the beershop in Kozihin's buildings in Little Bronnaia in an intoxicated
condition. . ."
"That's me and Semyon Petrovitch. . . . It's all described exactly! Go
on! Listen!"
". . . intoxicated condition, slipped and fell under a horse belonging
to a sledge-driver, a peasant of the village of Durikino in the
Yuhnovsky district, called Ivan Drotov. The frightened horse, stepping
over Kuldarov and drawing the sledge over him, together with a Moscow
merchant of the second guild called Stepan Lukov, who was in it, dashed
along the street and was caught by some house-porters. Kuldarov, at
first in an unconscious condition, was taken to the police station and
there examined by the doctor. The blow he had received on the back of
his head. . ."
"It was from the shaft, papa. Go on! Read the rest!"
". . . he had received on the back of his head turned out not to be
serious. The incident was duly reported. Medical aid was given to the
injured man. . . ."
"They told me to foment the back of my head with cold water. You have
read it now? Ah! So you see. Now it's all over Russia! Give it here!"
Mitya seized the paper, folded it up and put it into his pocket.
"I'll run round to the Makarovs and show it to them. . . . I must show
it to the Ivanitskys too, Natasya Ivanovna, and Anisim Vassilyitch. . .
. I'll run! Good-bye!"
Mitya put on his cap with its cockade and, joyful and triumphant, ran
into the street.
LADIES
FYODOR PETROVITCH the Director of Elementary Schools in the N. District,
who considered himself a just and generous man, was one day interviewing
in his office a schoolmaster called Vremensky.
"No, Mr. Vremensky," he was saying, "your retirement is inevitable. You
cannot continue your work as a schoolmaster with a voice like that! How
did you come to lose it?"
"I drank cold beer when I was in a perspiration. . ." hissed the
schoolmaster.
"What a pity! After a man has served fourteen years, such a calamity all
at once! The idea of a career being ruined by such a trivial thing. What
are you intending to do now?"
The schoolmaster made no answer.
"Are you a family man?" asked the director.
"A wife and two children, your Excellency . . ." hissed the
schoolmaster.
A silence followed. The director got up from the table and walked to and
fro in perturbation.
"I cannot think what I am going to do with you!" he said. "A teacher you
cannot be, and you are not yet entitled to a pension. . . . To abandon
you to your fate, and leave you to do the best you can, is rather
awkward. We look on you as one of our men, you have served fourteen
years, so it is our business to help you. . . . But how are we to help
you? What can I do for you? Put yourself in my place: what can I do for
you?"
A silence followed; the director walked up and down, still thinking, and
Vremensky, overwhelmed by his trouble, sat on the edge of his chair, and
he, too, thought. All at once the director began beaming, and even
snapped his fingers.
"I wonder I did not think of it before!" he began rapidly. "Listen, this
is what I can offer you. Next week our secretary at the Home is
retiring. If you like, you can have his place! There you are!"
Vremensky, not expecting such good fortune, beamed too.
"That's capital," said the director. "Write the application to-day."
Dismissing Vremensky, Fyodor Petrovitch felt relieved and even
gratified: the bent figure of the hissing schoolmaster was no longer
confronting him, and it was agreeable to recognize that in offering a
vacant post to Vremensky he had acted fairly and conscientiously, like a
good-hearted and thoroughly decent person. But this agreeable state of
mind did not last long. When he went home and sat down to dinner his
wife, Nastasya Ivanovna, said suddenly:
"Oh yes, I was almost forgetting! Nina Sergeyevna came to see me
yesterday and begged for your interest on behalf of a young man. I am
told there is a vacancy in our Home. . . ."
"Yes, but the post has already been promised to someone else," said the
director, and he frowned. "And you know my rule: I never give posts
through patronage."
"I know, but for Nina Sergeyevna, I imagine, you might make an
exception. She loves us as though we were relations, and we have never
done anything for her. And don't think of refusing, Fedya! You will
wound both her and me with your whims."
"Who is it that she is recommending?"
"Polzuhin!"
"What Polzuhin? Is it that fellow who played Tchatsky at the party on
New Year's Day? Is it that gentleman? Not on any account!"
The director left off eating.
"Not on any account!" he repeated. "Heaven preserve us!"
"But why not?"
"Understand, my dear, that if a young man does not set to work directly,
but through women, he must be good for nothing! Why doesn't he come to
me himself?"
After dinner the director lay on the sofa in his study and began reading
the letters and newspapers he had received.
"Dear Fyodor Petrovitch," wrote the wife of the Mayor of the town. "You
once said that I knew the human heart and understood people. Now you
have an opportunity of verifying this in practice. K. N. Polzuhin, whom
I know to be an excellent young man, will call upon you in a day or two
to ask you for the post of secretary at our Home. He is a very nice
youth. If you take an interest in him you will be convinced of it." And
so on.
"On no account!" was the director's comment. "Heaven preserve me!"
After that, not a day passed without the director's receiving letters
recommending Polzuhin. One fine morning Polzuhin himself, a stout young
man with a close-shaven face like a jockey's, in a new black suit, made
his appearance. . . .
"I see people on business not here but at the office," said the director
drily, on hearing his request.
"Forgive me, your Excellency, but our common acquaintances advised me to
come here."
"H'm!" growled the director, looking with hatred at the pointed toes of
the young man's shoes. "To the best of my belief your father is a man of
property and you are not in want," he said. "What induces you to ask for
this post? The salary is very trifling!"
"It's not for the sake of the salary. . . . It's a government post, any
way . . ."
"H'm. . . . It strikes me that within a month you will be sick of the
job and you will give it up, and meanwhile there are candidates for whom
it would be a career for life. There are poor men for whom . . ."
"I shan't get sick of it, your Excellency," Polzuhin interposed. "Honour
bright, I will do my best!"
It was too much for the director.
"Tell me," he said, smiling contemptuously, "why was it you didn't apply
to me direct but thought fitting instead to trouble ladies as a
preliminary?"
"I didn't know that it would be disagreeable to you," Polzuhin answered,
and he was embarrassed. "But, your Excellency, if you attach no
significance to letters of recommendation, I can give you a testimonial.
. . ."
He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it to the director. At the
bottom of the testimonial, which was written in official language and
handwriting, stood the signature of the Governor. Everything pointed to
the Governor's having signed it unread, simply to get rid of some
importunate lady.
"There's nothing for it, I bow to his authority. . . I obey . . ." said
the director, reading the testimonial, and he heaved a sigh.
"Send in your application to-morrow. . . . There's nothing to be done. .
. ."
And when Polzuhin had gone out, the director abandoned himself to a
feeling of repulsion.
"Sneak!" he hissed, pacing from one corner to the other. "He has got
what he wanted, one way or the other, the good-for-nothing toady! Making
up to the ladies! Reptile! Creature!"
The director spat loudly in the direction of the door by which Polzuhin
had departed, and was immediately overcome with embarrassment, for at
that moment a lady, the wife of the Superintendent of the Provincial
Treasury, walked in at the door.
"I've come for a tiny minute . . . a tiny minute. . ." began the lady.
"Sit down, friend, and listen to me attentively. . . . Well, I've been
told you have a post vacant. . . . To-day or to-morrow you will receive
a visit from a young man called Polzuhin. . . ."
The lady chattered on, while the director gazed at her with lustreless,
stupefied eyes like a man on the point of fainting, gazed and smiled
from politeness.
And the next day when Vremensky came to his office it was a long time
before the director could bring himself to tell the truth. He hesitated,
was incoherent, and could not think how to begin or what to say. He
wanted to apologize to the schoolmaster, to tell him the whole truth,
but his tongue halted like a drunkard's, his ears burned, and he was
suddenly overwhelmed with vexation and resentment that he should have to
play such an absurd part--in his own office, before his subordinate. He
suddenly brought his fist down on the table, leaped up, and shouted
angrily:
"I have no post for you! I have not, and that's all about it! Leave me
in peace! Don't worry me! Be so good as to leave me alone!"
And he walked out of the office.
A PECULIAR MAN
BETWEEN twelve and one at night a tall gentleman, wearing a top-hat and
a coat with a hood, stops before the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a
midwife and an old maid. Neither face nor hand can be distinguished in
the autumn darkness, but in the very manner of his coughing and the
ringing of the bell a certain solidity, positiveness, and even
impressiveness can be discerned. After the third ring the door opens and
Marya Petrovna herself appears. She has a man's overcoat flung on over
her white petticoat. The little lamp with the green shade which she
holds in her hand throws a greenish light over her sleepy, freckled
face, her scraggy neck, and the lank, reddish hair that strays from
under her cap.
"Can I see the midwife?" asks the gentleman.
"I am the midwife. What do you want?"
The gentleman walks into the entry and Marya Petrovna sees facing her a
tall, well-made man, no longer young, but with a handsome, severe face
and bushy whiskers.
"I am a collegiate assessor, my name is Kiryakov," he says. "I came to
fetch you to my wife. Only please make haste."
"Very good . . ." the midwife assents. "I'll dress at once, and I must
trouble you to wait for me in the parlour."
Kiryakov takes off his overcoat and goes into the parlour. The greenish
light of the lamp lies sparsely on the cheap furniture in patched white
covers, on the pitiful flowers and the posts on which ivy is trained. .
. . There is a smell of geranium and carbolic. The little clock on the
wall ticks timidly, as though abashed at the presence of a strange man.
"I am ready," says Marya Petrovna, coming into the room five minutes
later, dressed, washed, and ready for action. "Let us go."
"Yes, you must make haste," says Kiryakov. "And, by the way, it is not
out of place to enquire--what do you ask for your services?"
"I really don't know . . ." says Marya Petrovna with an embarrassed
smile. "As much as you will give."
"No, I don't like that," says Kiryakov, looking coldly and steadily at
the midwife. "An arrangement beforehand is best. I don't want to take
advantage of you and you don't want to take advantage of me. To avoid
misunderstandings it is more sensible for us to make an arrangement
beforehand."
"I really don't know--there is no fixed price."
"I work myself and am accustomed to respect the work of others. I don't
like injustice. It will be equally unpleasant to me if I pay you too
little, or if you demand from me too much, and so I insist on your
naming your charge."
"Well, there are such different charges."
"H'm. In view of your hesitation, which I fail to understand, I am
constrained to fix the sum myself. I can give you two roubles."
"Good gracious! . . . Upon my word! . . ." says Marya Petrovna, turning
crimson and stepping back. "I am really ashamed. Rather than take two
roubles I will come for nothing . . . . Five roubles, if you like."
"Two roubles, not a kopeck more. I don't want to take advantage of you,
but I do not intend to be overcharged."
"As you please, but I am not coming for two roubles. . . ."
"But by law you have not the right to refuse."
"Very well, I will come for nothing."
"I won't have you for nothing. All work ought to receive remuneration. I
work myself and I understand that. . . ."
"I won't come for two roubles," Marya Petrovna answers mildly. "I'll
come for nothing if you like."
"In that case I regret that I have troubled you for nothing. . . . I
have the honour to wish you good-bye."
"Well, you are a man!" says Marya Petrovna, seeing him into the entry.
"I will come for three roubles if that will satisfy you."
Kiryakov frowns and ponders for two full minutes, looking with
concentration on the floor, then he says resolutely, "No," and goes out
into the street. The astonished and disconcerted midwife fastens the
door after him and goes back into her bedroom.
"He's good-looking, respectable, but how queer, God bless the man! . .
." she thinks as she gets into bed.
But in less than half an hour she hears another ring; she gets up and
sees the same Kiryakov again.
"Extraordinary the way things are mismanaged. Neither the chemist, nor
the police, nor the house-porters can give me the address of a midwife,
and so I am under the necessity of assenting to your terms. I will give
you three roubles, but . . . I warn you beforehand that when I engage
servants or receive any kind of services, I make an arrangement
beforehand in order that when I pay there may be no talk of extras,
tips, or anything of the sort. Everyone ought to receive what is his
due."
Marya Petrovna has not listened to Kiryakov for long, but already she
feels that she is bored and repelled by him, that his even, measured
speech lies like a weight on her soul. She dresses and goes out into the
street with him. The air is still but cold, and the sky is so overcast
that the light of the street lamps is hardly visible. The sloshy snow
squelches under their feet. The midwife looks intently but does not see
a cab.
"I suppose it is not far?" she asks.
"No, not far," Kiryakov answers grimly.
They walk down one turning, a second, a third. . . . Kiryakov strides
along, and even in his step his respectability and positiveness is
apparent.
"What awful weather!" the midwife observes to him.
But he preserves a dignified silence, and it is noticeable that he tries
to step on the smooth stones to avoid spoiling his goloshes. At last
after a long walk the midwife steps into the entry; from which she can
see a big decently furnished drawing-room. There is not a soul in the
rooms, even in the bedroom where the woman is lying in labour. . . . The
old women and relations who flock in crowds to every confinement are not
to be seen. The cook rushes about alone, with a scared and vacant face.
There is a sound of loud groans.
Three hours pass. Marya Petrovna sits by the mother's bedside and
whispers to her. The two women have already had time to make friends,
they have got to know each other, they gossip, they sigh together. . . .
"You mustn't talk," says the midwife anxiously, and at the same time she
showers questions on her.
Then the door opens and Kiryakov himself comes quietly and stolidly into
the room. He sits down in the chair and strokes his whiskers. Silence
reigns. Marya Petrovna looks timidly at his handsome, passionless,
wooden face and waits for him to begin to talk, but he remains
absolutely silent and absorbed in thought. After waiting in vain, the
midwife makes up her mind to begin herself, and utters a phrase commonly
used at confinements.
"Well now, thank God, there is one human being more in the world!"
"Yes, that's agreeable," said Kiryakov, preserving the wooden expression
of his face, "though indeed, on the other hand, to have more children
you must have more money. The baby is not born fed and clothed."
A guilty expression comes into the mother's face, as though she had
brought a creature into the world without permission or through idle
caprice. Kiryakov gets up with a sigh and walks with solid dignity out
of the room.
"What a man, bless him!" says the midwife to the mother. "He's so stern
and does not smile."
The mother tells her that he is always like that. . . . He is honest,
fair, prudent, sensibly economical, but all that to such an exceptional
degree that simple mortals feel suffocated by it. His relations have
parted from him, the servants will not stay more than a month; they have
no friends; his wife and children are always on tenterhooks from terror
over every step they take. He does not shout at them nor beat them, his
virtues are far more numerous than his defects, but when he goes out of
the house they all feel better, and more at ease. Why it is so the woman
herself cannot say.
"The basins must be properly washed and put away in the store cupboard,"
says Kiryakov, coming into the bedroom. "These bottles must be put away
too: they may come in handy."
What he says is very simple and ordinary, but the midwife for some
reason feels flustered. She begins to be afraid of the man and shudders
every time she hears his footsteps. In the morning as she is preparing
to depart she sees Kiryakov's little son, a pale, close-cropped
schoolboy, in the dining-room drinking his tea. . . . Kiryakov is
standing opposite him, saying in his flat, even voice:
"You know how to eat, you must know how to work too. You have just
swallowed a mouthful but have not probably reflected that that mouthful
costs money and money is obtained by work. You must eat and reflect. . .
."
The midwife looks at the boy's dull face, and it seems to her as though
the very air is heavy, that a little more and the very walls will fall,
unable to endure the crushing presence of the peculiar man. Beside
herself with terror, and by now feeling a violent hatred for the man,
Marya Petrovna gathers up her bundles and hurriedly departs.
Half-way home she remembers that she has forgotten to ask for her three
roubles, but after stopping and thinking for a minute, with a wave of
her hand, she goes on.
AT THE BARBER'S
MORNING. It is not yet seven o'clock, but Makar Kuzmitch Blyostken's
shop is already open. The barber himself, an unwashed, greasy, but
foppishly dressed youth of three and twenty, is busy clearing up; there
is really nothing to be cleared away, but he is perspiring with his
exertions. In one place he polishes with a rag, in another he scrapes
with his finger or catches a bug and brushes it off the wall.
The barber's shop is small, narrow, and unclean. The log walls are hung
with paper suggestive of a cabman's faded shirt. Between the two dingy,
perspiring windows there is a thin, creaking, rickety door, above it,
green from the damp, a bell which trembles and gives a sickly ring of
itself without provocation. Glance into the looking-glass which hangs on
one of the walls, and it distorts your countenance in all directions in
the most merciless way! The shaving and haircutting is done before this
looking-glass. On the little table, as greasy and unwashed as Makar
Kuzmitch himself, there is everything: combs, scissors, razors, a
ha'porth of wax for the moustache, a ha'porth of powder, a ha'porth of
much watered eau de Cologne, and indeed the whole barber's shop is not
worth more than fifteen kopecks.
There is a squeaking sound from the invalid bell and an elderly man in a
tanned sheepskin and high felt over-boots walks into the shop. His head
and neck are wrapped in a woman's shawl.
This is Erast Ivanitch Yagodov, Makar Kuzmitch's godfather. At one time
he served as a watchman in the Consistory, now he lives near the Red
Pond and works as a locksmith.
"Makarushka, good-day, dear boy!" he says to Makar Kuzmitch, who is
absorbed in tidying up.
They kiss each other. Yagodov drags his shawl off his head, crosses
himself, and sits down.
"What a long way it is!" he says, sighing and clearing his throat. "It's
no joke! From the Red Pond to the Kaluga gate."
"How are you?"
"In a poor way, my boy. I've had a fever."
"You don't say so! Fever!"
"Yes, I have been in bed a month; I thought I should die. I had extreme
unction. Now my hair's coming out. The doctor says I must be shaved. He
says the hair will grow again strong. And so, I thought, I'll go to
Makar. Better to a relation than to anyone else. He will do it better
and he won't take anything for it. It's rather far, that's true, but
what of it? It's a walk."
"I'll do it with pleasure. Please sit down."
With a scrape of his foot Makar Kuzmitch indicates a chair. Yagodov sits
down and looks at himself in the glass and is apparently pleased with
his reflection: the looking-glass displays a face awry, with Kalmuck
lips, a broad, blunt nose, and eyes in the forehead. Makar Kuzmitch puts
round his client's shoulders a white sheet with yellow spots on it, and
begins snipping with the scissors.
"I'll shave you clean to the skin!" he says.
"To be sure. So that I may look like a Tartar, like a bomb. The hair
will grow all the thicker."
"How's auntie?"
"Pretty middling. The other day she went as midwife to the major's lady.
They gave her a rouble."
"Oh, indeed, a rouble. Hold your ear."
"I am holding it. . . . Mind you don't cut me. Oy, you hurt! You are
pulling my hair."
"That doesn't matter. We can't help that in our work. And how is Anna
Erastovna?"
"My daughter? She is all right, she's skipping about. Last week on the
Wednesday we betrothed her to Sheikin. Why didn't you come?"
The scissors cease snipping. Makar Kuzmitch drops his hands and asks in
a fright:
"Who is betrothed?"
"Anna."
"How's that? To whom?"
"To Sheikin. Prokofy Petrovitch. His aunt's a housekeeper in
Zlatoustensky Lane. She is a nice woman. Naturally we are all delighted,
thank God. The wedding will be in a week. Mind you come; we will have a
good time."
"But how's this, Erast Ivanitch?" says Makar Kuzmitch, pale, astonished,
and shrugging his shoulders. "It's . . . it's utterly impossible. Why,
Anna Erastovna . . . why I . . . why, I cherished sentiments for her, I
had intentions. How could it happen?"
"Why, we just went and betrothed her. He's a good fellow."
Cold drops of perspiration come on the face of Makar Kuzmitch. He puts
the scissors down on the table and begins rubbing his nose with his
fist.
"I had intentions," he says. "It's impossible, Erast Ivanitch. I . . . I
am in love with her and have made her the offer of my heart . . . . And
auntie promised. I have always respected you as though you were my
father. . . . I always cut your hair for nothing. . . . I have always
obliged you, and when my papa died you took the sofa and ten roubles in
cash and have never given them back. Do you remember?"
"Remember! of course I do. Only, what sort of a match would you be,
Makar? You are nothing of a match. You've neither money nor position,
your trade's a paltry one."
"And is Sheikin rich?"
"Sheikin is a member of a union. He has a thousand and a half lent on
mortgage. So my boy . . . . It's no good talking about it, the thing's
done. There is no altering it, Makarushka. You must look out for another
bride. . . . The world is not so small. Come, cut away. Why are you
stopping?"
Makar Kuzmitch is silent and remains motionless, then he takes a
handkerchief out of his pocket and begins to cry.
"Come, what is it?" Erast Ivanitch comforts him. "Give over. Fie, he is
blubbering like a woman! You finish my head and then cry. Take up the
scissors!"
Makar Kuzmitch takes up the scissors, stares vacantly at them for a
minute, then drops them again on the table. His hands are shaking.
"I can't," he says. "I can't do it just now. I haven't the strength! I
am a miserable man! And she is miserable! We loved each other, we had
given each other our promise and we have been separated by unkind people
without any pity. Go away, Erast Ivanitch! I can't bear the sight of
you."
"So I'll come to-morrow, Makarushka. You will finish me to-morrow."
"Right."
"You calm yourself and I will come to you early in the morning."
Erast Ivanitch has half his head shaven to the skin and looks like a
convict. It is awkward to be left with a head like that, but there is no
help for it. He wraps his head in the shawl and walks out of the
barber's shop. Left alone, Makar Kuzmitch sits down and goes on quietly
weeping.
Early next morning Erast Ivanitch comes again.
"What do you want?" Makar Kuzmitch asks him coldly.
"Finish cutting my hair, Makarushka. There is half the head left to do."
"Kindly give me the money in advance. I won't cut it for nothing."