It occurred to him that he did not regret the twelve roubles because he
got them for nothing. If he had been a working man he would have known
the value of every farthing, and would not have been so careless whether
he lost or won. And his good-fortune had all, he reflected, come to him
by chance, for nothing, and really was as superfluous for him as
medicine for the healthy. If, like the vast majority of people, he had
been harassed by anxiety for his daily bread, had been struggling for
existence, if his back and chest had ached from work, then supper, a
warm snug home, and domestic happiness, would have been the necessity,
the compensation, the crown of his life; as it was, all this had a
strange, indefinite significance for him.
"Foo, how horrid!" he repeated, knowing perfectly well that these
reflections were in themselves a bad sign.
When he got home Masha was in bed: she was breathing evenly and smiling,
and was evidently sleeping with great enjoyment. Near her the white cat
lay curled up, purring. While Nikitin lit the candle and lighted his
cigarette, Masha woke up and greedily drank a glass of water.
"I ate too many sweets," she said, and laughed. "Have you been home?"
she asked after a pause.
"No."
Nikitin knew already that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been
building great hopes of late, was being transferred to one of the
western provinces, and was already making his farewell visits in the
town, and so it was depressing at his father-in-law's.
"Varya looked in this evening," said Masha, sitting up. "She did not say
anything, but one could see from her face how wretched she is, poor
darling! I can't bear Polyansky. He is fat and bloated, and when he
walks or dances his cheeks shake. . . . He is not a man I would choose.
But, still, I did think he was a decent person."
"I think he is a decent person now," said Nikitin.
"Then why has he treated Varya so badly?"
"Why badly?" asked Nikitin, beginning to feel irritation against the
white cat, who was stretching and arching its back. "As far as I know,
he has made no proposal and has given her no promises."
"Then why was he so often at the house? If he didn't mean to marry her,
he oughtn't to have come."
Nikitin put out the candle and got into bed. But he felt disinclined to
lie down and to sleep. He felt as though his head were immense and empty
as a barn, and that new, peculiar thoughts were wandering about in it
like tall shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft light of the
ikon lamp, that beamed upon their quiet domestic happiness, that apart
from this little world in which he and this cat lived so peacefully and
happily, there was another world. . . . And he had a passionate,
poignant longing to be in that other world, to work himself at some
factory or big workshop, to address big audiences, to write, to publish,
to raise a stir, to exhaust himself, to suffer. . . . He wanted
something that would engross him till he forgot himself, ceased to care
for the personal happiness which yielded him only sensations so
monotonous. And suddenly there rose vividly before his imagination the
figure of Shebaldin with his clean-shaven face, saying to him with
horror: "You haven't even read Lessing! You are quite behind the times!
How you have gone to seed!"
Masha woke up and again drank some water. He glanced at her neck, at her
plump shoulders and throat, and remembered the word the brigadier-
general had used in church--"rose."
"Rose," he muttered, and laughed.
His laugh was answered by a sleepy growl from Mushka under the bed: "Rrr
. . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
A heavy anger sank like a cold weight on his heart, and he felt tempted
to say something rude to Masha, and even to jump up and hit her; his
heart began throbbing.
"So then," he asked, restraining himself, "since I went to your house, I
was bound in duty to marry you?"
"Of course. You know that very well."
"That's nice." And a minute later he repeated: "That's nice."
To relieve the throbbing of his heart, and to avoid saying too much,
Nikitin went to his study and lay down on the sofa, without a pillow;
then he lay on the floor on the carpet.
"What nonsense it is!" he said to reassure himself. "You are a teacher,
you are working in the noblest of callings. . . . What need have you of
any other world? What rubbish!"
But almost immediately he told himself with conviction that he was not a
real teacher, but simply a government employé, as commonplace and
mediocre as the Czech who taught Greek. He had never had a vocation for
teaching, he knew nothing of the theory of teaching, and never had been
interested in the subject; he did not know how to treat children; he did
not understand the significance of what he taught, and perhaps did not
teach the right things. Poor Ippolit Ippolititch had been frankly
stupid, and all the boys, as well as his colleagues, knew what he was
and what to expect from him; but he, Nikitin, like the Czech, knew how
to conceal his stupidity and cleverly deceived every one by pretending
that, thank God, his teaching was a success. These new ideas frightened
Nikitin; he rejected them, called them stupid, and believed that all
this was due to his nerves, that he would laugh at himself.
And he did, in fact, by the morning laugh at himself and call himself an
old woman; but it was clear to him that his peace of mind was lost,
perhaps, for ever, and that in that little two-story house happiness was
henceforth impossible for him. He realized that the illusion had
evaporated, and that a new life of unrest and clear sight was beginning
which was incompatible with peace and personal happiness.
Next day, which was Sunday, he was at the school chapel, and there met
his colleagues and the director. It seemed to him that they were
entirely preoccupied with concealing their ignorance and discontent with
life, and he, too, to conceal his uneasiness, smiled affably and talked
of trivialities. Then he went to the station and saw the mail train come
in and go out, and it was agreeable to him to be alone and not to have
to talk to any one.
At home he found Varya and his father-in-law, who had come to dinner.
Varya's eyes were red with crying, and she complained of a headache,
while Shelestov ate a great deal, saying that young men nowadays were
unreliable, and that there was very little gentlemanly feeling among
them.
"It's loutishness!" he said. "I shall tell him so to his face: 'It's
loutishness, sir,' I shall say."
Nikitin smiled affably and helped Masha to look after their guests, but
after dinner he went to his study and shut the door.
The March sun was shining brightly in at the windows and shedding its
warm rays on the table. It was only the twentieth of the month, but
already the cabmen were driving with wheels, and the starlings were
noisy in the garden. It was just the weather in which Masha would come
in, put one arm round his neck, tell him the horses were saddled or the
chaise was at the door, and ask him what she should put on to keep warm.
Spring was beginning as exquisitely as last spring, and it promised the
same joys. . . . But Nikitin was thinking that it would be nice to take
a holiday and go to Moscow, and stay at his old lodgings there. In the
next room they were drinking coffee and talking of Captain Polyansky,
while he tried not to listen and wrote in his diary: "Where am I, my
God? I am surrounded by vulgarity and vulgarity. Wearisome,
insignificant people, pots of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches,
stupid women. . . . There is nothing more terrible, mortifying, and
distressing than vulgarity. I must escape from here, I must escape
today, or I shall go out of my mind!"
NOT WANTED
BETWEEN six and seven o'clock on a July evening, a crowd of summer
visitors--mostly fathers of families--burdened with parcels, portfolios,
and ladies' hat-boxes, was trailing along from the little station of
Helkovo, in the direction of the summer villas. They all looked
exhausted, hungry, and ill-humoured, as though the sun were not shining
and the grass were not green for them.
Trudging along among the others was Pavel Matveyitch Zaikin, a member of
the Circuit Court, a tall, stooping man, in a cheap cotton dust-coat and
with a cockade on his faded cap. He was perspiring, red in the face, and
gloomy. . . .
"Do you come out to your holiday home every day?" said a summer visitor,
in ginger-coloured trousers, addressing him.
"No, not every day," Zaikin answered sullenly. "My wife and son are
staying here all the while, and I come down two or three times a week. I
haven't time to come every day; besides, it is expensive."
"You're right there; it is expensive," sighed he of the ginger trousers.
"In town you can't walk to the station, you have to take a cab; and
then, the ticket costs forty-two kopecks; you buy a paper for the
journey; one is tempted to drink a glass of vodka. It's all petty
expenditure not worth considering, but, mind you, in the course of the
summer it will run up to some two hundred roubles. Of course, to be in
the lap of Nature is worth any money--I don't dispute it . . . idyllic
and all the rest of it; but of course, with the salary an official gets,
as you know yourself, every farthing has to be considered. If you waste
a halfpenny you lie awake all night. . . . Yes. . . I receive, my dear
sir--I haven't the honour of knowing your name--I receive a salary of very
nearly two thousand roubles a year. I am a civil councillor, I smoke
second-rate tobacco, and I haven't a rouble to spare to buy Vichy water,
prescribed me by the doctor for gall-stones."
"It's altogether abominable," said Zaikin after a brief silence. "I
maintain, sir, that summer holidays are the invention of the devil and
of woman. The devil was actuated in the present instance by malice,
woman by excessive frivolity. Mercy on us, it is not life at all; it is
hard labour, it is hell! It's hot and stifling, you can hardly breathe,
and you wander about like a lost soul and can find no refuge. In town
there is no furniture, no servants. . . everything has been carried off
to the villa: you eat what you can get; you go without your tea because
there is no one to heat the samovar; you can't wash yourself; and when
you come down here into this 'lap of Nature' you have to walk, if you
please, through the dust and heat. . . . Phew! Are you married?"
"Yes. . . three children," sighs Ginger Trousers.
"It's abominable altogether. . . . It's a wonder we are still alive."
At last the summer visitors reached their destination. Zaikin said good-
bye to Ginger Trousers and went into his villa. He found a death-like
silence in the house. He could hear nothing but the buzzing of the
gnats, and the prayer for help of a fly destined for the dinner of a
spider. The windows were hung with muslin curtains, through which the
faded flowers of the geraniums showed red. On the unpainted wooden walls
near the oleographs flies were slumbering. There was not a soul in the
passage, the kitchen, or the dining-room. In the room which was called
indifferently the parlour or the drawing-room, Zaikin found his son
Petya, a little boy of six. Petya was sitting at the table, and
breathing loudly with his lower lip stuck out, was engaged in cutting
out the figure of a knave of diamonds from a card.
"Oh, that's you, father!" he said, without turning round. "Good-
evening."
"Good-evening. . . . And where is mother?"
"Mother? She is gone with Olga Kirillovna to a rehearsal of the play.
The day after tomorrow they will have a performance. And they will take
me, too. . . . And will you go?"
"H'm! . . . When is she coming back?"
"She said she would be back in the evening."
"And where is Natalya?"
"Mamma took Natalya with her to help her dress for the performance, and
Akulina has gone to the wood to get mushrooms. Father, why is it that
when gnats bite you their stomachs get red?"
"I don't know. . . . Because they suck blood. So there is no one in the
house, then?"
"No one; I am all alone in the house."
Zaikin sat down in an easy-chair, and for a moment gazed blankly at the
window.
"Who is going to get our dinner?" he asked.
"They haven't cooked any dinner today, father. Mamma thought you were
not coming today, and did not order any dinner. She is going to have
dinner with Olga Kirillovna at the rehearsal."
"Oh, thank you very much; and you, what have you to eat?"
"I've had some milk. They bought me six kopecks' worth of milk. And,
father, why do gnats suck blood?"
Zaikin suddenly felt as though something heavy were rolling down on his
liver and beginning to gnaw it. He felt so vexed, so aggrieved, and so
bitter, that he was choking and tremulous; he wanted to jump up, to bang
something on the floor, and to burst into loud abuse; but then he
remembered that his doctor had absolutely forbidden him all excitement,
so he got up, and making an effort to control himself, began whistling a
tune from "Les Huguenots."
"Father, can you act in plays?" he heard Petya's voice.
"Oh, don't worry me with stupid questions!" said Zaikin, getting angry.
"He sticks to one like a leaf in the bath! Here you are, six years old,
and just as silly as you were three years ago. . . . Stupid, neglected
child! Why are you spoiling those cards, for instance? How dare you
spoil them?"
"These cards aren't yours," said Petya, turning round. "Natalya gave
them me."
"You are telling fibs, you are telling fibs, you horrid boy!" said
Zaikin, growing more and more irritated. "You are always telling fibs!
You want a whipping, you horrid little pig! I will pull your ears!"
Petya leapt up, and craning his neck, stared fixedly at his father's red
and wrathful face. His big eyes first began blinking, then were dimmed
with moisture, and the boy's face began working.
"But why are you scolding?" squealed Petya. "Why do you attack me, you
stupid? I am not interfering with anybody; I am not naughty; I do what I
am told, and yet . . . you are cross! Why are you scolding me?"
The boy spoke with conviction, and wept so bitterly that Zaikin felt
conscience-stricken.
"Yes, really, why am I falling foul of him?" he thought. "Come, come,"
he said, touching the boy on the shoulder. "I am sorry, Petya . . .
forgive me. You are my good boy, my nice boy, I love you."
Petya wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sat down, with a sigh, in the same
place and began cutting out the queen. Zaikin went off to his own room.
He stretched himself on the sofa, and putting his hands behind his head,
sank into thought. The boy's tears had softened his anger, and by
degrees the oppression on his liver grew less. He felt nothing but
exhaustion and hunger.
"Father," he heard on the other side of the door, "shall I show you my
collection of insects?"
"Yes, show me."
Petya came into the study and handed his father a long green box. Before
raising it to his ear Zaikin could hear a despairing buzz and the
scratching of claws on the sides of the box. Opening the lid, he saw a
number of butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, and flies fastened to the
bottom of the box with pins. All except two or three butterflies were
still alive and moving.
"Why, the grasshopper is still alive!" said Petya in surprise. "I caught
him yesterday morning, and he is still alive!"
"Who taught you to pin them in this way?"
"Olga Kirillovna."
"Olga Kirillovna ought to be pinned down like that herself!" said Zaikin
with repulsion. "Take them away! It's shameful to torture animals."
"My God! How horribly he is being brought up!" he thought, as Petya went
out.
Pavel Matveyitch forgot his exhaustion and hunger, and thought of
nothing but his boy's future. Meanwhile, outside the light was gradually
fading. . . . He could hear the summer visitors trooping back from the
evening bathe. Some one was stopping near the open dining-room window
and shouting: "Do you want any mushrooms?" And getting no answer,
shuffled on with bare feet. . . . But at last, when the dusk was so
thick that the outlines of the geraniums behind the muslin curtain were
lost, and whiffs of the freshness of evening were coming in at the
window, the door of the passage was thrown open noisily, and there came
a sound of rapid footsteps, talk, and laughter. . . .
"Mamma!" shrieked Petya.
Zaikin peeped out of his study and saw his wife, Nadyezhda Stepanovna,
healthy and rosy as ever; with her he saw Olga Kirillovna, a spare woman
with fair hair and heavy freckles, and two unknown men: one a lanky
young man with curly red hair and a big Adam's apple; the other, a short
stubby man with a shaven face like an actor's and a bluish crooked chin.
"Natalya, set the samovar," cried Nadyezhda Stepanovna, with a loud
rustle of her skirts. "I hear Pavel Matveyitch is come. Pavel, where are
you? Good-evening, Pavel!" she said, running into the study
breathlessly. "So you've come. I am so glad. . . . Two of our amateurs
have come with me. . . . Come, I'll introduce you. . . . Here, the
taller one is Koromyslov . . . he sings splendidly; and the other, the
little one . . . is called Smerkalov: he is a real actor . . . he
recites magnificently. Oh, how tired I am! We have just had a rehearsal.
. . . It goes splendidly. We are acting 'The Lodger with the Trombone'
and 'Waiting for Him.' . . . The performance is the day after tomorrow.
. . ."
"Why did you bring them?" asked Zaikin.
"I couldn't help it, Poppet; after tea we must rehearse our parts and
sing something. . . . I am to sing a duet with Koromyslov. . . . Oh,
yes, I was almost forgetting! Darling, send Natalya to get some
sardines, vodka, cheese, and something else. They will most likely stay
to supper. . . . Oh, how tired I am!"
"H'm! I've no money."
"You must, Poppet! It would be awkward! Don't make me blush."
Half an hour later Natalya was sent for vodka and savouries; Zaikin,
after drinking tea and eating a whole French loaf, went to his bedroom
and lay down on the bed, while Nadyezhda Stepanovna and her visitors,
with much noise and laughter, set to work to rehearse their parts. For a
long time Pavel Matveyitch heard Koromyslov's nasal reciting and
Smerkalov's theatrical exclamations. . . . The rehearsal was followed by
a long conversation, interrupted by the shrill laughter of Olga
Kirillovna. Smerkalov, as a real actor, explained the parts with aplomb
and heat. . . .
Then followed the duet, and after the duet there was the clatter of
crockery. . . . Through his drowsiness Zaikin heard them persuading
Smerkalov to read "The Woman who was a Sinner," and heard him, after
affecting to refuse, begin to recite. He hissed, beat himself on the
breast, wept, laughed in a husky bass. . . . Zaikin scowled and hid his
head under the quilt.
"It's a long way for you to go, and it's dark," he heard Nadyezhda
Stepanovna's voice an hour later. "Why shouldn't you stay the night
here? Koromyslov can sleep here in the drawing-room on the sofa, and
you, Smerkalov, in Petya's bed. . . . I can put Petya in my husband's
study. . . . Do stay, really!"
At last when the clock was striking two, all was hushed, the bedroom
door opened, and Nadyezhda Stepanovna appeared.
"Pavel, are you asleep?" she whispered.
"No; why?"
"Go into your study, darling, and lie on the sofa. I am going to put
Olga Kirillovna here, in your bed. Do go, dear! I would put her to sleep
in the study, but she is afraid to sleep alone. . . . Do get up!"
Zaikin got up, threw on his dressing-gown, and taking his pillow, crept
wearily to the study. . . . Feeling his way to his sofa, he lighted a
match, and saw Petya lying on the sofa. The boy was not asleep, and,
looking at the match with wide-open eyes:
"Father, why is it gnats don't go to sleep at night?" he asked.
"Because . . . because . . . you and I are not wanted. . . . We have
nowhere to sleep even."
"Father, and why is it Olga Kirillovna has freckles on her face?"
"Oh, shut up! I am tired of you."
After a moment's thought, Zaikin dressed and went out into the street
for a breath of air. . . . He looked at the grey morning sky, at the
motionless clouds, heard the lazy call of the drowsy corncrake, and
began dreaming of the next day, when he would go to town, and coming
back from the court would tumble into bed. . . . Suddenly the figure of
a man appeared round the corner.
"A watchman, no doubt," thought Zaikin. But going nearer and looking
more closely he recognized in the figure the summer visitor in the
ginger trousers.
"You're not asleep?" he asked.
"No, I can't sleep," sighed Ginger Trousers. "I am enjoying Nature . . .
. A welcome visitor, my wife's mother, arrived by the night train, you
know. She brought with her our nieces . . . splendid girls! I was
delighted to see them, although . . . it's very damp! And you, too, are
enjoying Nature?"
"Yes," grunted Zaikin, "I am enjoying it, too. . . . Do you know whether
there is any sort of tavern or restaurant in the neighbourhood?"
Ginger Trousers raised his eyes to heaven and meditated profoundly.
TYPHUS
A YOUNG lieutenant called Klimov was travelling from Petersburg to
Moscow in a smoking carriage of the mail train. Opposite him was sitting
an elderly man with a shaven face like a sea captain's, by all
appearances a well-to-do Finn or Swede. He pulled at his pipe the whole
journey and kept talking about the same subject:
"Ha, you are an officer! I have a brother an officer too, only he is a
naval officer. . . . He is a naval officer, and he is stationed at
Kronstadt. Why are you going to Moscow?"
"I am serving there."
"Ha! And are you a family man?"
"No, I live with my sister and aunt."
"My brother's an officer, only he is a naval officer; he has a wife and
three children. Ha!"
The Finn seemed continually surprised at something, and gave a broad
idiotic grin when he exclaimed "Ha!" and continually puffed at his
stinking pipe. Klimov, who for some reason did not feel well, and found
it burdensome to answer questions, hated him with all his heart. He
dreamed of how nice it would be to snatch the wheezing pipe out of his
hand and fling it under the seat, and drive the Finn himself into
another compartment.
"Detestable people these Finns and . . . Greeks," he thought.
"Absolutely superfluous, useless, detestable people. They simply fill up
space on the earthly globe. What are they for?"
And the thought of Finns and Greeks produced a feeling akin to sickness
all over his body. For the sake of comparison he tried to think of the
French, of the Italians, but his efforts to think of these people evoked
in his mind, for some reason, nothing but images of organ-grinders,
naked women, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of
drawers at home, at his aunt's.
Altogether the officer felt in an abnormal state. He could not arrange
his arms and legs comfortably on the seat, though he had the whole seat
to himself. His mouth felt dry and sticky; there was a heavy fog in his
brain; his thoughts seemed to be straying, not only within his head, but
outside his skull, among the seats and the people that were shrouded in
the darkness of night. Through the mist in his brain, as through a
dream, he heard the murmur of voices, the rumble of wheels, the slamming
of doors. The sounds of the bells, the whistles, the guards, the running
to and fro of passengers on the platforms, seemed more frequent than
usual. The time flew by rapidly, imperceptibly, and so it seemed as
though the train were stopping at stations every minute, and metallic
voices crying continually:
"Is the mail ready?"
"Yes!" was repeatedly coming from outside.