his eyes. "Olya, I don't care about your property qualification, nor the
Circuit Courts . . ." (he gave a sob) "nor particular views, nor those
visitors, nor your fortune. . . . I don't care about anything! Why
didn't we take care of our child? Oh, it's no good talking!"
With a despairing gesture he went out of the bedroom.
But nothing mattered to Olga Mihalovna now, there was a mistiness in her
brain from the chloroform, an emptiness in her soul. . . . The dull
indifference to life which had overcome her when the two doctors were
performing the operation still had possession of her.
TERROR My Friend's Story
DMITRI PETROVITCH SILIN had taken his degree and entered the government
service in Petersburg, but at thirty he gave up his post and went in for
agriculture. His farming was fairly successful, and yet it always seemed
to me that he was not in his proper place, and that he would do well to
go back to Petersburg. When sunburnt, grey with dust, exhausted with
toil, he met me near the gates or at the entrance, and then at supper
struggled with sleepiness and his wife took him off to bed as though he
were a baby; or when, overcoming his sleepiness, he began in his soft,
cordial, almost imploring voice, to talk about his really excellent
ideas, I saw him not as a farmer nor an agriculturist, but only as a
worried and exhausted man, and it was clear to me that he did not really
care for farming, but that all he wanted was for the day to be over and
"Thank God for it."
I liked to be with him, and I used to stay on his farm for two or three
days at a time. I liked his house, and his park, and his big fruit
garden, and the river--and his philosophy, which was clear, though rather
spiritless and rhetorical. I suppose I was fond of him on his own
account, though I can't say that for certain, as I have not up to now
succeeded in analysing my feelings at that time. He was an intelligent,
kind-hearted, genuine man, and not a bore, but I remember that when he
confided to me his most treasured secrets and spoke of our relation to
each other as friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I was
conscious of awkwardness. In his affection for me there was something
inappropriate, tiresome, and I should have greatly preferred commonplace
friendly relations.
The fact is that I was extremely attracted by his wife, Marya
Sergeyevna. I was not in love with her, but I was attracted by her face,
her eyes, her voice, her walk. I missed her when I did not see her for a
long time, and my imagination pictured no one at that time so eagerly as
that young, beautiful, elegant woman. I had no definite designs in
regard to her, and did not dream of anything of the sort, yet for some
reason, whenever we were left alone, I remembered that her husband
looked upon me as his friend, and I felt awkward. When she played my
favourite pieces on the piano or told me something interesting, I
listened with pleasure, and yet at the same time for some reason the
reflection that she loved her husband, that he was my friend, and that
she herself looked upon me as his friend, obtruded themselves upon me,
my spirits flagged, and I became listless, awkward, and dull. She
noticed this change and would usually say:
"You are dull without your friend. We must send out to the fields for
him."
And when Dmitri Petrovitch came in, she would say:
"Well, here is your friend now. Rejoice."
So passed a year and a half.
It somehow happened one July Sunday that Dmitri Petrovitch and I, having
nothing to do, drove to the big village of Klushino to buy things for
supper. While we were going from one shop to another the sun set and the
evening came on--the evening which I shall probably never forget in my
life. After buying cheese that smelt like soap, and petrified sausages
that smelt of tar, we went to the tavern to ask whether they had any
beer. Our coachman went off to the blacksmith to get our horses shod,
and we told him we would wait for him near the church. We walked,
talked, laughed over our purchases, while a man who was known in the
district by a very strange nickname, "Forty Martyrs," followed us all
the while in silence with a mysterious air like a detective. This Forty
Martyrs was no other than Gavril Syeverov, or more simply Gavryushka,
who had been for a short time in my service as a footman and had been
dismissed by me for drunkenness. He had been in Dmitri Petrovitch's
service, too, and by him had been dismissed for the same vice. He was an
inveterate drunkard, and indeed his whole life was as drunk and
disorderly as himself. His father had been a priest and his mother of
noble rank, so by birth he belonged to the privileged class; but however
carefully I scrutinized his exhausted, respectful, and always perspiring
face, his red beard now turning grey, his pitifully torn reefer jacket
and his red shirt, I could not discover in him the faintest trace of
anything we associate with privilege. He spoke of himself as a man of
education, and used to say that he had been in a clerical school, but
had not finished his studies there, as he had been expelled for smoking;
then he had sung in the bishop's choir and lived for two years in a
monastery, from which he was also expelled, but this time not for
smoking but for "his weakness." He had walked all over two provinces,
had presented petitions to the Consistory, and to various government
offices, and had been four times on his trial. At last, being stranded
in our district, he had served as a footman, as a forester, as a
kennelman, as a sexton, had married a cook who was a widow and rather a
loose character, and had so hopelessly sunk into a menial position, and
had grown so used to filth and dirt, that he even spoke of his
privileged origin with a certain scepticism, as of some myth. At the
time I am describing, he was hanging about without a job, calling
himself a carrier and a huntsman, and his wife had disappeared and made
no sign.
From the tavern we went to the church and sat in the porch, waiting for
the coachman. Forty Martyrs stood a little way off and put his hand
before his mouth in order to cough in it respectfully if need be. By now
it was dark; there was a strong smell of evening dampness, and the moon
was on the point of rising. There were only two clouds in the clear
starry sky exactly over our heads: one big one and one smaller; alone in
the sky they were racing after one another like mother and child, in the
direction where the sunset was glowing.
"What a glorious day!" said Dmitri Petrovitch.
"In the extreme . . ." Forty Martyrs assented, and he coughed
respectfully into his hand. "How was it, Dmitri Petrovitch, you thought
to visit these parts?" he asked in an ingratiating voice, evidently
anxious to get up a conversation.
Dmitri Petrovitch made no answer. Forty Martyrs heaved a deep sigh and
said softly, not looking at us:
"I suffer solely through a cause to which I must answer to Almighty God.
No doubt about it, I am a hopeless and incompetent man; but believe me,
on my conscience, I am without a crust of bread and worse off than a
dog. . . . Forgive me, Dmitri Petrovitch."
Silin was not listening, but sat musing with his head propped on his
fists. The church stood at the end of the street on the high river-bank,
and through the trellis gate of the enclosure we could see the river,
the water-meadows on the near side of it, and the crimson glare of a
camp fire about which black figures of men and horses were moving. And
beyond the fire, further away, there were other lights, where there was
a little village. They were singing there. On the river, and here and
there on the meadows, a mist was rising. High narrow coils of mist,
thick and white as milk, were trailing over the river, hiding the
reflection of the stars and hovering over the willows. Every minute they
changed their form, and it seemed as though some were embracing, others
were bowing, others lifting up their arms to heaven with wide sleeves
like priests, as though they were praying. . . . Probably they reminded
Dmitri Petrovitch of ghosts and of the dead, for he turned facing me and
asked with a mournful smile:
"Tell me, my dear fellow, why is it that when we want to tell some
terrible, mysterious, and fantastic story, we draw our material, not
from life, but invariably from the world of ghosts and of the shadows
beyond the grave."
"We are frightened of what we don't understand."
"And do you understand life? Tell me: do you understand life better than
the world beyond the grave?"
Dmitri Petrovitch was sitting quite close to me, so that I felt his
breath upon my cheek. In the evening twilight his pale, lean face seemed
paler than ever and his dark beard was black as soot. His eyes were sad,
truthful, and a little frightened, as though he were about to tell me
something horrible. He looked into my eyes and went on in his habitual
imploring voice:
"Our life and the life beyond the grave are equally incomprehensible and
horrible. If any one is afraid of ghosts he ought to be afraid, too, of
me, and of those lights and of the sky, seeing that, if you come to
reflect, all that is no less fantastic and beyond our grasp than
apparitions from the other world. Prince Hamlet did not kill himself
because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after
death. I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to be candid, it never
touched my soul. I will confess to you as a friend that in moments of
depression I have sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death. My
fancy invented thousands of the gloomiest visions, and I have succeeded
in working myself up to an agonizing exaltation, to a state of
nightmare, and I assure you that that did not seem to me more terrible
than reality. What I mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is
terrible, too. I don't understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear
boy; I don't know. Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged. It seems to a
sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but
that 'seeming' is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning myself
with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease
is the fear of life. When I lie on the grass and watch a little beetle
which was born yesterday and understands nothing, it seems to me that
its life consists of nothing else but fear, and in it I see myself."
"What is it exactly you are frightened of?" I asked.
"I am afraid of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I
take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the
destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the
heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from
which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is
true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize
that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow
circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily
effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and
I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not
escape from this falsity. To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not
understand why I did it. I entered the service in Petersburg and took
fright; I came here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened.
. . . I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We
are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other's lives, we
waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us
from living; and that frightens me, because I don't understand why and
for whom it is necessary. I don't understand men, my dear fellow, and I
am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don't
know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living
for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous
people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and
unending, hopeless ignorance, I can't understand for whom and what this
torture is necessary. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to
understand this specimen, for instance," said Dmitri Petrovitch,
pointing to Forty Martyrs. "Think of him!"
Noticing that we were looking at him, Forty Martyrs coughed
deferentially into his fist and said:
"I was always a faithful servant with good masters, but the great
trouble has been spirituous liquor. If a poor fellow like me were shown
consideration and given a place, I would kiss the ikon. My word's my
bond."
The sexton walked by, looked at us in amazement, and began pulling the
rope. The bell, abruptly breaking upon the stillness of the evening,
struck ten with a slow and prolonged note.
"It's ten o'clock, though," said Dmitri Petrovitch. "It's time we were
going. Yes, my dear fellow," he sighed, "if only you knew how afraid I
am of my ordinary everyday thoughts, in which one would have thought
there should be nothing dreadful. To prevent myself thinking I distract
my mind with work and try to tire myself out that I may sleep sound at
night. Children, a wife--all that seems ordinary with other people; but
how that weighs upon me, my dear fellow!"
He rubbed his face with his hands, cleared his throat, and laughed.
"If I could only tell you how I have played the fool in my life!" he
said. "They all tell me that I have a sweet wife, charming children, and
that I am a good husband and father. They think I am very happy and envy
me. But since it has come to that, I will tell you in secret: my happy
family life is only a grievous misunderstanding, and I am afraid of it."
His pale face was distorted by a wry smile. He put his arm round my
waist and went on in an undertone:
"You are my true friend; I believe in you and have a deep respect for
you. Heaven gave us friendship that we may open our hearts and escape
from the secrets that weigh upon us. Let me take advantage of your
friendly feeling for me and tell you the whole truth. My home life,
which seems to you so enchanting, is my chief misery and my chief
terror. I got married in a strange and stupid way. I must tell you that
I was madly in love with Masha before I married her, and was courting
her for two years. I asked her to marry me five times, and she refused
me because she did not care for me in the least. The sixth, when burning
with passion I crawled on my knees before her and implored her to take a
beggar and marry me, she consented. . . . What she said to me was: 'I
don't love you, but I will be true to you. . . .' I accepted that
condition with rapture. At the time I understood what that meant, but I
swear to God I don't understand it now. 'I don't love you, but I will be
true to you.' What does that mean? It's a fog, a darkness. I love her
now as intensely as I did the day we were married, while she, I believe,
is as indifferent as ever, and I believe she is glad when I go away from
home. I don't know for certain whether she cares for me or not --I don't
know, I don't know; but, as you see, we live under the same roof, call
each other 'thou,' sleep together, have children, our property is in
common. . . . What does it mean, what does it mean? What is the object
of it? And do you understand it at all, my dear fellow? It's cruel
torture! Because I don't understand our relations, I hate, sometimes
her, sometimes myself, sometimes both at once. Everything is in a tangle
in my brain; I torment myself and grow stupid. And as though to spite
me, she grows more beautiful every day, she is getting more wonderful. .
. I fancy her hair is marvellous, and her smile is like no other
woman's. I love her, and I know that my love is hopeless. Hopeless love
for a woman by whom one has two children! Is that intelligible? And
isn't it terrible? Isn't it more terrible than ghosts?"
He was in the mood to have talked on a good deal longer, but luckily we
heard the coachman's voice. Our horses had arrived. We got into the
carriage, and Forty Martyrs, taking off his cap, helped us both into the
carriage with an expression that suggested that he had long been waiting
for an opportunity to come in contact with our precious persons.
"Dmitri Petrovitch, let me come to you," he said, blinking furiously
and tilting his head on one side. "Show divine mercy! I am dying of
hunger!"
"Very well," said Silin. "Come, you shall stay three days, and then we
shall see."
"Certainly, sir," said Forty Martyrs, overjoyed. "I'll come today, sir."
It was a five miles' drive home. Dmitri Petrovitch, glad that he had at
last opened his heart to his friend, kept his arm round my waist all the
way; and speaking now, not with bitterness and not with apprehension,
but quite cheerfully, told me that if everything had been satisfactory
in his home life, he should have returned to Petersburg and taken up
scientific work there. The movement which had driven so many gifted
young men into the country was, he said, a deplorable movement. We had
plenty of rye and wheat in Russia, but absolutely no cultured people.
The strong and gifted among the young ought to take up science, art, and
politics; to act otherwise meant being wasteful. He generalized with
pleasure and expressed regret that he would be parting from me early
next morning, as he had to go to a sale of timber.
And I felt awkward and depressed, and it seemed to me that I was
deceiving the man. And at the same time it was pleasant to me. I gazed
at the immense crimson moon which was rising, and pictured the tall,
graceful, fair woman, with her pale face, always well-dressed and
fragrant with some special scent, rather like musk, and for some reason
it pleased me to think she did not love her husband.
On reaching home, we sat down to supper. Marya Sergeyevna, laughing,
regaled us with our purchases, and I thought that she certainly had
wonderful hair and that her smile was unlike any other woman's. I
watched her, and I wanted to detect in every look and movement that she
did not love her husband, and I fancied that I did see it.
Dmitri Petrovitch was soon struggling with sleep. After supper he sat
with us for ten minutes and said:
"Do as you please, my friends, but I have to be up at three o'clock
tomorrow morning. Excuse my leaving you."
He kissed his wife tenderly, pressed my hand with warmth and gratitude,
and made me promise that I would certainly come the following week. That
he might not oversleep next morning, he went to spend the night in the
lodge.
Marya Sergeyevna always sat up late, in the Petersburg fashion, and for
some reason on this occasion I was glad of it.
"And now," I began when we were left alone, "and now you'll be kind and
play me something."
I felt no desire for music, but I did not know how to begin the
conversation. She sat down to the piano and played, I don't remember
what. I sat down beside her and looked at her plump white hands and
tried to read something on her cold, indifferent face. Then she smiled
at something and looked at me.
"You are dull without your friend," she said.
I laughed.
"It would be enough for friendship to be here once a month, but I turn
up oftener than once a week."
Saying this, I got up and walked from one end of the room to the other.
She too got up and walked away to the fireplace.
"What do you mean to say by that?" she said, raising her large, clear
eyes and looking at me.
I made no answer.
"What you say is not true," she went on, after a moment's thought. "You
only come here on account of Dmitri Petrovitch. Well, I am very glad.
One does not often see such friendships nowadays."
"Aha!" I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: "Would you care
for a turn in the garden?"
I went out upon the verandah. Nervous shudders were running over my head
and I felt chilly with excitement. I was convinced now that our
conversation would be utterly trivial, and that there was nothing
particular we should be able to say to one another, but that, that
night, what I did not dare to dream of was bound to happen--that it was
bound to be that night or never.
"What lovely weather!" I said aloud.
"It makes absolutely no difference to me," she answered.
I went into the drawing-room. Marya Sergeyevna was standing, as before,
near the fireplace, with her hands behind her back, looking away and
thinking of something.
"Why does it make no difference to you?" I asked.
"Because I am bored. You are only bored without your friend, but I am
always bored. However . . . that is of no interest to you."
I sat down to the piano and struck a few chords, waiting to hear what
she would say.
"Please don't stand on ceremony," she said, looking angrily at me, and
she seemed as though on the point of crying with vexation. "If you are
sleepy, go to bed. Because you are Dmitri Petrovitch's friend, you are
not in duty bound to be bored with his wife's company. I don't want a
sacrifice. Please go."
I did not, of course, go to bed. She went out on the verandah while I
remained in the drawing-room and spent five minutes turning over the
music. Then I went out, too. We stood close together in the shadow of
the curtains, and below us were the steps bathed in moonlight. The black
shadows of the trees stretched across the flower beds and the yellow
sand of the paths.
"I shall have to go away tomorrow, too," I said.
"Of course, if my husband's not at home you can't stay here," she said
sarcastically. "I can imagine how miserable you would be if you were in
love with me! Wait a bit: one day I shall throw myself on your neck. . .
. I shall see with what horror you will run away from me. That would be
interesting."
Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were full of tender
passionate love. I already looked upon this lovely creature as my
property, and then for the first time I noticed that she had golden
eyebrows, exquisite eyebrows. I had never seen such eyebrows before. The
thought that I might at once press her to my heart, caress her, touch
her wonderful hair, seemed to me such a miracle that I laughed and shut
my eyes.
"It's bed-time now. . . . A peaceful night," she said.
"I don't want a peaceful night," I said, laughing, following her into
the drawing-room. "I shall curse this night if it is a peaceful one."
Pressing her hand, and escorting her to the door, I saw by her face that
she understood me, and was glad that I understood her, too.
I went to my room. Near the books on the table lay Dmitri Petrovitch's
cap, and that reminded me of his affection for me. I took my stick and
went out into the garden. The mist had risen here, too, and the same
tall, narrow, ghostly shapes which I had seen earlier on the river were
trailing round the trees and bushes and wrapping about them. What a pity
I could not talk to them!
In the extraordinarily transparent air, each leaf, each drop of dew
stood out distinctly; it was all smiling at me in the stillness half
asleep, and as I passed the green seats I recalled the words in some
play of Shakespeare's: "How sweetly falls the moonlight on yon seat!"
There was a mound in the garden; I went up it and sat down. I was
tormented by a delicious feeling. I knew for certain that in a moment I
should hold in my arms, should press to my heart her magnificent body,
should kiss her golden eyebrows; and I wanted to disbelieve it, to
tantalize myself, and was sorry that she had cost me so little trouble
and had yielded so soon.
But suddenly I heard heavy footsteps. A man of medium height appeared in
the avenue, and I recognized him at once as Forty Martyrs. He sat down
on the bench and heaved a deep sigh, then crossed himself three times
and lay down. A minute later he got up and lay on the other side. The
gnats and the dampness of the night prevented his sleeping.
"Oh, life!" he said. "Wretched, bitter life!"
Looking at his bent, wasted body and hearing his heavy, noisy sighs, I
thought of an unhappy, bitter life of which the confession had been made
to me that day, and I felt uneasy and frightened at my blissful mood. I
came down the knoll and went to the house.
"Life, as he thinks, is terrible," I thought, "so don't stand on
ceremony with it, bend it to your will, and until it crushes you, snatch
all you can wring from it."
Marya Sergeyevna was standing on the verandah. I put my arms round her
without a word, and began greedily kissing her eyebrows, her temples,
her neck. . . .