the commercial school myself, I have been to Paris three times. I am not
cleverer than you, of course, but I am no more foolish than my wife. No,
brother, education is not the sore point. Let me tell you how all the
trouble began. It began with my suddenly fancying that she had married
me not from love, but for the sake of my money. This idea took
possession of my brain. I have done all I could think of, but the cursed
thing sticks! And to make it worse my wife was overtaken with a passion
for luxury. Getting into a sack of gold after poverty, she took to
flinging it in all directions. She went quite off her head, and was so
carried away that she used to get through twenty thousand every month.
And I am a distrustful man. I don't believe in anyone, I suspect
everybody. And the more friendly you are to me the greater my torment. I
keep fancying I am being flattered for my money. I trust no one! I am a
difficult man, my boy, very difficult!"
Frolov emptied his glass at one gulp and went on.
"But that's all nonsense," he said. "One never ought to speak of it.
It's stupid. I am tipsy and I have been chattering, and now you are
looking at me with lawyer's eyes--glad you know some one else's secret.
Well, well! . . . Let us drop this conversation. Let us drink! I say,"
he said, addressing a waiter, "is Mustafa here? Fetch him in!"
Shortly afterwards there walked into the room a little Tatar boy, aged
about twelve, wearing a dress coat and white gloves.
"Come here!" Frolov said to him. "Explain to us the following fact:
there was a time when you Tatars conquered us and took tribute from us,
but now you serve us as waiters and sell dressing-gowns. How do you
explain such a change?"
Mustafa raised his eyebrows and said in a shrill voice, with a sing-song
intonation: "The mutability of destiny!"
Almer looked at his grave face and went off into peals of laughter.
"Well, give him a rouble!" said Frolov. "He is making his fortune out of
the mutability of destiny. He is only kept here for the sake of those
two words. Drink, Mustafa! You will make a gre-eat rascal! I mean it is
awful how many of your sort are toadies hanging about rich men. The
number of these peaceful bandits and robbers is beyond all reckoning!
Shouldn't we send for the gypsies now? Eh? Fetch the gypsies along!"
The gypsies, who had been hanging about wearily in the corridors for a
long time, burst with whoops into the room, and a wild orgy began.
"Drink!" Frolov shouted to them. "Drink! Seed of Pharaoh! Sing! A-a-ah!"
"In the winter time . . . o-o-ho! . . . the sledge was flying . . ."
The gypsies sang, whistled, danced. In the frenzy which sometimes takes
possession of spoilt and very wealthy men, "broad natures," Frolov began
to play the fool. He ordered supper and champagne for the gypsies, broke
the shade of the electric light, shied bottles at the pictures and
looking-glasses, and did it all apparently without the slightest
enjoyment, scowling and shouting irritably, with contempt for the
people, with an expression of hatred in his eyes and his manners. He
made the engineer sing a solo, made the bass singers drink a mixture of
wine, vodka, and oil.
At six o'clock they handed him the bill.
"Nine hundred and twenty-five roubles, forty kopecks," said Almer, and
shrugged his shoulders. "What's it for? No, wait, we must go into it!"
"Stop!" muttered Frolov, pulling out his pocket-book. "Well! . . . let
them rob me. That's what I'm rich for, to be robbed! . . . You can't get
on without parasites! . . . You are my lawyer. You get six thousand a
year out of me and what for? But excuse me, . . . I don't know what I am
saying."
As he was returning home with Almer, Frolov murmured:
"Going home is awful to me! Yes! . . . There isn't a human being I can
open my soul to. . . . They are all robbers . . . traitors . . . . Oh,
why did I tell you my secret? Yes . . . why? Tell me why?"
At the entrance to his house, he craned forward towards Almer and,
staggering, kissed him on the lips, having the old Moscow habit of
kissing indiscriminately on every occasion.
"Good-bye . . . I am a difficult, hateful man," he said. "A horrid,
drunken, shameless life. You are a well-educated, clever man, but you
only laugh and drink with me . . . there's no help from any of you. . .
. But if you were a friend to me, if you were an honest man, in reality
you ought to have said to me: 'Ugh, you vile, hateful man! You
reptile!'"
"Come, come," Almer muttered, "go to bed."
"There is no help from you; the only hope is that, when I am in the
country in the summer, I may go out into the fields and a storm come on
and the thunder may strike me dead on the spot. . . . Good-bye."
Frolov kissed Almer once more and muttering and dropping asleep as he
walked, began mounting the stairs, supported by two footmen.
THE MARSHAL'S WIDOW
ON the first of February every year, St. Trifon's day, there is an
extraordinary commotion on the estate of Madame Zavzyatov, the widow of
Trifon Lvovitch, the late marshal of the district. On that day, the
nameday of the deceased marshal, the widow Lyubov Petrovna has a requiem
service celebrated in his memory, and after the requiem a thanksgiving
to the Lord. The whole district assembles for the service. There you
will see Hrumov the present marshal, Marfutkin, the president of the
Zemstvo, Potrashkov, the permanent member of the Rural Board, the two
justices of the peace of the district, the police captain, Krinolinov,
two police-superintendents, the district doctor, Dvornyagin, smelling of
iodoform, all the landowners, great and small, and so on. There are
about fifty people assembled in all.
Precisely at twelve o'clock, the visitors, with long faces, make their
way from all the rooms to the big hall. There are carpets on the floor
and their steps are noiseless, but the solemnity of the occasion makes
them instinctively walk on tip-toe, holding out their hands to balance
themselves. In the hall everything is already prepared. Father Yevmeny,
a little old man in a high faded cap, puts on his black vestments.
Konkordiev, the deacon, already in his vestments, and as red as a crab,
is noiselessly turning over the leaves of his missal and putting slips
of paper in it. At the door leading to the vestibule, Luka, the
sacristan, puffing out his cheeks and making round eyes, blows up the
censer. The hall is gradually filled with bluish transparent smoke and
the smell of incense.
Gelikonsky, the elementary schoolmaster, a young man with big pimples on
his frightened face, wearing a new greatcoat like a sack, carries round
wax candles on a silver-plated tray. The hostess, Lyubov Petrovna,
stands in the front by a little table with a dish of funeral rice on it,
and holds her handkerchief in readiness to her face. There is a profound
stillness, broken from time to time by sighs. Everybody has a long,
solemn face. . . .
The requiem service begins. The blue smoke curls up from the censer and
plays in the slanting sunbeams, the lighted candles faintly splutter.
The singing, at first harsh and deafening, soon becomes quiet and
musical as the choir gradually adapt themselves to the acoustic
conditions of the rooms. . . . The tunes are all mournful and sad. . . .
The guests are gradually brought to a melancholy mood and grow pensive.
Thoughts of the brevity of human life, of mutability, of worldly vanity
stray through their brains. . . . They recall the deceased Zavzyatov, a
thick-set, red-cheeked man who used to drink off a bottle of champagne
at one gulp and smash looking-glasses with his forehead. And when they
sing "With Thy Saints, O Lord," and the sobs of their hostess are
audible, the guests shift uneasily from one foot to the other. The more
emotional begin to feel a tickling in their throat and about their
eyelids. Marfutkin, the president of the Zemstvo, to stifle the
unpleasant feeling, bends down to the police captain's ear and whispers:
"I was at Ivan Fyodoritch's yesterday. . . . Pyotr Petrovitch and I took
all the tricks, playing no trumps. . . . Yes, indeed. . . . Olga
Andreyevna was so exasperated that her false tooth fell out of her
mouth."
But at last the "Eternal Memory" is sung. Gelikonsky respectfully takes
away the candles, and the memorial service is over. Thereupon there
follows a momentary commotion; there is a changing of vestments and a
thanksgiving service. After the thanksgiving, while Father Yevmeny is
disrobing, the visitors rub their hands and cough, while their hostess
tells some anecdote of the good-heartedness of the deceased Trifon
Lvovitch.
"Pray come to lunch, friends," she says, concluding her story with a
sigh.
The visitors, trying not to push or tread on each other's feet, hasten
into the dining-room. . . . There the luncheon is awaiting them. The
repast is so magnificent that the deacon Konkordiev thinks it his duty
every year to fling up his hands as he looks at it and, shaking his head
in amazement, say:
"Supernatural! It's not so much like human fare, Father Yevmeny, as
offerings to the gods."
The lunch is certainly exceptional. Everything that the flora and fauna
of the country can furnish is on the table, but the only thing
supernatural about it, perhaps, is that on the table there is everything
except . . . alcoholic beverages. Lyubov Petrovna has taken a vow never
to have in her house cards or spirituous liquors --the two sources of her
husband's ruin. And the only bottles contain oil and vinegar, as though
in mockery and chastisement of the guests who are to a man desperately
fond of the bottle, and given to tippling.
"Please help yourselves, gentlemen!" the marshal's widow presses them.
"Only you must excuse me, I have no vodka. . . . I have none in the
house."
The guests approach the table and hesitatingly attack the pie. But the
progress with eating is slow. In the plying of forks, in the cutting up
and munching, there is a certain sloth and apathy. . . . Evidently
something is wanting.
"I feel as though I had lost something," one of the justices of the
peace whispers to the other. "I feel as I did when my wife ran away with
the engineer. . . . I can't eat."
Marfutkin, before beginning to eat, fumbles for a long time in his
pocket and looks for his handkerchief.
"Oh, my handkerchief must be in my greatcoat," he recalls in a loud
voice, "and here I am looking for it," and he goes into the vestibule
where the fur coats are hanging up.
He returns from the vestibule with glistening eyes, and at once attacks
the pie with relish.
"I say, it's horrid munching away with a dry mouth, isn't it?" he
whispers to Father Yevmeny. "Go into the vestibule, Father. There's a
bottle there in my fur coat. . . . Only mind you are careful; don't make
a clatter with the bottle."
Father Yevmeny recollects that he has some direction to give to Luka,
and trips off to the vestibule.
"Father, a couple of words in confidence," says Dvornyagin, overtaking
him.
"You should see the fur coat I've bought myself, gentlemen," Hrumov
boasts. "It's worth a thousand, and I gave . . . you won't believe it .
. . two hundred and fifty! Not a farthing more."
At any other time the guests would have greeted this information with
indifference, but now they display surprise and incredulity. In the end
they all troop out into the vestibule to look at the fur coat, and go on
looking at it till the doctor's man Mikeshka carries five empty bottles
out on the sly. When the steamed sturgeon is served, Marfutkin remembers
that he has left his cigar case in his sledge and goes to the stable.
That he may not be lonely on this expedition, he takes with him the
deacon, who appropriately feels it necessary to have a look at his
horse. . . .
On the evening of the same day, Lyubov Petrovna is sitting in her study,
writing a letter to an old friend in Petersburg:
"To-day, as in past years," she writes among other things, "I had a
memorial service for my dear husband. All my neighbours came to the
service. They are a simple, rough set, but what hearts! I gave them a
splendid lunch, but of course, as in previous years, without a drop of
alcoholic liquor. Ever since he died from excessive drinking I have
vowed to establish temperance in this district and thereby to expiate
his sins. I have begun the campaign for temperance at my own house.
Father Yevmeny is delighted with my efforts, and helps me both in word
and deed. Oh, ma chère, if you knew how fond my bears are of me! The
president of the Zemstvo, Marfutkin, kissed my hand after lunch, held it
a long while to his lips, and, wagging his head in an absurd way, burst
into tears: so much feeling but no words! Father Yevmeny, that
delightful little old man, sat down by me, and looking tearfully at me
kept babbling something like a child. I did not understand what he said,
but I know how to understand true feeling. The police captain, the
handsome man of whom I wrote to you, went down on his knees to me, tried
to read me some verses of his own composition (he is a poet), but . . .
his feelings were too much for him, he lurched and fell over . . . that
huge giant went into hysterics, you can imagine my delight! The day did
not pass without a hitch, however. Poor Alalykin, the president of the
judges' assembly, a stout and apoplectic man, was overcome by illness
and lay on the sofa in a state of unconsciousness for two hours. We had
to pour water on him. . . . I am thankful to Doctor Dvornyagin: he had
brought a bottle of brandy from his dispensary and he moistened the
patient's temples, which quickly revived him, and he was able to be
moved. . . ."
A BAD BUSINESS "WHO goes there?"
No answer. The watchman sees nothing, but through the roar of the wind
and the trees distinctly hears someone walking along the avenue ahead of
him. A March night, cloudy and foggy, envelopes the earth, and it seems
to the watchman that the earth, the sky, and he himself with his
thoughts are all merged together into something vast and impenetrably
black. He can only grope his way.
"Who goes there?" the watchman repeats, and he begins to fancy that he
hears whispering and smothered laughter. "Who's there?"
"It's I, friend . . ." answers an old man's voice.
"But who are you?"
"I . . . a traveller."
"What sort of traveller?" the watchman cries angrily, trying to disguise
his terror by shouting. "What the devil do you want here? You go
prowling about the graveyard at night, you ruffian!"
"You don't say it's a graveyard here?"
"Why, what else? Of course it's the graveyard! Don't you see it is?"
"O-o-oh . . . Queen of Heaven!" there is a sound of an old man sighing.
"I see nothing, my good soul, nothing. Oh the darkness, the darkness!
You can't see your hand before your face, it is dark, friend. O-o-oh. .
."
"But who are you?"
"I am a pilgrim, friend, a wandering man."
"The devils, the nightbirds. . . . Nice sort of pilgrims! They are
drunkards . . ." mutters the watchman, reassured by the tone and sighs
of the stranger. "One's tempted to sin by you. They drink the day away
and prowl about at night. But I fancy I heard you were not alone; it
sounded like two or three of you."
"I am alone, friend, alone. Quite alone. O-o-oh our sins. . . ."
The watchman stumbles up against the man and stops.
"How did you get here?" he asks.
"I have lost my way, good man. I was walking to the Mitrievsky Mill and
I lost my way."
"Whew! Is this the road to Mitrievsky Mill? You sheepshead! For the
Mitrievsky Mill you must keep much more to the left, straight out of the
town along the high road. You have been drinking and have gone a couple
of miles out of your way. You must have had a drop in the town."
"I did, friend . . . Truly I did; I won't hide my sins. But how am I to
go now?"
"Go straight on and on along this avenue till you can go no farther, and
then turn at once to the left and go till you have crossed the whole
graveyard right to the gate. There will be a gate there. . . . Open it
and go with God's blessing. Mind you don't fall into the ditch. And when
you are out of the graveyard you go all the way by the fields till you
come out on the main road."
"God give you health, friend. May the Queen of Heaven save you and have
mercy on you. You might take me along, good man! Be merciful! Lead me to
the gate."
"As though I had the time to waste! Go by yourself!"
"Be merciful! I'll pray for you. I can't see anything; one can't see
one's hand before one's face, friend. . . . It's so dark, so dark! Show
me the way, sir!"
"As though I had the time to take you about; if I were to play the nurse
to everyone I should never have done."
"For Christ's sake, take me! I can't see, and I am afraid to go alone
through the graveyard. It's terrifying, friend, it's terrifying; I am
afraid, good man."
"There's no getting rid of you," sighs the watchman. "All right then,
come along."
The watchman and the traveller go on together. They walk shoulder to
shoulder in silence. A damp, cutting wind blows straight into their
faces and the unseen trees murmuring and rustling scatter big drops upon
them. . . . The path is almost entirely covered with puddles.
"There is one thing passes my understanding," says the watchman after a
prolonged silence--"how you got here. The gate's locked. Did you climb
over the wall? If you did climb over the wall, that's the last thing you
would expect of an old man."
"I don't know, friend, I don't know. I can't say myself how I got here.
It's a visitation. A chastisement of the Lord. Truly a visitation, the
evil one confounded me. So you are a watchman here, friend?"
"Yes."
"The only one for the whole graveyard?"
There is such a violent gust of wind that both stop for a minute.
Waiting till the violence of the wind abates, the watchman answers:
"There are three of us, but one is lying ill in a fever and the other's
asleep. He and I take turns about."
"Ah, to be sure, friend. What a wind! The dead must hear it! It howls
like a wild beast! O-o-oh."
"And where do you come from?"
"From a distance, friend. I am from Vologda, a long way off. I go from
one holy place to another and pray for people. Save me and have mercy
upon me, O Lord."
The watchman stops for a minute to light his pipe. He stoops down behind
the traveller's back and lights several matches. The gleam of the first
match lights up for one instant a bit of the avenue on the right, a
white tombstone with an angel, and a dark cross; the light of the second
match, flaring up brightly and extinguished by the wind, flashes like
lightning on the left side, and from the darkness nothing stands out but
the angle of some sort of trellis; the third match throws light to right
and to left, revealing the white tombstone, the dark cross, and the
trellis round a child's grave.
"The departed sleep; the dear ones sleep!" the stranger mutters, sighing
loudly. "They all sleep alike, rich and poor, wise and foolish, good and
wicked. They are of the same value now. And they will sleep till the
last trump. The Kingdom of Heaven and peace eternal be theirs."
"Here we are walking along now, but the time will come when we shall be
lying here ourselves," says the watchman.
"To be sure, to be sure, we shall all. There is no man who will not die.
O-o-oh. Our doings are wicked, our thoughts are deceitful! Sins, sins!
My soul accursed, ever covetous, my belly greedy and lustful! I have
angered the Lord and there is no salvation for me in this world and the
next. I am deep in sins like a worm in the earth."
"Yes, and you have to die."
"You are right there."
"Death is easier for a pilgrim than for fellows like us," says the
watchman.
"There are pilgrims of different sorts. There are the real ones who are
God-fearing men and watch over their own souls, and there are such as
stray about the graveyard at night and are a delight to the devils. . .
Ye-es! There's one who is a pilgrim could give you a crack on the pate
with an axe if he liked and knock the breath out of you."
"What are you talking like that for?"
"Oh, nothing . . . Why, I fancy here's the gate. Yes, it is. Open it,
good man."
The watchman, feeling his way, opens the gate, leads the pilgrim out by
the sleeve, and says:
"Here's the end of the graveyard. Now you must keep on through the open
fields till you get to the main road. Only close here there will be the
boundary ditch--don't fall in. . . . And when you come out on to the
road, turn to the right, and keep on till you reach the mill. . . ."
"O-o-oh!" sighs the pilgrim after a pause, "and now I am thinking that I
have no cause to go to Mitrievsky Mill. . . . Why the devil should I go
there? I had better stay a bit with you here, sir. . . ."
"What do you want to stay with me for?"
"Oh . . . it's merrier with you! . . . ."
"So you've found a merry companion, have you? You, pilgrim, are fond of
a joke I see. . . ."
"To be sure I am," says the stranger, with a hoarse chuckle. "Ah, my
dear good man, I bet you will remember the pilgrim many a long year!"
"Why should I remember you?"
"Why I've got round you so smartly. . . . Am I a pilgrim? I am not a
pilgrim at all."
"What are you then?"
"A dead man. . . . I've only just got out of my coffin. . . . Do you
remember Gubaryev, the locksmith, who hanged himself in carnival week?
Well, I am Gubaryev himself! . . ."
"Tell us something else!"
The watchman does not believe him, but he feels all over such a cold,
oppressive terror that he starts off and begins hurriedly feeling for
the gate.
"Stop, where are you off to?" says the stranger, clutching him by the
arm. "Aie, aie, aie . . . what a fellow you are! How can you leave me
all alone?"
"Let go!" cries the watchman, trying to pull his arm away.
"Sto-op! I bid you stop and you stop. Don't struggle, you dirty dog! If
you want to stay among the living, stop and hold your tongue till I tell
you. It's only that I don't care to spill blood or you would have been a
dead man long ago, you scurvy rascal. . . . Stop!"
The watchman's knees give way under him. In his terror he shuts his
eyes, and trembling all over huddles close to the wall. He would like to
call out, but he knows his cries would not reach any living thing. The
stranger stands beside him and holds him by the arm. . . . Three minutes
pass in silence.
"One's in a fever, another's asleep, and the third is seeing pilgrims on
their way," mutters the stranger. "Capital watchmen, they are worth
their salary! Ye-es, brother, thieves have always been cleverer than
watchmen! Stand still, don't stir. . . ."
Five minutes, ten minutes pass in silence. All at once the wind brings
the sound of a whistle.
"Well, now you can go," says the stranger, releasing the watchman's arm.
"Go and thank God you are alive!"
The stranger gives a whistle too, runs away from the gate, and the
watchman hears him leap over the ditch.
With a foreboding of something very dreadful in his heart, the watchman,
still trembling with terror, opens the gate irresolutely and runs back
with his eyes shut.
At the turning into the main avenue he hears hurried footsteps, and
someone asks him, in a hissing voice: "Is that you, Timofey? Where is
Mitka?"
And after running the whole length of the main avenue he notices a
little dim light in the darkness. The nearer he gets to the light the
more frightened he is and the stronger his foreboding of evil.
"It looks as though the light were in the church," he thinks. "And how
can it have come there? Save me and have mercy on me, Queen of Heaven!
And that it is."
The watchman stands for a minute before the broken window and looks with
horror towards the altar. . . . A little wax candle which the thieves
had forgotten to put out flickers in the wind that bursts in at the
window and throws dim red patches of light on the vestments flung about
and a cupboard overturned on the floor, on numerous footprints near the
high altar and the altar of offerings.
A little time passes and the howling wind sends floating over the
churchyard the hurried uneven clangs of the alarm-bell. . . .
IN THE COURT
AT the district town of N. in the cinnamon-coloured government house in
which the Zemstvo, the sessional meetings of the justices of the peace,
the Rural Board, the Liquor Board, the Military Board, and many others
sit by turns, the Circuit Court was in session on one of the dull days
of autumn. Of the above-mentioned cinnamon-coloured house a local
official had wittily observed:
"Here is Justitia, here is Policia, here is Militia--a regular boarding
school of high-born young ladies."