his daughter whom he wants to send to a boarding school, and . . .
touched by the lady's liberality he whimpers with excess of feeling,
twists his mouth, and feels in his pocket for his handkerchief . . . .
Marfa Petrovna sees a red paper slip out of his pocket with his
handkerchief and fall noiselessly to the floor.
"I shall never forget it to all eternity . . ." he mutters, "and I shall
make my children and my grandchildren remember it . . . from generation
to generation. 'See, children,' I shall say, 'who has saved me from the
grave, who . . .'"
When she has seen her patient out, the lady looks for a minute at Father
Aristark with eyes full of tears, then turns her caressing, reverent
gaze on the drug chest, the books, the bills, the armchair in which the
man she had saved from death has just been sitting, and her eyes fall on
the paper just dropped by her patient. She picks up the paper, unfolds
it, and sees in it three pilules--the very pilules she had given
Zamuhrishen the previous Tuesday.
"They are the very ones," she thinks puzzled. ". . . The paper is the
same. . . . He hasn't even unwrapped them! What has he taken then?
Strange. . . . Surely he wouldn't try to deceive me!"
And for the first time in her ten years of practice a doubt creeps into
Marfa Petrovna's mind. . . . She summons the other patients, and while
talking to them of their complaints notices what has hitherto slipped by
her ears unnoticed. The patients, every one of them as though they were
in a conspiracy, first belaud her for their miraculous cure, go into
raptures over her medical skill, and abuse allopath doctors, then when
she is flushed with excitement, begin holding forth on their needs. One
asks for a bit of land to plough, another for wood, a third for
permission to shoot in her forests, and so on. She looks at the broad,
benevolent countenance of Father Aristark who has revealed the truth to
her, and a new truth begins gnawing at her heart. An evil oppressive
truth. . . .
The deceitfulness of man!
IN THE GRAVEYARD
"THE wind has got up, friends, and it is beginning to get dark. Hadn't
we better take ourselves off before it gets worse?"
The wind was frolicking among the yellow leaves of the old birch trees,
and a shower of thick drops fell upon us from the leaves. One of our
party slipped on the clayey soil, and clutched at a big grey cross to
save himself from falling.
"Yegor Gryaznorukov, titular councillor and cavalier . ." he read. "I
knew that gentleman. He was fond of his wife, he wore the Stanislav
ribbon, and read nothing. . . . His digestion worked well . . . . life
was all right, wasn't it? One would have thought he had no reason to
die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor fellow fell a
victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was
listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door
that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a brain), and died.
And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested
verses and epigrams. . . . As though to mock him his whole tombstone is
adorned with verses. . . . There is someone coming!"
A man in a shabby overcoat, with a shaven, bluish-crimson countenance,
overtook us. He had a bottle under his arm and a parcel of sausage was
sticking out of his pocket.
"Where is the grave of Mushkin, the actor?" he asked us in a husky
voice.
We conducted him towards the grave of Mushkin, the actor, who had died
two years before.
"You are a government clerk, I suppose?" we asked him.
"No, an actor. Nowadays it is difficult to distinguish actors from
clerks of the Consistory. No doubt you have noticed that. . . . That's
typical, but it's not very flattering for the government clerk."
It was with difficulty that we found the actor's grave. It had sunken,
was overgrown with weeds, and had lost all appearance of a grave. A
cheap, little cross that had begun to rot, and was covered with green
moss blackened by the frost, had an air of aged dejection and looked, as
it were, ailing.
". . . forgotten friend Mushkin . . ." we read.
Time had erased the never, and corrected the falsehood of man.
"A subscription for a monument to him was got up among actors and
journalists, but they drank up the money, the dear fellows . . ." sighed
the actor, bowing down to the ground and touching the wet earth with his
knees and his cap.
"How do you mean, drank it?"
That's very simple. They collected the money, published a paragraph
about it in the newspaper, and spent it on drink. . . . I don't say it
to blame them. . . . I hope it did them good, dear things! Good health
to them, and eternal memory to him."
"Drinking means bad health, and eternal memory nothing but sadness. God
give us remembrance for a time, but eternal memory--what next!"
"You are right there. Mushkin was a well-known man, you see; there were
a dozen wreaths on the coffin, and he is already forgotten. Those to
whom he was dear have forgotten him, but those to whom he did harm
remember him. I, for instance, shall never, never forget him, for I got
nothing but harm from him. I have no love for the deceased."
"What harm did he do you?"
"Great harm," sighed the actor, and an expression of bitter resentment
overspread his face. "To me he was a villain and a scoundrel--the Kingdom
of Heaven be his! It was through looking at him and listening to him
that I became an actor. By his art he lured me from the parental home,
he enticed me with the excitements of an actor's life, promised me all
sorts of things--and brought tears and sorrow. . . . An actor's lot is a
bitter one! I have lost youth, sobriety, and the divine semblance. . . .
I haven't a half-penny to bless myself with, my shoes are down at heel,
my breeches are frayed and patched, and my face looks as if it had been
gnawed by dogs. . . . My head's full of freethinking and nonsense. . . .
He robbed me of my faith--my evil genius! It would have been something if
I had had talent, but as it is, I am ruined for nothing. . . . It's
cold, honoured friends. . . . Won't you have some? There is enough for
all. . . . B-r-r-r. . . . Let us drink to the rest of his soul! Though I
don't like him and though he's dead, he was the only one I had in the
world, the only one. It's the last time I shall visit him. . . . The
doctors say I shall soon die of drink, so here I have come to say good-
bye. One must forgive one's enemies."
We left the actor to converse with the dead Mushkin and went on. It
began drizzling a fine cold rain.
At the turning into the principal avenue strewn with gravel, we met a
funeral procession. Four bearers, wearing white calico sashes and muddy
high boots with leaves sticking on them, carried the brown coffin. It
was getting dark and they hastened, stumbling and shaking their burden.
. . .
"We've only been walking here for a couple of hours and that is the
third brought in already. . . . Shall we go home, friends?"
HUSH!
IVAN YEGORITCH KRASNYHIN, a fourth-rate journalist, returns home late at
night, grave and careworn, with a peculiar air of concentration. He
looks like a man expecting a police-raid or contemplating suicide.
Pacing about his rooms he halts abruptly, ruffles up his hair, and says
in the tone in which Laertes announces his intention of avenging his
sister:
"Shattered, soul-weary, a sick load of misery on the heart . . . and
then to sit down and write. And this is called life! How is it nobody
has described the agonizing discord in the soul of a writer who has to
amuse the crowd when his heart is heavy or to shed tears at the word of
command when his heart is light? I must be playful, coldly unconcerned,
witty, but what if I am weighed down with misery, what if I am ill, or
my child is dying or my wife in anguish!"
He says this, brandishing his fists and rolling his eyes. . . . Then he
goes into the bedroom and wakes his wife.
"Nadya," he says, "I am sitting down to write. . . . Please don't let
anyone interrupt me. I can't write with children crying or cooks
snoring. . . . See, too, that there's tea and . . . steak or something.
. . . You know that I can't write without tea. . . . Tea is the one
thing that gives me the energy for my work."
Returning to his room he takes off his coat, waistcoat, and boots. He
does this very slowly; then, assuming an expression of injured
innocence, he sits down to his table.
There is nothing casual, nothing ordinary on his writing-table, down to
the veriest trifle everything bears the stamp of a stern, deliberately
planned programme. Little busts and photographs of distinguished
writers, heaps of rough manuscripts, a volume of Byelinsky with a page
turned down, part of a skull by way of an ash-tray, a sheet of newspaper
folded carelessly, but so that a passage is uppermost, boldly marked in
blue pencil with the word "disgraceful." There are a dozen sharply-
pointed pencils and several penholders fitted with new nibs, put in
readiness that no accidental breaking of a pen may for a single second
interrupt the flight of his creative fancy.
Ivan Yegoritch throws himself back in his chair, and closing his eyes
concentrates himself on his subject. He hears his wife shuffling about
in her slippers and splitting shavings to heat the samovar. She is
hardly awake, that is apparent from the way the knife and the lid of the
samovar keep dropping from her hands. Soon the hissing of the samovar
and the spluttering of the frying meat reaches him. His wife is still
splitting shavings and rattling with the doors and blowers of the stove.
All at once Ivan Yegoritch starts, opens frightened eyes, and begins to
sniff the air.
"Heavens! the stove is smoking!" he groans, grimacing with a face of
agony. "Smoking! That insufferable woman makes a point of trying to
poison me! How, in God's Name, am I to write in such surroundings,
kindly tell me that?"
He rushes into the kitchen and breaks into a theatrical wail. When a
little later, his wife, stepping cautiously on tiptoe, brings him in a
glass of tea, he is sitting in an easy chair as before with his eyes
closed, absorbed in his article. He does not stir, drums lightly on his
forehead with two fingers, and pretends he is not aware of his wife's
presence. . . . His face wears an expression of injured innocence.
Like a girl who has been presented with a costly fan, he spends a long
time coquetting, grimacing, and posing to himself before he writes the
title. . . . He presses his temples, he wriggles, and draws his legs up
under his chair as though he were in pain, or half closes his eyes
languidly like a cat on the sofa. At last, not without hesitation, he
stretches out his hand towards the inkstand, and with an expression as
though he were signing a death-warrant, writes the title. . . .
"Mammy, give me some water!" he hears his son's voice.
"Hush!" says his mother. "Daddy's writing! Hush!"
Daddy writes very, very quickly, without corrections or pauses, he has
scarcely time to turn over the pages. The busts and portraits of
celebrated authors look at his swiftly racing pen and, keeping stock
still, seem to be thinking: "Oh my, how you are going it!"
"Sh!" squeaks the pen.
"Sh!" whisper the authors, when his knee jolts the table and they are
set trembling.
All at once Krasnyhin draws himself up, lays down his pen and listens. .
. . He hears an even monotonous whispering. . . . It is Foma
Nikolaevitch, the lodger in the next room, saying his prayers.
"I say!" cries Krasnyhin. "Couldn't you, please, say your prayers more
quietly? You prevent me from writing!"
"Very sorry. . . ." Foma Nikolaevitch answers timidly.
After covering five pages, Krasnyhin stretches and looks at his watch.
"Goodness, three o'clock already," he moans. "Other people are asleep
while I . . . I alone must work!"
Shattered and exhausted he goes, with his head on one side, to the
bedroom to wake his wife, and says in a languid voice:
"Nadya, get me some more tea! I . . . feel weak."
He writes till four o'clock and would readily have written till six if
his subject had not been exhausted. Coquetting and posing to himself and
the inanimate objects about him, far from any indiscreet, critical eye,
tyrannizing and domineering over the little anthill that fate has put in
his power are the honey and the salt of his existence. And how different
is this despot here at home from the humble, meek, dull-witted little
man we are accustomed to see in the editor's offices!
"I am so exhausted that I am afraid I shan't sleep . . ." he says as he
gets into bed. "Our work, this cursed, ungrateful hard labour, exhausts
the soul even more than the body. . . . I had better take some bromide.
. . . God knows, if it were not for my family I'd throw up the work. . .
. To write to order! It is awful."
He sleeps till twelve or one o'clock in the day, sleeps a sound, healthy
sleep. . . . Ah! how he would sleep, what dreams he would have, how he
would spread himself if he were to become a well-known writer, an
editor, or even a sub-editor!
"He has been writing all night," whispers his wife with a scared
expression on her face. "Sh!"
No one dares to speak or move or make a sound. His sleep is something
sacred, and the culprit who offends against it will pay dearly for his
fault.
"Hush!" floats over the flat. "Hush!"
IN AN HOTEL
"LET me tell you, my good man," began Madame Nashatyrin, the colonel's
lady at No. 47, crimson and spluttering, as she pounced on the hotel-
keeper. "Either give me other apartments, or I shall leave your
confounded hotel altogether! It's a sink of iniquity! Mercy on us, I
have grown-up daughters and one hears nothing but abominations day and
night! It's beyond everything! Day and night! Sometimes he fires off
such things that it simply makes one's ears blush! Positively like a
cabman. It's a good thing that my poor girls don't understand or I
should have to fly out into the street with them. . . He's saying
something now! You listen!"
"I know a thing better than that, my boy," a husky bass floated in from
the next room. "Do you remember Lieutenant Druzhkov? Well, that same
Druzhkov was one day making a drive with the yellow into the pocket and
as he usually did, you know, flung up his leg. . . . All at once
something went crrr-ack! At first they thought he had torn the cloth of
the billiard table, but when they looked, my dear fellow, his United
States had split at every seam! He had made such a high kick, the beast,
that not a seam was left. . . . Ha-ha-ha, and there were ladies present,
too . . . among others the wife of that drivelling Lieutenant Okurin. .
. . Okurin was furious. . . . 'How dare the fellow,' said he, 'behave
with impropriety in the presence of my wife?' One thing led to another .
. . you know our fellows! . . . Okurin sent seconds to Druzhkov, and
Druzhkov said 'don't be a fool' . . . ha-ha-ha, 'but tell him he had
better send seconds not to me but to the tailor who made me those
breeches; it is his fault, you know.' Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha. . . ."
Lilya and Mila, the colonel's daughters, who were sitting in the window
with their round cheeks propped on their fists, flushed crimson and
dropped their eyes that looked buried in their plump faces.
"Now you have heard him, haven't you?" Madame Nashatyrin went on,
addressing the hotel-keeper. "And that, you consider, of no consequence,
I suppose? I am the wife of a colonel, sir! My husband is a commanding
officer. I will not permit some cabman to utter such infamies almost in
my presence!"
"He is not a cabman, madam, but the staff-captain Kikin. . . . A
gentleman born."
"If he has so far forgotten his station as to express himself like a
cabman, then he is even more deserving of contempt! In short, don't
answer me, but kindly take steps!"
"But what can I do, madam? You are not the only one to complain,
everybody's complaining, but what am I to do with him? One goes to his
room and begins putting him to shame, saying: 'Hannibal Ivanitch, have
some fear of God! It's shameful! and he'll punch you in the face with
his fists and say all sorts of things: 'there, put that in your pipe and
smoke it,' and such like. It's a disgrace! He wakes up in the morning
and sets to walking about the corridor in nothing, saving your presence,
but his underclothes. And when he has had a drop he will pick up a
revolver and set to putting bullets into the wall. By day he is swilling
liquor and at night he plays cards like mad, and after cards it is
fighting. . . . I am ashamed for the other lodgers to see it!"
"Why don't you get rid of the scoundrel?"
"Why, there's no getting him out! He owes me for three months, but we
don't ask for our money, we simply ask him to get out as a favour . . .
. The magistrate has given him an order to clear out of the rooms, but
he's taking it from one court to another, and so it drags on. . . . He's
a perfect nuisance, that's what he is. And, good Lord, such a man, too!
Young, good-looking and intellectual. . . . When he hasn't had a drop
you couldn't wish to see a nicer gentleman. The other day he wasn't
drunk and he spent the whole day writing letters to his father and
mother."
"Poor father and mother!" sighed the colonel's lady.
"They are to be pitied, to be sure! There's no comfort in having such a
scamp! He's sworn at and turned out of his lodgings, and not a day
passes but he is in trouble over some scandal. It's sad!"
"His poor unhappy wife!" sighed the lady.
"He has no wife, madam. A likely idea! She would have to thank God if
her head were not broken. . . ."
The lady walked up and down the room.
"He is not married, you say?"
"Certainly not, madam."
The lady walked up and down the room again and mused a little.
"H'm, not married . . ." she pronounced meditatively. "H'm. Lilya and
Mila, don't sit at the window, there's a draught! What a pity! A young
man and to let himself sink to this! And all owing to what? The lack of
good influence! There is no mother who would. . . . Not married? Well .
. . there it is. . . . Please be so good," the lady continued suavely
after a moment's thought, "as to go to him and ask him in my name to . .
. refrain from using expressions. . . . Tell him that Madame Nashatyrin
begs him. . . . Tell him she is staying with her daughters in No. 47 . .
. that she has come up from her estate in the country. . . ."
"Certainly."
"Tell him, a colonel's lady and her daughters. He might even come and
apologize. . . . We are always at home after dinner. Oh, Mila, shut the
window!"
"Why, what do you want with that . . . black sheep, mamma?" drawled
Lilya when the hotel-keeper had retired. "A queer person to invite! A
drunken, rowdy rascal!"
"Oh, don't say so, ma chère! You always talk like that; and there . . .
sit down! Why, whatever he may be, we ought not to despise him. . . .
There's something good in everyone. Who knows," sighed the colonel's
lady, looking her daughters up and down anxiously, "perhaps your fate is
here. Change your dresses anyway. . . ."
IN A STRANGE LAND
SUNDAY, midday. A landowner, called Kamyshev, is sitting in his dining-
room, deliberately eating his lunch at a luxuriously furnished table.
Monsieur Champoun, a clean, neat, smoothly-shaven, old Frenchman, is
sharing the meal with him. This Champoun had once been a tutor in
Kamyshev's household, had taught his children good manners, the correct
pronunciation of French, and dancing: afterwards when Kamyshev's
children had grown up and become lieutenants, Champoun had become
something like a bonne of the male sex. The duties of the former tutor
were not complicated. He had to be properly dressed, to smell of scent,
to listen to Kamyshev's idle babble, to eat and drink and sleep--and
apparently that was all. For this he received a room, his board, and an
indefinite salary.
Kamyshev eats and as usual babbles at random.
"Damnation!" he says, wiping away the tears that have come into his eyes
after a mouthful of ham thickly smeared with mustard. "Ough! It has shot
into my head and all my joints. Your French mustard would not do that,
you know, if you ate the whole potful."
"Some like the French, some prefer the Russian. . ." Champoun assents
mildly.
"No one likes French mustard except Frenchmen. And a Frenchman will eat
anything, whatever you give him--frogs and rats and black beetles. . .
brrr! You don't like that ham, for instance, because it is Russian, but
if one were to give you a bit of baked glass and tell you it was French,
you would eat it and smack your lips. . . . To your thinking everything
Russian is nasty."
"I don't say that."
"Everything Russian is nasty, but if it's French--o say tray zholee! To
your thinking there is no country better than France, but to my mind. .
. Why, what is France, to tell the truth about it? A little bit of land.
Our police captain was sent out there, but in a month he asked to be
transferred: there was nowhere to turn round! One can drive round the
whole of your France in one day, while here when you drive out of the
gate--you can see no end to the land, you can ride on and on. . ."
"Yes, monsieur, Russia is an immense country."
"To be sure it is! To your thinking there are no better people than the
French. Well-educated, clever people! Civilization! I agree, the French
are all well-educated with elegant manners. . . that is true. . . . A
Frenchman never allows himself to be rude: he hands a lady a chair at
the right minute, he doesn't eat crayfish with his fork, he doesn't spit
on the floor, but . . . there's not the same spirit in him! not the
spirit in him! I don't know how to explain it to you but, however one is
to express it, there's nothing in a Frenchman of . . . something . . .
(the speaker flourishes his fingers) . . . of something . . . fanatical.
I remember I have read somewhere that all of you have intelligence
acquired from books, while we Russians have innate intelligence. If a
Russian studies the sciences properly, none of your French professors is
a match for him."
"Perhaps," says Champoun, as it were reluctantly.
"No, not perhaps, but certainly! It's no use your frowning, it's the
truth I am speaking. The Russian intelligence is an inventive
intelligence. Only of course he is not given a free outlet for it, and
he is no hand at boasting. He will invent something--and break it or give
it to the children to play with, while your Frenchman will invent some
nonsensical thing and make an uproar for all the world to hear it. The
other day Iona the coachman carved a little man out of wood, if you pull
the little man by a thread he plays unseemly antics. But Iona does not
brag of it. . . . I don't like Frenchmen as a rule. I am not referring
to you, but speaking generally. . . . They are an immoral people!
Outwardly they look like men, but they live like dogs. Take marriage for
instance. With us, once you are married, you stick to your wife, and
there is no talk about it, but goodness knows how it is with you. The
husband is sitting all day long in a café, while his wife fills the
house with Frenchmen, and sets to dancing the can-can with them."
"That's not true!" Champoun protests, flaring up and unable to restrain
himself. "The principle of the family is highly esteemed in France."
"We know all about that principle! You ought to be ashamed to defend it:
one ought to be impartial: a pig is always a pig. . . . We must thank
the Germans for having beaten them. . . . Yes indeed, God bless them for
it."
"In that case, monsieur, I don't understand. . ." says the Frenchman
leaping up with flashing eyes, "if you hate the French why do you keep
me?"
"What am I to do with you?"
"Let me go, and I will go back to France."
"Wha-at? But do you suppose they would let you into France now? Why, you
are a traitor to your country! At one time Napoleon's your great man, at
another Gambetta. . . . Who the devil can make you out?"
"Monsieur," says Champoun in French, spluttering and crushing up his
table napkin in his hands, "my worst enemy could not have thought of a
greater insult than the outrage you have just done to my feelings! All
is over!"
And with a tragic wave of his arm the Frenchman flings his dinner napkin
on the table majestically, and walks out of the room with dignity.
Three hours later the table is laid again, and the servants bring in the
dinner. Kamyshev sits alone at the table. After the preliminary glass he
feels a craving to babble. He wants to chatter, but he has no listener.
"What is Alphonse Ludovikovitch doing?" he asks the footman.
"He is packing his trunk, sir."
"What a noodle! Lord forgive us!" says Kamyshev, and goes in to the
Frenchman.