comprehensible or incomprehensible, she had a very simple explanation.
"There's nothing extraordinary about it," she said. "You don't believe
it, of course, but I have said it already and I say it again: there is a
great deal in the world that is supernatural, which our feeble intellect
can never grasp. I am convinced that this Fedyukov is a spirit who has a
sympathy for you . . . If I were you, I would call him up and ask him
what he wants."
"Nonsense, nonsense!"
Navagin was free from superstitions, but the phenomenon which interested
him was so mysterious that all sorts of uncanny devilry intruded into
his mind against his will. All the evening he was imagining that the
incognito Fedyukov was the spirit of some long-dead clerk, who had been
discharged from the service by Navagin's ancestors and was now revenging
himself on their descendant; or perhaps it was the kinsman of some petty
official dismissed by Navagin himself, or of a girl seduced by him. . .
.
All night Navagin dreamed of a gaunt old clerk in a shabby uniform, with
a face as yellow as a lemon, hair that stood up like a brush, and
pewtery eyes; the clerk said something in a sepulchral voice and shook a
bony finger at him. And Navagin almost had an attack of inflammation of
the brain.
For a fortnight he was silent and gloomy and kept walking up and down
and thinking. In the end he overcame his sceptical vanity, and going
into his wife's room he said in a hollow voice:
"Zina, call up Fedyukov!"
The spiritualistic lady was delighted; she sent for a sheet of cardboard
and a saucer, made her husband sit down beside her, and began upon the
magic rites.
Fedyukov did not keep them waiting long. . . .
"What do you want?" asked Navagin.
"Repent," answered the saucer.
"What were you on earth?"
"A sinner. . . ."
"There, you see!" whispered his wife, "and you did not believe!"
Navagin conversed for a long time with Fedyukov, and then called up
Napoleon, Hannibal, Askotchensky, his aunt Klavdya Zaharovna, and they
all gave him brief but correct answers full of deep significance. He was
busy with the saucer for four hours, and fell asleep soothed and happy
that he had become acquainted with a mysterious world that was new to
him. After that he studied spiritualism every day, and at the office,
informed the clerks that there was a great deal in nature that was
supernatural and marvellous to which our men of science ought to have
turned their attention long ago.
Hypnotism, mediumism, bishopism, spiritualism, the fourth dimension, and
other misty notions took complete possession of him, so that for whole
days at a time, to the great delight of his wife, he read books on
spiritualism or devoted himself to the saucer, table-turning, and
discussions of supernatural phenomena. At his instigation all his clerks
took up spiritualism, too, and with such ardour that the old managing
clerk went out of his mind and one day sent a telegram: "Hell.
Government House. I feel that I am turning into an evil spirit. What's
to be done? Reply paid. Vassily Krinolinsky."
After reading several hundreds of treatises on spiritualism Navagin had
a strong desire to write something himself. For five months he sat
composing, and in the end had written a huge monograph, entitled: My
Opinion. When he had finished this essay he determined to send it to a
spiritualist journal.
The day on which it was intended to despatch it to the journal was a
very memorable one for him. Navagin remembers that on that never-to-be-
forgotten day the secretary who had made a fair copy of his article and
the sacristan of the parish who had been sent for on business were in
his study. Navagin's face was beaming. He looked lovingly at his
creation, felt between his fingers how thick it was, and with a happy
smile said to the secretary:
"I propose, Filipp Sergeyitch, to send it registered. It will be safer.
. . ." And raising his eyes to the sacristan, he said: "I have sent for
you on business, my good man. I am putting my youngest son to the high
school and I must have a certificate of baptism; only could you let me
have it quickly?"
"Very good, your Excellency!" said the sacristan, bowing. "Very good, I
understand. . . ."
"Can you let me have it by to-morrow?"
"Very well, your Excellency, set your mind at rest! To-morrow it shall
be ready! Will you send someone to the church to-morrow before evening
service? I shall be there. Bid him ask for Fedyukov. I am always there.
. . ."
"What!" cried the general, turning pale.
"Fedyukov."
"You, . . . you are Fedyukov?" asked Navagin, looking at him with wide-
open eyes.
"Just so, Fedyukov."
"You. . . . you signed your name in my hall?"
"Yes . . ." the sacristan admitted, and was overcome with confusion.
"When we come with the Cross, your Excellency, to grand gentlemen's
houses I always sign my name. . . . I like doing it. . . . Excuse me,
but when I see the list of names in the hall I feel an impulse to sign
mine. . . ."
In dumb stupefaction, understanding nothing, hearing nothing, Navagin
paced about his study. He touched the curtain over the door, three times
waved his hands like a jeune premier in a ballet when he sees her, gave
a whistle and a meaningless smile, and pointed with his finger into
space.
"So I will send off the article at once, your Excellency," said the
secretary.
These words roused Navagin from his stupour. He looked blankly at the
secretary and the sacristan, remembered, and stamping, his foot
irritably, screamed in a high, breaking tenor:
"Leave me in peace! Lea-eave me in peace, I tell you! What you want of
me I don't understand."
The secretary and the sacristan went out of the study and reached the
street while he was still stamping and shouting:
"Leave me in peace! What you want of me I don't understand. Lea-eave me
in peace!"
STRONG IMPRESSIONS
IT happened not so long ago in the Moscow circuit court. The jurymen,
left in the court for the night, before lying down to sleep fell into
conversation about strong impressions. They were led to this discussion
by recalling a witness who, by his own account, had begun to stammer and
had gone grey owing to a terrible moment. The jurymen decided that
before going to sleep, each one of them should ransack among his
memories and tell something that had happened to him. Man's life is
brief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast that there have been
terrible moments in his past.
One juryman told the story of how he was nearly drowned; another
described how, in a place where there were neither doctors nor chemists,
he had one night poisoned his own son through giving him zinc vitriol by
mistake for soda. The child did not die, but the father nearly went out
of his mind. A third, a man not old but in bad health, told how he had
twice attempted to commit suicide: the first time by shooting himself
and the second time by throwing himself before a train.
The fourth, a foppishly dressed, fat little man, told us the following
story:
"I was not more than twenty-two or twenty-three when I fell head over
ears in love with my present wife and made her an offer. Now I could
with pleasure thrash myself for my early marriage, but at the time, I
don't know what would have become of me if Natasha had refused me. My
love was absolutely the real thing, just as it is described in
novels--frantic, passionate, and so on. My happiness overwhelmed me and I
did not know how to get away from it, and I bored my father and my
friends and the servants, continually talking about the fervour of my
passion. Happy people are the most sickening bores. I was a fearful
bore; I feel ashamed of it even now. . . .
"Among my friends there was in those days a young man who was beginning
his career as a lawyer. Now he is a lawyer known all over Russia; in
those days he was only just beginning to gain recognition and was not
rich and famous enough to be entitled to cut an old friend when he met
him. I used to go and see him once or twice a week. We used to loll on
sofas and begin discussing philosophy.
"One day I was lying on his sofa, arguing that there was no more
ungrateful profession than that of a lawyer. I tried to prove that as
soon as the examination of witnesses is over the court can easily
dispense with both the counsels for the prosecution and for the defence,
because they are neither of them necessary and are only in the way. If a
grown-up juryman, morally and mentally sane, is convinced that the
ceiling is white, or that Ivanov is guilty, to struggle with that
conviction and to vanquish it is beyond the power of any Demosthenes.
Who can convince me that I have a red moustache when I know that it is
black? As I listen to an orator I may perhaps grow sentimental and weep,
but my fundamental conviction, based for the most part on unmistakable
evidence and fact, is not changed in the least. My lawyer maintained
that I was young and foolish and that I was talking childish nonsense.
In his opinion, for one thing, an obvious fact becomes still more
obvious through light being thrown upon it by conscientious, well-
informed people; for another, talent is an elemental force, a hurricane
capable of turning even stones to dust, let alone such trifles as the
convictions of artisans and merchants of the second guild. It is as hard
for human weakness to struggle against talent as to look at the sun
without winking, or to stop the wind. One simple mortal by the power of
the word turns thousands of convinced savages to Christianity; Odysseus
was a man of the firmest convictions, but he succumbed to the Syrens,
and so on. All history consists of similar examples, and in life they
are met with at every turn; and so it is bound to be, or the intelligent
and talented man would have no superiority over the stupid and
incompetent.
"I stuck to my point, and went on maintaining that convictions are
stronger than any talent, though, frankly speaking, I could not have
defined exactly what I meant by conviction or what I meant by talent.
Most likely I simply talked for the sake of talking.
"'Take you, for example,' said the lawyer. 'You are convinced at this
moment that your fiancée is an angel and that there is not a man in the
whole town happier than you. But I tell you: ten or twenty minutes would
be enough for me to make you sit down to this table and write to your
fiancée, breaking off your engagement.
"I laughed.
"'Don't laugh, I am speaking seriously,' said my friend. 'If I choose,
in twenty minutes you will be happy at the thought that you need not get
married. Goodness knows what talent I have, but you are not one of the
strong sort.'
"'Well, try it on!' said I.
"'No, what for? I am only telling you this. You are a good boy and it
would be cruel to subject you to such an experiment. And besides I am
not in good form to-day.'
"We sat down to supper. The wine and the thought of Natasha, my beloved,
flooded my whole being with youth and happiness. My happiness was so
boundless that the lawyer sitting opposite to me with his green eyes
seemed to me an unhappy man, so small, so grey. . . .
"'Do try!' I persisted. 'Come, I entreat you!
"The lawyer shook his head and frowned. Evidently I was beginning to
bore him.
"'I know,' he said, 'after my experiment you will say, thank you, and
will call me your saviour; but you see I must think of your fiancée
too. She loves you; your jilting her would make her suffer. And what a
charming creature she is! I envy you.'
"The lawyer sighed, sipped his wine, and began talking of how charming
my Natasha was. He had an extraordinary gift of description. He could
knock you off a regular string of words about a woman's eyelashes or her
little finger. I listened to him with relish.
"'I have seen a great many women in my day,' he said, 'but I give you my
word of honour, I speak as a friend, your Natasha Andreyevna is a pearl,
a rare girl. Of course she has her defects--many of them, in fact, if you
like--but still she is fascinating.'
"And the lawyer began talking of my fiancée's defects. Now I understand
very well that he was talking of women in general, of their weak points
in general, but at the time it seemed to me that he was talking only of
Natasha. He went into ecstasies over her turn-up nose, her shrieks, her
shrill laugh, her airs and graces, precisely all the things I so
disliked in her. All that was, to his thinking, infinitely sweet,
graceful, and feminine.
"Without my noticing it, he quickly passed from his enthusiastic tone to
one of fatherly admonition, and then to a light and derisive one. . . .
There was no presiding judge and no one to check the diffusiveness of
the lawyer. I had not time to open my mouth, besides, what could I say?
What my friend said was not new, it was what everyone has known for
ages, and the whole venom lay not in what he said, but in the damnable
form he put it in. It really was beyond anything!
"As I listened to him then I learned that the same word has thousands of
shades of meaning according to the tone in which it is pronounced, and
the form which is given to the sentence. Of course I cannot reproduce
the tone or the form; I can only say that as I listened to my friend and
walked up and down the room, I was moved to resentment, indignation, and
contempt together with him. I even believed him when with tears in his
eyes he informed me that I was a great man, that I was worthy of a
better fate, that I was destined to achieve something in the future
which marriage would hinder!
"'My friend!' he exclaimed, pressing my hand. 'I beseech you, I adjure
you: stop before it is too late. Stop! May Heaven preserve you from this
strange, cruel mistake! My friend, do not ruin your youth!'
"Believe me or not, as you choose, but the long and the short of it was
that I sat down to the table and wrote to my fiancée, breaking off the
engagement. As I wrote I felt relieved that it was not yet too late to
rectify my mistake. Sealing the letter, I hastened out into the street
to post it. The lawyer himself came with me.
"'Excellent! Capital!' he applauded me as my letter to Natasha
disappeared into the darkness of the box. 'I congratulate you with all
my heart. I am glad for you.'
"After walking a dozen paces with me the lawyer went on:
"'Of course, marriage has its good points. I, for instance, belong to
the class of people to whom marriage and home life is everything.'
"And he proceeded to describe his life, and lay before me all the
hideousness of a solitary bachelor existence.
"He spoke with enthusiasm of his future wife, of the sweets of ordinary
family life, and was so eloquent, so sincere in his ecstasies that by
the time we had reached his door, I was in despair.
"'What are you doing to me, you horrible man?' I said, gasping. 'You
have ruined me! Why did you make me write that cursed letter? I love
her, I love her!'
"And I protested my love. I was horrified at my conduct which now seemed
to me wild and senseless. It is impossible, gentlemen, to imagine a more
violent emotion than I experienced at that moment. Oh, what I went
through, what I suffered! If some kind person had thrust a revolver into
my hand at that moment, I should have put a bullet through my brains
with pleasure.
"'Come, come . . .' said the lawyer, slapping me on the shoulder, and he
laughed. 'Give over crying. The letter won't reach your fiancée. It was
not you who wrote the address but I, and I muddled it so they won't be
able to make it out at the post-office. It will be a lesson to you not
to argue about what you don't understand.'
"Now, gentlemen, I leave it to the next to speak."
The fifth juryman settled himself more comfortably, and had just opened
his mouth to begin his story when we heard the clock strike on Spassky
Tower.
"Twelve . . ." one of the jurymen counted. "And into which class,
gentlemen, would you put the emotions that are being experienced now by
the man we are trying? He, that murderer, is spending the night in a
convict cell here in the court, sitting or lying down and of course not
sleeping, and throughout the whole sleepless night listening to that
chime. What is he thinking of? What visions are haunting him?"
And the jurymen all suddenly forgot about strong impressions; what their
companion who had once written a letter to his Natasha had suffered
seemed unimportant, even not amusing; and no one said anything more;
they began quietly and in silence lying down to sleep.
DRUNK
A MANUFACTURER called Frolov, a handsome dark man with a round beard,
and a soft, velvety expression in his eyes, and Almer, his lawyer, an
elderly man with a big rough head, were drinking in one of the public
rooms of a restaurant on the outskirts of the town. They had both come
to the restaurant straight from a ball and so were wearing dress coats
and white ties. Except them and the waiters at the door there was not a
soul in the room; by Frolov's orders no one else was admitted.
They began by drinking a big wine-glass of vodka and eating oysters.
"Good!" said Almer. "It was I brought oysters into fashion for the first
course, my boy. The vodka burns and stings your throat and you have a
voluptuous sensation in your throat when you swallow an oyster. Don't
you?"
A dignified waiter with a shaven upper lip and grey whiskers put a
sauceboat on the table.
"What's that you are serving?" asked Frolov.
"Sauce Provençale for the herring, sir. . . ."
"What! is that the way to serve it?" shouted Frolov, not looking into
the sauceboat. "Do you call that sauce? You don't know how to wait, you
blockhead!"
Frolov's velvety eyes flashed. He twisted a corner of the table-cloth
round his finger, made a slight movement, and the dishes, the
candlesticks, and the bottles, all jingling and clattering, fell with a
crash on the floor.
The waiters, long accustomed to pot-house catastrophes, ran up to the
table and began picking up the fragments with grave and unconcerned
faces, like surgeons at an operation.
"How well you know how to manage them!" said Almer, and he laughed. "But
. . . move a little away from the table or you will step in the
caviare."
"Call the engineer here!" cried Frolov.
This was the name given to a decrepit, doleful old man who really had
once been an engineer and very well off; he had squandered all his
property and towards the end of his life had got into a restaurant where
he looked after the waiters and singers and carried out various
commissions relating to the fair sex. Appearing at the summons, he put
his head on one side respectfully.
"Listen, my good man," Frolov said, addressing him. "What's the meaning
of this disorder? How queerly you fellows wait! Don't you know that I
don't like it? Devil take you, I shall give up coming to you!"
"I beg you graciously to excuse it, Alexey Semyonitch!" said the
engineer, laying his hand on his heart. "I will take steps immediately,
and your slightest wishes shall be carried out in the best and speediest
way."
"Well, that'll do, you can go. . . ."
The engineer bowed, staggered back, still doubled up, and disappeared
through the doorway with a final flash of the false diamonds on his
shirt-front and fingers.
The table was laid again. Almer drank red wine and ate with relish some
sort of bird served with truffles, and ordered a matelote of eelpouts
and a sterlet with its tail in its mouth. Frolov only drank vodka and
ate nothing but bread. He rubbed his face with his open hands, scowled,
and was evidently out of humour. Both were silent. There was a
stillness. Two electric lights in opaque shades flickered and hissed as
though they were angry. The gypsy girls passed the door, softly humming.
"One drinks and is none the merrier," said Frolov. "The more I pour into
myself, the more sober I become. Other people grow festive with vodka,
but I suffer from anger, disgusting thoughts, sleeplessness. Why is it,
old man, that people don't invent some other pleasure besides
drunkenness and debauchery? It's really horrible!"
"You had better send for the gypsy girls."
"Confound them!"
The head of an old gypsy woman appeared in the door from the passage.
"Alexey Semyonitch, the gypsies are asking for tea and brandy," said the
old woman. "May we order it?"
"Yes," answered Frolov. "You know they get a percentage from the
restaurant keeper for asking the visitors to treat them. Nowadays you
can't even believe a man when he asks for vodka. The people are all
mean, vile, spoilt. Take these waiters, for instance. They have
countenances like professors, and grey heads; they get two hundred
roubles a month, they live in houses of their own and send their girls
to the high school, but you may swear at them and give yourself airs as
much as you please. For a rouble the engineer will gulp down a whole pot
of mustard and crow like a cock. On my honour, if one of them would take
offence I would make him a present of a thousand roubles."
"What's the matter with you?" said Almer, looking at him with surprise.
"Whence this melancholy? You are red in the face, you look like a wild
animal. . . . What's the matter with you?"
"It's horrid. There's one thing I can't get out of my head. It seems as
though it is nailed there and it won't come out."
A round little old man, buried in fat and completely bald, wearing a
short reefer jacket and lilac waistcoat and carrying a guitar, walked
into the room. He made an idiotic face, drew himself up, and saluted
like a soldier.
"Ah, the parasite!" said Frolov, "let me introduce him, he has made his
fortune by grunting like a pig. Come here!" He poured vodka, wine, and
brandy into a glass, sprinkled pepper and salt into it, mixed it all up
and gave it to the parasite. The latter tossed it off and smacked his
lips with gusto.
"He's accustomed to drink a mess so that pure wine makes him sick," said
Frolov. "Come, parasite, sit down and sing."
The old man sat down, touched the strings with his fat fingers, and
began singing:
"Neetka, neetka, Margareetka. . . ."
After drinking champagne Frolov was drunk. He thumped with his fist on
the table and said:
"Yes, there's something that sticks in my head! It won't give me a
minute's peace!"
"Why, what is it?"
"I can't tell you. It's a secret. It's something so private that I could
only speak of it in my prayers. But if you like . . . as a sign of
friendship, between ourselves . . . only mind, to no one, no, no, no, .
. . I'll tell you, it will ease my heart, but for God's sake . . .
listen and forget it. . . ."
Frolov bent down to Almer and for a minute breathed in his ear.
"I hate my wife!" he brought out.
The lawyer looked at him with surprise.
"Yes, yes, my wife, Marya Mihalovna," Frolov muttered, flushing red. "I
hate her and that's all about it."
"What for?"
"I don't know myself! I've only been married two years. I married as you
know for love, and now I hate her like a mortal enemy, like this
parasite here, saving your presence. And there is no cause, no sort of
cause! When she sits by me, eats, or says anything, my whole soul boils,
I can scarcely restrain myself from being rude to her. It's something
one can't describe. To leave her or tell her the truth is utterly
impossible because it would be a scandal, and living with her is worse
than hell for me. I can't stay at home! I spend my days at business and
in the restaurants and spend my nights in dissipation. Come, how is one
to explain this hatred? She is not an ordinary woman, but handsome,
clever, quiet."
The old man stamped his foot and began singing:
"I went a walk with a captain bold, And in his ear my secrets told."
"I must own I always thought that Marya Mihalovna was not at all the
right person for you," said Almer after a brief silence, and he heaved a
sigh.