it. She poisoned herself most probably."
The examining magistrate turned quickly, facing the doctor, and screwing
up his eyes, asked:
"And from what do you conclude that she poisoned herself?"
"I don't conclude it, but I assume it. Was she on good terms with her
husband?"
"H'm, not altogether. There had been misunderstandings soon after their
marriage. There were unfortunate circumstances. She had found her
husband on one occasion with a lady. She soon forgave him however."
"And which came first, her husband's infidelity or her idea of dying?"
The examining magistrate looked attentively at the doctor as though he
were trying to imagine why he put that question.
"Excuse me," he said, not quite immediately. "Let me try and remember."
The examining magistrate took off his hat and rubbed his forehead. "Yes,
yes . . . it was very shortly after that incident that she began talking
of death. Yes, yes."
"Well, there, do you see? . . . In all probability it was at that time
that she made up her mind to poison herself, but, as most likely she did
not want to kill her child also, she put it off till after her
confinement."
"Not likely, not likely! . . . it's impossible. She forgave him at the
time."
"That she forgave it quickly means that she had something bad in her
mind. Young wives do not forgive quickly."
The examining magistrate gave a forced smile, and, to conceal his too
noticeable agitation, began lighting a cigarette.
"Not likely, not likely," he went on. "No notion of anything of the sort
being possible ever entered into my head. . . . And besides . . . he was
not so much to blame as it seems. . . . He was unfaithful to her in
rather a queer way, with no desire to be; he came home at night somewhat
elevated, wanted to make love to somebody, his wife was in an
interesting condition . . . then he came across a lady who had come to
stay for three days--damnation take her-- an empty-headed creature, silly
and not good-looking. It couldn't be reckoned as an infidelity. His wife
looked at it in that way herself and soon . . . forgave it. Nothing more
was said about it. . . ."
"People don't die without a reason," said the doctor.
"That is so, of course, but all the same . . . I cannot admit that she
poisoned herself. But it is strange that the idea has never struck me
before! And no one thought of it! Everyone was astonished that her
prediction had come to pass, and the idea . . . of such a death was far
from their mind. And indeed, it cannot be that she poisoned herself!
No!"
The examining magistrate pondered. The thought of the woman who had died
so strangely haunted him all through the inquest. As he noted down what
the doctor dictated to him he moved his eyebrows gloomily and rubbed his
forehead.
"And are there really poisons that kill one in a quarter of an hour,
gradually, without any pain?" he asked the doctor while the latter was
opening the skull.
"Yes, there are. Morphia for instance."
"H'm, strange. I remember she used to keep something of the sort . . . .
But it could hardly be."
On the way back the examining magistrate looked exhausted, he kept
nervously biting his moustache, and was unwilling to talk.
"Let us go a little way on foot," he said to the doctor. "I am tired of
sitting."
After walking about a hundred paces, the examining magistrate seemed to
the doctor to be overcome with fatigue, as though he had been climbing
up a high mountain. He stopped and, looking at the doctor with a strange
look in his eyes, as though he were drunk, said:
"My God, if your theory is correct, why it's. . . it was cruel, inhuman!
She poisoned herself to punish some one else! Why, was the sin so great?
Oh, my God! And why did you make me a present of this damnable idea,
doctor!"
The examining magistrate clutched at his head in despair, and went on:
"What I have told you was about my own wife, about myself. Oh, my God! I
was to blame, I wounded her, but can it have been easier to die than to
forgive? That's typical feminine logic--cruel, merciless logic. Oh, even
then when she was living she was cruel! I recall it all now! It's all
clear to me now!"
As the examining magistrate talked he shrugged his shoulders, then
clutched at his head. He got back into the carriage, then walked again.
The new idea the doctor had imparted to him seemed to have overwhelmed
him, to have poisoned him; he was distracted, shattered in body and
soul, and when he got back to the town he said good-bye to the doctor,
declining to stay to dinner though he had promised the doctor the
evening before to dine with him.
BETROTHED I
IT was ten o'clock in the evening and the full moon was shining over the
garden. In the Shumins' house an evening service celebrated at the
request of the grandmother, Marfa Mihalovna, was just over, and now
Nadya--she had gone into the garden for a minute--could see the table
being laid for supper in the dining-room, and her grandmother bustling
about in her gorgeous silk dress; Father Andrey, a chief priest of the
cathedral, was talking to Nadya's mother, Nina Ivanovna, and now in the
evening light through the window her mother for some reason looked very
young; Andrey Andreitch, Father Andrey's son, was standing by listening
attentively.
It was still and cool in the garden, and dark peaceful shadows lay on
the ground. There was a sound of frogs croaking, far, far away beyond
the town. There was a feeling of May, sweet May! One drew deep breaths
and longed to fancy that not here but far away under the sky, above the
trees, far away in the open country, in the fields and the woods, the
life of spring was unfolding now, mysterious, lovely, rich and holy
beyond the understanding of weak, sinful man. And for some reason one
wanted to cry.
She, Nadya, was already twenty-three. Ever since she was sixteen she had
been passionately dreaming of marriage and at last she was engaged to
Andrey Andreitch, the young man who was standing on the other side of
the window; she liked him, the wedding was already fixed for July 7, and
yet there was no joy in her heart, she was sleeping badly, her spirits
drooped. . . . She could hear from the open windows of the basement
where the kitchen was the hurrying servants, the clatter of knives, the
banging of the swing door; there was a smell of roast turkey and pickled
cherries, and for some reason it seemed to her that it would be like
that all her life, with no change, no end to it.
Some one came out of the house and stood on the steps; it was Alexandr
Timofeitch, or, as he was always called, Sasha, who had come from Moscow
ten days before and was staying with them. Years ago a distant relation
of the grandmother, a gentleman's widow called Marya Petrovna, a thin,
sickly little woman who had sunk into poverty, used to come to the house
to ask for assistance. She had a son Sasha. It used for some reason to
be said that he had talent as an artist, and when his mother died
Nadya's grandmother had, for the salvation of her soul, sent him to the
Komissarovsky school in Moscow; two years later he went into the school
of painting, spent nearly fifteen years there, and only just managed to
scrape through the leaving examination in the section of architecture.
He did not set up as an architect, however, but took a job at a
lithographer's. He used to come almost every year, usually very ill, to
stay with Nadya's grandmother to rest and recover.
He was wearing now a frock-coat buttoned up, and shabby canvas trousers,
crumpled into creases at the bottom. And his shirt had not been ironed
and he had somehow all over a look of not being fresh. He was very thin,
with big eyes, long thin fingers and a swarthy bearded face, and all the
same he was handsome. With the Shumins he was like one of the family,
and in their house felt he was at home. And the room in which he lived
when he was there had for years been called Sasha's room. Standing on
the steps he saw Nadya, and went up to her.
"It's nice here," he said.
"Of course it's nice, you ought to stay here till the autumn."
"Yes, I expect it will come to that. I dare say I shall stay with you
till September."
He laughed for no reason, and sat down beside her.
"I'm sitting gazing at mother," said Nadya. "She looks so young from
here! My mother has her weaknesses, of course," she added, after a
pause, "but still she is an exceptional woman."
"Yes, she is very nice . . ." Sasha agreed. "Your mother, in her own way
of course, is a very good and sweet woman, but . . . how shall I say? I
went early this morning into your kitchen and there I found four
servants sleeping on the floor, no bedsteads, and rags for bedding,
stench, bugs, beetles . . . it is just as it was twenty years ago, no
change at all. Well, Granny, God bless her, what else can you expect of
Granny? But your mother speaks French, you know, and acts in private
theatricals. One would think she might understand."
As Sasha talked, he used to stretch out two long wasted fingers before
the listener's face.
"It all seems somehow strange to me here, now I am out of the habit of
it," he went on. "There is no making it out. Nobody ever does anything.
Your mother spends the whole day walking about like a duchess, Granny
does nothing either, nor you either. And your Andrey Andreitch never
does anything either."
Nadya had heard this the year before and, she fancied, the year before
that too, and she knew that Sasha could not make any other criticism,
and in old days this had amused her, but now for some reason she felt
annoyed.
"That's all stale, and I have been sick of it for ages," she said and
got up. "You should think of something a little newer."
He laughed and got up too, and they went together toward the house. She,
tall, handsome, and well-made, beside him looked very healthy and
smartly dressed; she was conscious of this and felt sorry for him and
for some reason awkward.
"And you say a great deal you should not," she said. "You've just been
talking about my Andrey, but you see you don't know him."
"My Andrey. . . . Bother him, your Andrey. I am sorry for your youth."
They were already sitting down to supper as the young people went into
the dining-room. The grandmother, or Granny as she was called in the
household, a very stout, plain old lady with bushy eyebrows and a little
moustache, was talking loudly, and from her voice and manner of speaking
it could be seen that she was the person of most importance in the
house. She owned rows of shops in the market, and the old-fashioned
house with columns and the garden, yet she prayed every morning that God
might save her from ruin and shed tears as she did so. Her daughter-in-
law, Nadya's mother, Nina Ivanovna, a fair-haired woman tightly laced
in, with a pince-nez, and diamonds on every finger, Father Andrey, a
lean, toothless old man whose face always looked as though he were just
going to say something amusing, and his son, Andrey Andreitch, a stout
and handsome young man with curly hair looking like an artist or an
actor, were all talking of hypnotism.
"You will get well in a week here," said Granny, addressing Sasha. "Only
you must eat more. What do you look like!" she sighed. "You are really
dreadful! You are a regular prodigal son, that is what you are."
"After wasting his father's substance in riotous living," said Father
Andrey slowly, with laughing eyes. "He fed with senseless beasts."
"I like my dad," said Andrey Andreitch, touching his father on the
shoulder. "He is a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow."
Everyone was silent for a space. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing and
put his dinner napkin to his mouth.
"So you believe in hypnotism?" said Father Andrey to Nina Ivanovna.
"I cannot, of course, assert that I believe," answered Nina Ivanovna,
assuming a very serious, even severe, expression; "but I must own that
there is much that is mysterious and incomprehensible in nature."
"I quite agree with you, though I must add that religion distinctly
curtails for us the domain of the mysterious."
A big and very fat turkey was served. Father Andrey and Nina Ivanovna
went on with their conversation. Nina Ivanovna's diamonds glittered on
her fingers, then tears began to glitter in her eyes, she grew excited.
"Though I cannot venture to argue with you," she said, "you must admit
there are so many insoluble riddles in life!"
"Not one, I assure you."
After supper Andrey Andreitch played the fiddle and Nina Ivanovna
accompanied him on the piano. Ten years before he had taken his degree
at the university in the Faculty of Arts, but had never held any post,
had no definite work, and only from time to time took part in concerts
for charitable objects; and in the town he was regarded as a musician.
Andrey Andreitch played; they all listened in silence. The samovar was
boiling quietly on the table and no one but Sasha was drinking tea. Then
when it struck twelve a violin string suddenly broke; everyone laughed,
bustled about, and began saying good-bye.
After seeing her fiancé out, Nadya went upstairs where she and her
mother had their rooms (the lower storey was occupied by the
grandmother). They began putting the lights out below in the dining-
room, while Sasha still sat on drinking tea. He always spent a long time
over tea in the Moscow style, drinking as much as seven glasses at a
time. For a long time after Nadya had undressed and gone to bed she
could hear the servants clearing away downstairs and Granny talking
angrily. At last everything was hushed, and nothing could be heard but
Sasha from time to time coughing on a bass note in his room below. II
When Nadya woke up it must have been two o'clock, it was beginning to
get light. A watchman was tapping somewhere far away. She was not
sleepy, and her bed felt very soft and uncomfortable. Nadya sat up in
her bed and fell to thinking as she had done every night in May. Her
thoughts were the same as they had been the night before, useless,
persistent thoughts, always alike, of how Andrey Andreitch had begun
courting her and had made her an offer, how she had accepted him and
then little by little had come to appreciate the kindly, intelligent
man. But for some reason now when there was hardly a month left before
the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as though something
vague and oppressive were before her.
"Tick-tock, tick-tock . . ." the watchman tapped lazily. ". . . Tick-
tock."
Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden and at a
little distance bushes of lilac in full flower, drowsy and lifeless from
the cold; and the thick white mist was floating softly up to the lilac,
trying to cover it. Drowsy rooks were cawing in the far-away trees.
"My God, why is my heart so heavy?"
Perhaps every girl felt the same before her wedding. There was no
knowing! Or was it Sasha's influence? But for several years past Sasha
had been repeating the same thing, like a copybook, and when he talked
he seemed naïve and queer. But why was it she could not get Sasha out
of her head? Why was it?