request. There seems no avoiding it. I get up and bend over her long
face, feeling as I do so just as I did in my childhood when I was lifted
up to kiss my grandmother in her coffin. Not content with the kiss,
Mashenka leaps up and impulsively embraces me. At that instant,
Mashenka's maman appears in the doorway of the arbour. . . . She makes a
face as though in alarm, and saying "sh-sh" to someone with her,
vanishes like Mephistopheles through the trapdoor.
Confused and enraged, I return to our villa. At home I find Varenka's
maman embracing my maman with tears in her eyes. And my maman weeps and
says:
"I always hoped for it!"
And then, if you please, Nadenka's maman comes up to me, embraces me,
and says:
"May God bless you! . . . Mind you love her well. . . . Remember the
sacrifice she is making for your sake!"
And here I am at my wedding. At the moment I write these last words, my
best man is at my side, urging me to make haste. These people have no
idea of my character! I have a violent temper, I cannot always answer
for myself! Hang it all! God knows what will come of it! To lead a
violent, desperate man to the altar is as unwise as to thrust one's hand
into the cage of a ferocious tiger. We shall see, we shall see!
And so, I am married. Everybody congratulates me and Varenka keeps
clinging to me and saying:
"Now you are mine, mine; do you understand that? Tell me that you love
me!" And her nose swells as she says it.
I learn from my best man that the wounded officer has very cleverly
escaped the snares of Hymen. He showed the variegated young lady a
medical certificate that owing to the wound in his temple he was at
times mentally deranged and incapable of contracting a valid marriage.
An inspiration! I might have got a certificate too. An uncle of mine
drank himself to death, another uncle was extremely absent-minded (on
one occasion he put a lady's muff on his head in mistake for his hat),
an aunt of mine played a great deal on the piano, and used to put out
her tongue at gentlemen she did not like. And my ungovernable temper is
a very suspicious symptom.
But why do these great ideas always come too late? Why?
IN THE DARK
A FLY of medium size made its way into the nose of the assistant
procurator, Gagin. It may have been impelled by curiosity, or have got
there through frivolity or accident in the dark; anyway, the nose
resented the presence of a foreign body and gave the signal for a
sneeze. Gagin sneezed, sneezed impressively and so shrilly and loudly
that the bed shook and the springs creaked. Gagin's wife, Marya
Mihalovna, a full, plump, fair woman, started, too, and woke up. She
gazed into the darkness, sighed, and turned over on the other side. Five
minutes afterwards she turned over again and shut her eyes more firmly
but she could not get to sleep again. After sighing and tossing from
side to side for a time, she got up, crept over her husband, and putting
on her slippers, went to the window.
It was dark outside. She could see nothing but the outlines of the trees
and the roof of the stables. There was a faint pallor in the east, but
this pallor was beginning to be clouded over. There was perfect
stillness in the air wrapped in slumber and darkness. Even the watchman,
paid to disturb the stillness of night, was silent; even the
corncrake--the only wild creature of the feathered tribe that does not
shun the proximity of summer visitors--was silent.
The stillness was broken by Marya Mihalovna herself. Standing at the
window and gazing into the yard, she suddenly uttered a cry. She fancied
that from the flower garden with the gaunt, clipped poplar, a dark
figure was creeping towards the house. For the first minute she thought
it was a cow or a horse, then, rubbing her eyes, she distinguished
clearly the outlines of a man.
Then she fancied the dark figure approached the window of the kitchen
and, standing still a moment, apparently undecided, put one foot on the
window ledge and disappeared into the darkness of the window.
"A burglar!" flashed into her mind and a deathly pallor overspread her
face.
And in one instant her imagination had drawn the picture so dreaded by
lady visitors in country places--a burglar creeps into the kitchen, from
the kitchen into the dining-room . . . the silver in the cupboard . . .
next into the bedroom . . . an axe . . . the face of a brigand . . .
jewelry. . . . Her knees gave way under her and a shiver ran down her
back.
"Vassya!" she said, shaking her husband, "Basile! Vassily Prokovitch!
Ah! mercy on us, he might be dead! Wake up, Basile, I beseech you!"
"W-well?" grunted the assistant procurator, with a deep inward breath
and a munching sound.
"For God's sake, wake up! A burglar has got into the kitchen! I was
standing at the window looking out and someone got in at the window. He
will get into the dining-room next . . . the spoons are in the cupboard!
Basile! They broke into Mavra Yegorovna's last year."
"Wha--what's the matter?"
"Heavens! he does not understand. Do listen, you stupid! I tell you I've
just seen a man getting in at the kitchen window! Pelagea will be
frightened and . . . and the silver is in the cupboard!"
"Stuff and nonsense!"
"Basile, this is unbearable! I tell you of a real danger and you sleep
and grunt! What would you have? Would you have us robbed and murdered?"
The assistant procurator slowly got up and sat on the bed, filling the
air with loud yawns.
"Goodness knows what creatures women are!" he muttered. "Can't leave one
in peace even at night! To wake a man for such nonsense!"
"But, Basile, I swear I saw a man getting in at the window!"
"Well, what of it? Let him get in. . . . That's pretty sure to be
Pelagea's sweetheart, the fireman."
"What! what did you say?"
"I say it's Pelagea's fireman come to see her."
"Worse than ever!" shrieked Marya Mihalovna. "That's worse than a
burglar! I won't put up with cynicism in my house!"
"Hoity-toity! We are virtuous! . . . Won't put up with cynicism? As
though it were cynicism! What's the use of firing off those foreign
words? My dear girl, it's a thing that has happened ever since the world
began, sanctified by tradition. What's a fireman for if not to make love
to the cook?"
"No, Basile! It seems you don't know me! I cannot face the idea of such
a . . . such a . . . in my house. You must go this minute into the
kitchen and tell him to go away! This very minute! And to-morrow I'll
tell Pelagea that she must not dare to demean herself by such
proceedings! When I am dead you may allow immorality in your house, but
you shan't do it now! . . . Please go!"
"Damn it," grumbled Gagin, annoyed. "Consider with your microscopic
female brain, what am I to go for?"
"Basile, I shall faint! . . ."
Gagin cursed, put on his slippers, cursed again, and set off to the
kitchen. It was as dark as the inside of a barrel, and the assistant
procurator had to feel his way. He groped his way to the door of the
nursery and waked the nurse.
"Vassilissa," he said, "you took my dressing-gown to brush last
night--where is it?"
"I gave it to Pelagea to brush, sir."
"What carelessness! You take it away and don't put it back--now I've to
go without a dressing-gown!"
On reaching the kitchen, he made his way to the corner in which on a box
under a shelf of saucepans the cook slept.
"Pelagea," he said, feeling her shoulder and giving it a shake,
"Pelagea! Why are you pretending? You are not asleep! Who was it got in
at your window just now?"
"Mm . . . m . . . good morning! Got in at the window? Who could get in?"
"Oh come, it's no use your trying to keep it up! You'd better tell your
scamp to clear out while he can! Do you hear? He's no business to be
here!"
"Are you out of your senses, sir, bless you? Do you think I'd be such a
fool? Here one's running about all day long, never a minute to sit down
and then spoken to like this at night! Four roubles a month . . . and to
find my own tea and sugar and this is all the credit I get for it! I
used to live in a tradesman's house, and never met with such insult
there!"
"Come, come--no need to go over your grievances! This very minute your
grenadier must turn out! Do you understand?"
"You ought to be ashamed, sir," said Pelagea, and he could hear the
tears in her voice. "Gentlefolks . . . educated, and yet not a notion
that with our hard lot . . . in our life of toil"--she burst into tears.
"It's easy to insult us. There's no one to stand up for us."
"Come, come . . . I don't mind! Your mistress sent me. You may let a
devil in at the window for all I care!"
There was nothing left for the assistant procurator but to acknowledge
himself in the wrong and go back to his spouse.
"I say, Pelagea," he said, "you had my dressing-gown to brush. Where is
it?"
"Oh, I am so sorry, sir; I forgot to put it on your chair. It's hanging
on a peg near the stove."
Gagin felt for the dressing-gown by the stove, put it on, and went
quietly back to his room.
When her husband went out Marya Mihalovna got into bed and waited. For
the first three minutes her mind was at rest, but after that she began
to feel uneasy.
"What a long time he's gone," she thought. "It's all right if he is
there . . . that immoral man . . . but if it's a burglar?"
And again her imagination drew a picture of her husband going into the
dark kitchen . . . a blow with an axe . . . dying without uttering a
single sound . . . a pool of blood! . . .
Five minutes passed . . . five and a half . . . at last six. . . . A
cold sweat came out on her forehead.
"Basile!" she shrieked, "Basile!"
"What are you shouting for? I am here." She heard her husband's voice
and steps. "Are you being murdered?"
The assistant procurator went up to the bedstead and sat down on the
edge of it.
"There's nobody there at all," he said. "It was your fancy, you queer
creature. . . . You can sleep easy, your fool of a Pelagea is as
virtuous as her mistress. What a coward you are! What a . . . ."
And the deputy procurator began teasing his wife. He was wide awake now
and did not want to go to sleep again.
"You are a coward!" he laughed. "You'd better go to the doctor to-morrow
and tell him about your hallucinations. You are a neurotic!"
"What a smell of tar," said his wife--"tar or something . . . onion . . .
cabbage soup!"
"Y-yes! There is a smell . . . I am not sleepy. I say, I'll light the
candle. . . . Where are the matches? And, by the way, I'll show you the
photograph of the procurator of the Palace of Justice. He gave us all a
photograph when he said good-bye to us yesterday, with his autograph."
Gagin struck a match against the wall and lighted a candle. But before
he had moved a step from the bed to fetch the photographs he heard
behind him a piercing, heartrending shriek. Looking round, he saw his
wife's large eyes fastened upon him, full of amazement, horror, and
wrath. . . .
"You took your dressing-gown off in the kitchen?" she said, turning
pale.
"Why?"
"Look at yourself!"
The deputy procurator looked down at himself, and gasped.
Flung over his shoulders was not his dressing-gown, but the fireman's
overcoat. How had it come on his shoulders? While he was settling that
question, his wife's imagination was drawing another picture, awful and
impossible: darkness, stillness, whispering, and so on, and so on.
A PLAY
"PAVEL VASSILYEVITCH, there's a lady here, asking for you," Luka
announced. "She's been waiting a good hour. . . ."
Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady,
he frowned and said:
"Oh, damn her! Tell her I'm busy."
"She has been here five times already, Pavel Vassilyevitch. She says she
really must see you. . . . She's almost crying."
"H'm . . . very well, then, ask her into the study."
Without haste Pavel Vassilyevitch put on his coat, took a pen in one
hand, and a book in the other, and trying to look as though he were very
busy he went into the study. There the visitor was awaiting him--a large
stout lady with a red, beefy face, in spectacles. She looked very
respectable, and her dress was more than fashionable (she had on a
crinolette of four storeys and a high hat with a reddish bird in it). On
seeing him she turned up her eyes and folded her hands in supplication.
"You don't remember me, of course," she began in a high masculine tenor,
visibly agitated. "I . . . I have had the pleasure of meeting you at the
Hrutskys. . . . I am Mme. Murashkin. . . ."
"A. . . a . . . a . . . h'm . . . Sit down! What can I do for you?"
"You . . . you see . . . I . . . I . . ." the lady went on, sitting down
and becoming still more agitated. "You don't remember me. . . . I'm Mme.
Murashkin. . . . You see I'm a great admirer of your talent and always
read your articles with great enjoyment. . . . Don't imagine I'm
flattering you--God forbid!--I'm only giving honour where honour is due. .
. . I am always reading you . . . always! To some extent I am myself not
a stranger to literature-- that is, of course . . . I will not venture to
call myself an authoress, but . . . still I have added my little quota .
. . I have published at different times three stories for children. . .
. You have not read them, of course. . . . I have translated a good deal
and . . . and my late brother used to write for The Cause."
"To be sure . . . er--er--er----What can I do for you?"
"You see . . . (the lady cast down her eyes and turned redder) I know
your talents . . . your views, Pavel Vassilyevitch, and I have been
longing to learn your opinion, or more exactly . . . to ask your advice.
I must tell you I have perpetrated a play, my first-born --pardon pour
l'expression!--and before sending it to the Censor I should like above
all things to have your opinion on it."
Nervously, with the flutter of a captured bird, the lady fumbled in her
skirt and drew out a fat manuscript.
Pavel Vassilyevitch liked no articles but his own. When threatened with
the necessity of reading other people's, or listening to them, he felt
as though he were facing the cannon's mouth. Seeing the manuscript he
took fright and hastened to say:
"Very good, . . . leave it, . . . I'll read it."
"Pavel Vassilyevitch," the lady said languishingly, clasping her hands
and raising them in supplication, "I know you're busy. . . . Your every
minute is precious, and I know you're inwardly cursing me at this
moment, but . . . Be kind, allow me to read you my play . . . . Do be so
very sweet!"
"I should be delighted . . ." faltered Pavel Vassilyevitch; "but, Madam,
I'm . . . I'm very busy . . . . I'm . . . I'm obliged to set off this
minute."
"Pavel Vassilyevitch," moaned the lady and her eyes filled with tears,
"I'm asking a sacrifice! I am insolent, I am intrusive, but be
magnanimous. To-morrow I'm leaving for Kazan and I should like to know
your opinion to-day. Grant me half an hour of your attention . . . only
one half-hour . . . I implore you!"
Pavel Vassilyevitch was cotton-wool at core, and could not refuse. When
it seemed to him that the lady was about to burst into sobs and fall on
her knees, he was overcome with confusion and muttered helplessly.
"Very well; certainly . . . I will listen . . . I will give you half an
hour."
The lady uttered a shriek of joy, took off her hat and settling herself,
began to read. At first she read a scene in which a footman and a house
maid, tidying up a sumptuous drawing-room, talked at length about their
young lady, Anna Sergyevna, who was building a school and a hospital in
the village. When the footman had left the room, the maidservant
pronounced a monologue to the effect that education is light and
ignorance is darkness; then Mme. Murashkin brought the footman back into
the drawing-room and set him uttering a long monologue concerning his
master, the General, who disliked his daughter's views, intended to
marry her to a rich kammer junker, and held that the salvation of the
people lay in unadulterated ignorance. Then, when the servants had left
the stage, the young lady herself appeared and informed the audience
that she had not slept all night, but had been thinking of Valentin
Ivanovitch, who was the son of a poor teacher and assisted his sick
father gratuitously. Valentin had studied all the sciences, but had no
faith in friendship nor in love; he had no object in life and longed for
death, and therefore she, the young lady, must save him.
Pavel Vassilyevitch listened, and thought with yearning anguish of his
sofa. He scanned the lady viciously, felt her masculine tenor thumping
on his eardrums, understood nothing, and thought:
"The devil sent you . . . as though I wanted to listen to your tosh!
It's not my fault you've written a play, is it? My God! what a thick
manuscript! What an infliction!"
Pavel Vassilyevitch glanced at the wall where the portrait of his wife
was hanging and remembered that his wife had asked him to buy and bring
to their summer cottage five yards of tape, a pound of cheese, and some
tooth-powder.
"I hope I've not lost the pattern of that tape," he thought, "where did
I put it? I believe it's in my blue reefer jacket. . . . Those wretched
flies have covered her portrait with spots already, I must tell Olga to
wash the glass. . . . She's reading the twelfth scene, so we must soon
be at the end of the first act. As though inspiration were possible in
this heat and with such a mountain of flesh, too! Instead of writing
plays she'd much better eat cold vinegar hash and sleep in a cellar. . .
."
"You don't think that monologue's a little too long?" the lady asked
suddenly, raising her eyes.
Pavel Vassilyevitch had not heard the monologue, and said in a voice as
guilty as though not the lady but he had written that monologue:
"No, no, not at all. It's very nice. . . ."
The lady beamed with happiness and continued reading:
ANNA: You are consumed by analysis. Too early you have ceased to live in
the heart and have put your faith in the intellect.
VALENTIN: What do you mean by the heart? That is a concept of anatomy.
As a conventional term for what are called the feelings, I do not admit
it.
ANNA (confused): And love? Surely that is not merely a product of the
association of ideas? Tell me frankly, have you ever loved?
VALENTIN (bitterly): Let us not touch on old wounds not yet healed. (A
pause.) What are you thinking of?
ANNA: I believe you are unhappy.
During the sixteenth scene Pavel Vassilyevitch yawned, and accidently
made with his teeth the sound dogs make when they catch a fly. He was
dismayed at this unseemly sound, and to cover it assumed an expression
of rapt attention.
"Scene seventeen! When will it end?" he thought. "Oh, my God! If this
torture is prolonged another ten minutes I shall shout for the police.
It's insufferable."
But at last the lady began reading more loudly and more rapidly, and
finally raising her voice she read "Curtain."
Pavel Vassilyevitch uttered a faint sigh and was about to get up, but
the lady promptly turned the page and went on reading.
ACT II.--Scene, a village street. On right, School. On left, Hospital.
Villagers, male and female, sitting on the hospital steps.
"Excuse me," Pavel Vassilyevitch broke in, "how many acts are there?"
"Five," answered the lady, and at once, as though fearing her audience
might escape her, she went on rapidly.
VALENTIN is looking out of the schoolhouse window. In the background
Villagers can be seen taking their goods to the Inn.
Like a man condemned to be executed and convinced of the impossibility
of a reprieve, Pavel Vassilyevitch gave up expecting the end, abandoned
all hope, and simply tried to prevent his eyes from closing, and to
retain an expression of attention on his face. . . . The future when the
lady would finish her play and depart seemed to him so remote that he
did not even think of it.
"Trooo--too--too--too . . ." the lady's voice sounded in his ears.
"Troo--too--too . . . sh--sh--sh--sh . . ."
"I forgot to take my soda," he thought. "What am I thinking about? Oh--my
soda. . . . Most likely I shall have a bilious attack. . . . It's
extraordinary, Smirnovsky swills vodka all day long and yet he never has
a bilious attack. . . . There's a bird settled on the window . . . a
sparrow. . . ."
Pavel Vassilyevitch made an effort to unglue his strained and closing
eyelids, yawned without opening his mouth, and stared at Mme. Murashkin.
She grew misty and swayed before his eyes, turned into a triangle and
her head pressed against the ceiling. . . .
VALENTIN No, let me depart.
ANNA (in dismay): Why?
VALENTIN (aside): She has turned pale! (To her) Do not force me to
explain. Sooner would I die than you should know the reason.
ANNA (after a pause): You cannot go away. . . .
The lady began to swell, swelled to an immense size, and melted into the
dingy atmosphere of the study--only her moving mouth was visible; then
she suddenly dwindled to the size of a bottle, swayed from side to side,
and with the table retreated to the further end of the room . . .
VALENTIN (holding ANNA in his arms): You have given me new life! You
have shown me an object to live for! You have renewed me as the Spring
rain renews the awakened earth! But . . . it is too late, too late! The
ill that gnaws at my heart is beyond cure. . . .
Pavel Vassilyevitch started and with dim and smarting eyes stared at the
reading lady; for a minute he gazed fixedly as though understanding
nothing. . . .
SCENE XI.--The same. The BARON and the POLICE INSPECTOR with assistants.
VALENTIN: Take me!
ANNA: I am his! Take me too! Yes, take me too! I love him, I love him
more than life!
BARON: Anna Sergyevna, you forget that you are ruining your father . . .
.
The lady began swelling again. . . . Looking round him wildly Pavel
Vassilyevitch got up, yelled in a deep, unnatural voice, snatched from
the table a heavy paper-weight, and beside himself, brought it down with
all his force on the authoress's head. . . .
"Give me in charge, I've killed her!" he said to the maidservant who ran
in, a minute later.
The jury acquitted him.
A MYSTERY
ON the evening of Easter Sunday the actual Civil Councillor, Navagin, on
his return from paying calls, picked up the sheet of paper on which
visitors had inscribed their names in the hall, and went with it into
his study. After taking off his outer garments and drinking some seltzer
water, he settled himself comfortably on a couch and began reading the
signatures in the list. When his eyes reached the middle of the long
list of signatures, he started, gave an ejaculation of astonishment and
snapped his fingers, while his face expressed the utmost perplexity.
"Again!" he said, slapping his knee. "It's extraordinary! Again! Again
there is the signature of that fellow, goodness knows who he is!
Fedyukov! Again!"
Among the numerous signatures on the paper was the signature of a
certain Fedyukov. Who the devil this Fedyukov was, Navagin had not a
notion. He went over in his memory all his acquaintances, relations and
subordinates in the service, recalled his remote past but could
recollect no name like Fedyukov. What was so strange was that this
incognito, Fedyukov, had signed his name regularly every Christmas and
Easter for the last thirteen years. Neither Navagin, his wife, nor his
house porter knew who he was, where he came from or what he was like.
"It's extraordinary!" Navagin thought in perplexity, as he paced about
the study. "It's strange and incomprehensible! It's like sorcery!"
"Call the porter here!" he shouted.
"It's devilish queer! But I will find out who he is!"
"I say, Grigory," he said, addressing the porter as he entered, "that
Fedyukov has signed his name again! Did you see him?"
"No, your Excellency."
"Upon my word, but he has signed his name! So he must have been in the
hall. Has he been?"
"No, he hasn't, your Excellency."
"How could he have signed his name without being there?"
"I can't tell."
"Who is to tell, then? You sit gaping there in the hall. Try and
remember, perhaps someone you didn't know came in? Think a minute!"
"No, your Excellency, there has been no one I didn't know. Our clerks
have been, the baroness came to see her Excellency, the priests have
been with the Cross, and there has been no one else. . . ."
"Why, he was invisible when he signed his name, then, was he?"
"I can't say: but there has been no Fedyukov here. That I will swear
before the holy image. . . ."
"It's queer! It's incomprehensible! It's ex-traordinary!" mused Navagin.
"It's positively ludicrous. A man has been signing his name here for
thirteen years and you can't find out who he is. Perhaps it's a joke?
Perhaps some clerk writes that name as well as his own for fun."
And Navagin began examining Fedyukov's signature.
The bold, florid signature in the old-fashioned style with twirls and
flourishes was utterly unlike the handwriting of the other signatures.
It was next below the signature of Shtutchkin, the provincial secretary,
a scared, timorous little man who would certainly have died of fright if
he had ventured upon such an impudent joke.
"The mysterious Fedyukov has signed his name again!" said Navagin, going
in to see his wife. "Again I fail to find out who he is."