to look at the thermometer, that the noise of trains going in the
opposite direction and the rumble of the wheels over the bridges was
incessant. The noise, the whistles, the Finn, the tobacco smoke--all this
mingling with the menace and flickering of the misty images in his
brain, the shape and character of which a man in health can never
recall, weighed upon Klimov like an unbearable nightmare. In horrible
misery he lifted his heavy head, looked at the lamp in the rays of which
shadows and misty blurs seemed to be dancing. He wanted to ask for
water, but his parched tongue would hardly move, and he scarcely had
strength to answer the Finn's questions. He tried to lie down more
comfortably and go to sleep, but he could not succeed. The Finn several
times fell asleep, woke up again, lighted his pipe, addressed him with
his "Ha!" and went to sleep again; and still the lieutenant's legs could
not get into a comfortable position, and still the menacing images stood
facing him.
At Spirovo he went out into the station for a drink of water. He saw
people sitting at the table and hurriedly eating.
"And how can they eat!" he thought, trying not to sniff the air, that
smelt of roast meat, and not to look at the munching mouths --they both
seemed to him sickeningly disgusting.
A good-looking lady was conversing loudly with a military man in a red
cap, and showing magnificent white teeth as she smiled; and the smile,
and the teeth, and the lady herself made on Klimov the same revolting
impression as the ham and the rissoles. He could not understand how it
was the military man in the red cap was not ill at ease, sitting beside
her and looking at her healthy, smiling face.
When after drinking some water he went back to his carriage, the Finn
was sitting smoking; his pipe was wheezing and squelching like a golosh
with holes in it in wet weather.
"Ha!" he said, surprised; "what station is this?"
"I don't know," answered Klimov, lying down and shutting his mouth that
he might not breathe the acrid tobacco smoke.
"And when shall we reach Tver?"
"I don't know. Excuse me, I . . . I can't answer. I am ill. I caught
cold today."
The Finn knocked his pipe against the window-frame and began talking of
his brother, the naval officer. Klimov no longer heard him; he was
thinking miserably of his soft, comfortable bed, of a bottle of cold
water, of his sister Katya, who was so good at making one comfortable,
soothing, giving one water. He even smiled when the vision of his
orderly Pavel, taking off his heavy stifling boots and putting water on
the little table, flitted through his imagination. He fancied that if he
could only get into his bed, have a drink of water, his nightmare would
give place to sound healthy sleep.
"Is the mail ready?" a hollow voice reached him from the distance.
"Yes," answered a bass voice almost at the window.
It was already the second or third station from Spirovo.
The time was flying rapidly in leaps and bounds, and it seemed as though
the bells, whistles, and stoppings would never end. In despair Klimov
buried his face in the corner of the seat, clutched his head in his
hands, and began again thinking of his sister Katya and his orderly
Pavel, but his sister and his orderly were mixed up with the misty
images in his brain, whirled round, and disappeared. His burning breath,
reflected from the back of the seat, seemed to scald his face; his legs
were uncomfortable; there was a draught from the window on his back;
but, however wretched he was, he did not want to change his position. .
. . A heavy nightmarish lethargy gradually gained possession of him and
fettered his limbs.
When he brought himself to raise his head, it was already light in the
carriage. The passengers were putting on their fur coats and moving
about. The train was stopping. Porters in white aprons and with discs on
their breasts were bustling among the passengers and snatching up their
boxes. Klimov put on his great-coat, mechanically followed the other
passengers out of the carriage, and it seemed to him that not he, but
some one else was moving, and he felt that his fever, his thirst, and
the menacing images which had not let him sleep all night, came out of
the carriage with him. Mechanically he took his luggage and engaged a
sledge-driver. The man asked him for a rouble and a quarter to drive to
Povarsky Street, but he did not haggle, and without protest got
submissively into the sledge. He still understood the difference of
numbers, but money had ceased to have any value to him.
At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katya, a girl of
eighteen. When Katya greeted him she had a pencil and exercise book in
her hand, and he remembered that she was preparing for an examination as
a teacher. Gasping with fever, he walked aimlessly through all the rooms
without answering their questions or greetings, and when he reached his
bed he sank down on the pillow. The Finn, the red cap, the lady with the
white teeth, the smell of roast meat, the flickering blurs, filled his
consciousness, and by now he did not know where he was and did not hear
the agitated voices.
When he recovered consciousness he found himself in bed, undressed, saw
a bottle of water and Pavel, but it was no cooler, nor softer, nor more
comfortable for that. His arms and legs, as before, refused to lie
comfortably; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he heard the
wheezing of the Finn's pipe. . . . A stalwart, black-bearded doctor was
busy doing something beside the bed, brushing against Pavel with his
broad back.
"It's all right, it's all right, young man," he muttered. "Excellent,
excellent . . . goo-od, goo-od . . . !"
The doctor called Klimov "young man," said "goo-od" instead of "good"
and "so-o" instead of "so."
"So-o . . . so-o . . . so-o," he murmured. "Goo-od, goo-od . . . !
Excellent, young man. You mustn't lose heart!"
The doctor's rapid, careless talk, his well-fed countenance, and
condescending "young man," irritated Klimov.
"Why do you call me 'young man'?" he moaned. "What familiarity! Damn it
all!"
And he was frightened by his own voice. The voice was so dried up, so
weak and peevish, that he would not have known it.
"Excellent, excellent!" muttered the doctor, not in the least offended.
. . . "You mustn't get angry, so-o, so-o, so-s. . . ."
And the time flew by at home with the same startling swiftness as in the
railway carriage. The daylight was continually being replaced by the
dusk of evening. The doctor seemed never to leave his bedside, and he
heard at every moment his "so-o, so-o, so-o." A continual succession of
people was incessantly crossing the bedroom. Among them were: Pavel, the
Finn, Captain Yaroshevitch, Lance-Corporal Maximenko, the red cap, the
lady with the white teeth, the doctor. They were all talking and waving
their arms, smoking and eating. Once by daylight Klimov saw the chaplain
of the regiment, Father Alexandr, who was standing before the bed,
wearing a stole and with a prayer-book in his hand. He was muttering
something with a grave face such as Klimov had never seen in him before.
The lieutenant remembered that Father Alexandr used in a friendly way to
call all the Catholic officers "Poles," and wanting to amuse him, he
cried:
"Father, Yaroshevitch the Pole has climbed up a pole!"
But Father Alexandr, a light-hearted man who loved a joke, did not
smile, but became graver than ever, and made the sign of the cross over
Klimov. At night-time by turn two shadows came noiselessly in and out;
they were his aunt and sister. His sister's shadow knelt down and
prayed; she bowed down to the ikon, and her grey shadow on the wall
bowed down too, so that two shadows were praying. The whole time there
was a smell of roast meat and the Finn's pipe, but once Klimov smelt the
strong smell of incense. He felt so sick he could not lie still, and
began shouting:
"The incense! Take away the incense!"
There was no answer. He could only hear the subdued singing of the
priest somewhere and some one running upstairs.
When Klimov came to himself there was not a soul in his bedroom. The
morning sun was streaming in at the window through the lower blind, and
a quivering sunbeam, bright and keen as the sword's edge, was flashing
on the glass bottle. He heard the rattle of wheels-- so there was no snow
now in the street. The lieutenant looked at the ray, at the familiar
furniture, at the door, and the first thing he did was to laugh. His
chest and stomach heaved with delicious, happy, tickling laughter. His
whole body from head to foot was overcome by a sensation of infinite
happiness and joy in life, such as the first man must have felt when he
was created and first saw the world. Klimov felt a passionate desire for
movement, people, talk. His body lay a motionless block; only his hands
stirred, but that he hardly noticed, and his whole attention was
concentrated on trifles. He rejoiced in his breathing, in his laughter,
rejoiced in the existence of the water-bottle, the ceiling, the
sunshine, the tape on the curtains. God's world, even in the narrow
space of his bedroom, seemed beautiful, varied, grand. When the doctor
made his appearance, the lieutenant was thinking what a delicious thing
medicine was, how charming and pleasant the doctor was, and how nice and
interesting people were in general.
"So-o, so, so. . . Excellent, excellent! . . . Now we are well again. .
. . Goo-od, goo-od!" the doctor pattered.
The lieutenant listened and laughed joyously; he remembered the Finn,
the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he longed to smoke, to
eat.
"Doctor," he said, "tell them to give me a crust of rye bread and salt,
and . . . and sardines."
The doctor refused; Pavel did not obey the order, and did not go for the
bread. The lieutenant could not bear this and began crying like a
naughty child.
"Baby!" laughed the doctor. "Mammy, bye-bye!"
Klimov laughed, too, and when the doctor went away he fell into a sound
sleep. He woke up with the same joyfulness and sensation of happiness.
His aunt was sitting near the bed.
"Well, aunt," he said joyfully. "What has been the matter?"
"Spotted typhus."
"Really. But now I am well, quite well! Where is Katya?"
"She is not at home. I suppose she has gone somewhere from her
examination."
The old lady said this and looked at her stocking; her lips began
quivering, she turned away, and suddenly broke into sobs. Forgetting the
doctor's prohibition in her despair, she said:
"Ah, Katya, Katya! Our angel is gone! Is gone!"
She dropped her stocking and bent down to it, and as she did so her cap
fell off her head. Looking at her grey head and understanding nothing,
Klimov was frightened for Katya, and asked:
"Where is she, aunt?"
The old woman, who had forgotten Klimov and was thinking only of her
sorrow, said:
"She caught typhus from you, and is dead. She was buried the day before
yesterday."
This terrible, unexpected news was fully grasped by Klimov's
consciousness; but terrible and startling as it was, it could not
overcome the animal joy that filled the convalescent. He cried and
laughed, and soon began scolding because they would not let him eat.
Only a week later when, leaning on Pavel, he went in his dressing-gown
to the window, looked at the overcast spring sky and listened to the
unpleasant clang of the old iron rails which were being carted by, his
heart ached, he burst into tears, and leaned his forehead against the
window-frame.
"How miserable I am!" he muttered. "My God, how miserable!"
And joy gave way to the boredom of everyday life and the feeling of his
irrevocable loss.
A MISFORTUNE
SOFYA PETROVNA, the wife of Lubyantsev the notary, a handsome young
woman of five-and-twenty, was walking slowly along a track that had been
cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was spending the summer in
the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in the evening. Feathery-white
masses of cloud stood overhead; patches of bright blue sky peeped out
between them. The clouds stood motionless, as though they had caught in
the tops of the tall old pine-trees. It was still and sultry.
Farther on, the track was crossed by a low railway embankment on which a
sentinel with a gun was for some reason pacing up and down. Just beyond
the embankment there was a large white church with six domes and a rusty
roof.
"I did not expect to meet you here," said Sofya Petrovna, looking at the
ground and prodding at the last year's leaves with the tip of her
parasol, "and now I am glad we have met. I want to speak to you
seriously and once for all. I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, if you really
love and respect me, please make an end of this pursuit of me! You
follow me about like a shadow, you are continually looking at me not in
a nice way, making love to me, writing me strange letters, and . . . and
I don't know where it's all going to end! Why, what can come of it?"
Ilyin said nothing. Sofya Petrovna walked on a few steps and continued:
"And this complete transformation in you all came about in the course of
two or three weeks, after five years' friendship. I don't know you, Ivan
Mihalovitch!"
Sofya Petrovna stole a glance at her companion. Screwing up his eyes, he
was looking intently at the fluffy clouds. His face looked angry, ill-
humoured, and preoccupied, like that of a man in pain forced to listen
to nonsense.
"I wonder you don't see it yourself," Madame Lubyantsev went on,
shrugging her shoulders. "You ought to realize that it's not a very nice
part you are playing. I am married; I love and respect my husband. . . .
I have a daughter . . . . Can you think all that means nothing? Besides,
as an old friend you know my attitude to family life and my views as to
the sanctity of marriage."
Ilyin cleared his throat angrily and heaved a sigh.
"Sanctity of marriage . . ." he muttered. "Oh, Lord!"
"Yes, yes. . . . I love my husband, I respect him; and in any case I
value the peace of my home. I would rather let myself be killed than be
a cause of unhappiness to Andrey and his daughter. . . . And I beg you,
Ivan Mihalovitch, for God's sake, leave me in peace! Let us be as good,
true friends as we used to be, and give up these sighs and groans, which
really don't suit you. It's settled and over! Not a word more about it.
Let us talk of something else."
Sofya Petrovna again stole a glance at Ilyin's face. Ilyin was looking
up; he was pale, and was angrily biting his quivering lips. She could
not understand why he was angry and why he was indignant, but his pallor
touched her.
"Don't be angry; let us be friends," she said affectionately. "Agreed?
Here's my hand."
Ilyin took her plump little hand in both of his, squeezed it, and slowly
raised it to his lips.
"I am not a schoolboy," he muttered. "I am not in the least tempted by
friendship with the woman I love."
"Enough, enough! It's settled and done with. We have reached the seat;
let us sit down."
Sofya Petrovna's soul was filled with a sweet sense of relief: the most
difficult and delicate thing had been said, the painful question was
settled and done with. Now she could breathe freely and look Ilyin
straight in the face. She looked at him, and the egoistic feeling of the
superiority of the woman over the man who loves her, agreeably flattered
her. It pleased her to see this huge, strong man, with his manly, angry
face and his big black beard--clever, cultivated, and, people said,
talented--sit down obediently beside her and bow his head dejectedly. For
two or three minutes they sat without speaking.
"Nothing is settled or done with," began Ilyin. "You repeat copy-book
maxims to me. 'I love and respect my husband . . . the sanctity of
marriage. . . .' I know all that without your help, and I could tell you
more, too. I tell you truthfully and honestly that I consider the way I
am behaving as criminal and immoral. What more can one say than that?
But what's the good of saying what everybody knows? Instead of feeding
nightingales with paltry words, you had much better tell me what I am to
do."
"I've told you already--go away."
"As you know perfectly well, I have gone away five times, and every time
I turned back on the way. I can show you my through tickets --I've kept
them all. I have not will enough to run away from you! I am struggling.
I am struggling horribly; but what the devil am I good for if I have no
backbone, if I am weak, cowardly! I can't struggle with Nature! Do you
understand? I cannot! I run away from here, and she holds on to me and
pulls me back. Contemptible, loathsome weakness!"
Ilyin flushed crimson, got up, and walked up and down by the seat.
"I feel as cross as a dog," he muttered, clenching his fists. "I hate
and despise myself! My God! like some depraved schoolboy, I am making
love to another man's wife, writing idiotic letters, degrading myself .
. . ugh!"
Ilyin clutched at his head, grunted, and sat down. "And then your
insincerity!" he went on bitterly. "If you do dislike my disgusting
behaviour, why have you come here? What drew you here? In my letters I
only ask you for a direct, definite answer--yes or no; but instead of a
direct answer, you contrive every day these 'chance' meetings with me
and regale me with copy-book maxims!"
Madame Lubyantsev was frightened and flushed. She suddenly felt the
awkwardness which a decent woman feels when she is accidentally
discovered undressed.
"You seem to suspect I am playing with you," she muttered. "I have
always given you a direct answer, and . . . only today I've begged you .
. ."
"Ough! as though one begged in such cases! If you were to say straight
out 'Get away,' I should have been gone long ago; but you've never said
that. You've never once given me a direct answer. Strange indecision!
Yes, indeed; either you are playing with me, or else . . ."
Ilyin leaned his head on his fists without finishing. Sofya Petrovna
began going over in her own mind the way she had behaved from beginning
to end. She remembered that not only in her actions, but even in her
secret thoughts, she had always been opposed to Ilyin's love-making; but
yet she felt there was a grain of truth in the lawyer's words. But not
knowing exactly what the truth was, she could not find answers to make
to Ilyin's complaint, however hard she thought. It was awkward to be
silent, and, shrugging her shoulders, she said:
So I am to blame, it appears."
"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "I did not mean
that when I spoke of it. . . . Your insincerity is natural and in the
order of things. If people agreed together and suddenly became sincere,
everything would go to the devil."
Sofya Petrovna was in no mood for philosophical reflections, but she was
glad of a chance to change the conversation, and asked:
"But why?"
"Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once civilization
has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for instance, feminine
virtue, sincerity is out of place. . . ."
Ilyin jabbed his stick angrily into the sand. Madame Lubyantsev listened
to him and liked his conversation, though a great deal of it she did not
understand. What gratified her most was that she, an ordinary woman, was
talked to by a talented man on "intellectual" subjects; it afforded her
great pleasure, too, to watch the working of his mobile, young face,
which was still pale and angry. She failed to understand a great deal
that he said, but what was clear to her in his words was the attractive
boldness with which the modern man without hesitation or doubt decides
great questions and draws conclusive deductions.
She suddenly realized that she was admiring him, and was alarmed.
"Forgive me, but I don't understand," she said hurriedly. "What makes
you talk of insincerity? I repeat my request again: be my good, true
friend; let me alone! I beg you most earnestly!"
"Very good; I'll try again," sighed Ilyin. "Glad to do my best. . . .
Only I doubt whether anything will come of my efforts. Either I shall
put a bullet through my brains or take to drink in an idiotic way. I
shall come to a bad end! There's a limit to everything-- to struggles
with Nature, too. Tell me, how can one struggle against madness? If you
drink wine, how are you to struggle against intoxication? What am I to
do if your image has grown into my soul, and day and night stands
persistently before my eyes, like that pine there at this moment? Come,
tell me, what hard and difficult thing can I do to get free from this
abominable, miserable condition, in which all my thoughts, desires, and
dreams are no longer my own, but belong to some demon who has taken
possession of me? I love you, love you so much that I am completely
thrown out of gear; I've given up my work and all who are dear to me;
I've forgotten my God! I've never been in love like this in my life."
Sofya Petrovna, who had not expected such a turn to their conversation,
drew away from Ilyin and looked into his face in dismay. Tears came into
his eyes, his lips were quivering, and there was an imploring, hungry
expression in his face.
"I love you!" he muttered, bringing his eyes near her big, frightened
eyes. "You are so beautiful! I am in agony now, but I swear I would sit
here all my life, suffering and looking in your eyes. But . . . be
silent, I implore you!"
Sofya Petrovna, feeling utterly disconcerted, tried to think as quickly
as possible of something to say to stop him. "I'll go away," she
decided, but before she had time to make a movement to get up, Ilyin was
on his knees before her. . . . He was clasping her knees, gazing into
her face and speaking passionately, hotly, eloquently. In her terror and
confusion she did not hear his words; for some reason now, at this
dangerous moment, while her knees were being agreeably squeezed and felt
as though they were in a warm bath, she was trying, with a sort of angry
spite, to interpret her own sensations. She was angry that instead of
brimming over with protesting virtue, she was entirely overwhelmed with
weakness, apathy, and emptiness, like a drunken man utterly reckless;
only at the bottom of her soul a remote bit of herself was malignantly
taunting her: "Why don't you go? Is this as it should be? Yes?"
Seeking for some explanation, she could not understand how it was she
did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging like a leech, and
why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right and to left to see whether
any one was looking. The clouds and the pines stood motionless, looking
at them severely, like old ushers seeing mischief, but bribed not to
tell the school authorities. The sentry stood like a post on the
embankment and seemed to be looking at the seat.
"Let him look," thought Sofya Petrovna.
"But . . . but listen," she said at last, with despair in her voice.
"What can come of this? What will be the end of this?"
"I don't know, I don't know," he whispered, waving off the disagreeable
questions.
They heard the hoarse, discordant whistle of the train. This cold,
irrelevant sound from the everyday world of prose made Sofya Petrovna
rouse herself.
"I can't stay . . . it's time I was at home," she said, getting up
quickly. "The train is coming in. . . Andrey is coming by it! He will
want his dinner."
Sofya Petrovna turned towards the embankment with a burning face. The
engine slowly crawled by, then came the carriages. It was not the local
train, as she had supposed, but a goods train. The trucks filed by
against the background of the white church in a long string like the
days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end.
But at last the train passed, and the last carriage with the guard and a
light in it had disappeared behind the trees. Sofya Petrovna turned
round sharply, and without looking at Ilyin, walked rapidly back along
the track. She had regained her self-possession. Crimson with shame,
humiliated not by Ilyin--no, but by her own cowardice, by the
shamelessness with which she, a chaste and high-principled woman, had
allowed a man, not her husband, to hug her knees--she had only one
thought now: to get home as quickly as possible to her villa, to her
family. The lawyer could hardly keep pace with her. Turning from the
clearing into a narrow path, she turned round and glanced at him so
quickly that she saw nothing but the sand on his knees, and waved to him
to drop behind.
Reaching home, Sofya Petrovna stood in the middle of her room for five
minutes without moving, and looked first at the window and then at her
writing-table.
"You low creature!" she said, upbraiding herself. "You low creature!"
To spite herself, she recalled in precise detail, keeping nothing
back--she recalled that though all this time she had been opposed to
Ilyin's lovemaking, something had impelled her to seek an interview with
him; and what was more, when he was at her feet she had enjoyed it
enormously. She recalled it all without sparing herself, and now,
breathless with shame, she would have liked to slap herself in the face.
"Poor Andrey!" she said to herself, trying as she thought of her husband
to put into her face as tender an expression as she could. "Varya, my
poor little girl, doesn't know what a mother she has! Forgive me, my
dear ones! I love you so much . . . so much!"