should not have paid attention to his insignificance," he went on, after
waiting till the deacon had left off laughing; "I should have passed him
by if he were not so noxious and dangerous. His noxiousness lies first
of all in the fact that he has great success with women, and so
threatens to leave descendants--that is, to present the world with a
dozen Laevskys as feeble and as depraved as himself. Secondly, he is in
the highest degree contaminating. I have spoken to you already of vint
and beer. In another year or two he will dominate the whole Caucasian
coast. You know how the mass, especially its middle stratum, believe in
intellectuality, in a university education, in gentlemanly manners, and
in literary language. Whatever filthy thing he did, they would all
believe that it was as it should be, since he is an intellectual man, of
liberal ideas and university education. What is more, he is a failure, a
superfluous man, a neurasthenic, a victim of the age, and that means he
can do anything. He is a charming fellow, a regular good sort, he is so
genuinely indulgent to human weaknesses; he is compliant, accommodating,
easy and not proud; one can drink with him and gossip and talk evil of
people. . . . The masses, always inclined to anthropomorphism in
religion and morals, like best of all the little gods who have the same
weaknesses as themselves. Only think what a wide field he has for
contamination! Besides, he is not a bad actor and is a clever hypocrite,
and knows very well how to twist things round. Only take his little
shifts and dodges, his attitude to civilisation, for instance. He has
scarcely sniffed at civilisation, yet: 'Ah, how we have been crippled by
civilisation! Ah, how I envy those savages, those children of nature,
who know nothing of civilisation!' We are to understand, you see, that
at one time, in ancient days, he has been devoted to civilisation with
his whole soul, has served it, has sounded it to its depths, but it has
exhausted him, disillusioned him, deceived him; he is a Faust, do you
see?--a second Tolstoy. . . . As for Schopenhauer and Spencer, he treats
them like small boys and slaps them on the shoulder in a fatherly way:
'Well, what do you say, old Spencer?' He has not read Spencer, of
course, but how charming he is when with light, careless irony he says
of his lady friend: 'She has read Spencer!' And they all listen to him,
and no one cares to understand that this charlatan has not the right to
kiss the sole of Spencer's foot, let alone speaking about him in that
tone! Sapping the foundations of civilisation, of authority, of other
people's altars, spattering them with filth, winking jocosely at them
only to justify and conceal one's own rottenness and moral poverty is
only possible for a very vain, base, and nasty creature."
"I don't know what it is you expect of him, Kolya," said Samoylenko,
looking at the zoologist, not with anger now, but with a guilty air. "He
is a man the same as every one else. Of course, he has his weaknesses,
but he is abreast of modern ideas, is in the service, is of use to his
country. Ten years ago there was an old fellow serving as agent here, a
man of the greatest intelligence . . . and he used to say . . ."
"Nonsense, nonsense!" the zoologist interrupted. "You say he is in the
service; but how does he serve? Do you mean to tell me that things have
been done better because he is here, and the officials are more
punctual, honest, and civil? On the contrary, he has only sanctioned
their slackness by his prestige as an intellectual university man. He is
only punctual on the 20th of the month, when he gets his salary; on the
other days he lounges about at home in slippers and tries to look as if
he were doing the Government a great service by living in the Caucasus.
No, Alexandr Daviditch, don't stick up for him. You are insincere from
beginning to end. If you really loved him and considered him your
neighbour, you would above all not be indifferent to his weaknesses, you
would not be indulgent to them, but for his own sake would try to make
him innocuous."
"That is?"
"Innocuous. Since he is incorrigible, he can only be made innocuous in
one way. . . ." Von Koren passed his finger round his throat. "Or he
might be drowned . . .", he added. "In the interests of humanity and in
their own interests, such people ought to be destroyed. They certainly
ought."
"What are you saying?" muttered Samoylenko, getting up and looking with
amazement at the zoologist's calm, cold face. "Deacon, what is he
saying? Why--are you in your senses?"
"I don't insist on the death penalty," said Von Koren. "If it is proved
that it is pernicious, devise something else. If we can't destroy
Laevsky, why then, isolate him, make him harmless, send him to hard
labour."
"What are you saying!" said Samoylenko in horror. "With pepper, with
pepper," he cried in a voice of despair, seeing that the deacon was
eating stuffed aubergines without pepper. "You with your great
intellect, what are you saying! Send our friend, a proud intellectual
man, to penal servitude!"
"Well, if he is proud and tries to resist, put him in fetters!"
Samoylenko could not utter a word, and only twiddled his fingers; the
deacon looked at his flabbergasted and really absurd face, and laughed.
"Let us leave off talking of that," said the zoologist. "Only remember
one thing, Alexandr Daviditch: primitive man was preserved from such as
Laevsky by the struggle for existence and by natural selection; now our
civilisation has considerably weakened the struggle and the selection,
and we ought to look after the destruction of the rotten and worthless
for ourselves; otherwise, when the Laevskys multiply, civilisation will
perish and mankind will degenerate utterly. It will be our fault."
"If it depends on drowning and hanging," said Samoylenko, "damnation
take your civilisation, damnation take your humanity! Damnation take it!
I tell you what: you are a very learned and intelligent man and the
pride of your country, but the Germans have ruined you. Yes, the
Germans! The Germans!"
Since Samoylenko had left Dorpat, where he had studied medicine, he had
rarely seen a German and had not read a single German book, but, in his
opinion, every harmful idea in politics or science was due to the
Germans. Where he had got this notion he could not have said himself,
but he held it firmly.
"Yes, the Germans!" he repeated once more. "Come and have some tea."
All three stood up, and putting on their hats, went out into the little
garden, and sat there under the shade of the light green maples, the
pear-trees, and a chestnut-tree. The zoologist and the deacon sat on a
bench by the table, while Samoylenko sank into a deep wicker chair with
a sloping back. The orderly handed them tea, jam, and a bottle of syrup.
It was very hot, thirty degrees Réaumur in the shade. The sultry air
was stagnant and motionless, and a long spider-web, stretching from the
chestnut-tree to the ground, hung limply and did not stir.
The deacon took up the guitar, which was constantly lying on the ground
near the table, tuned it, and began singing softly in a thin voice:
"'Gathered round the tavern were the seminary lads,'"
but instantly subsided, overcome by the heat, mopped his brow and
glanced upwards at the blazing blue sky. Samoylenko grew drowsy; the
sultry heat, the stillness and the delicious after-dinner languor, which
quickly pervaded all his limbs, made him feel heavy and sleepy; his arms
dropped at his sides, his eyes grew small, his head sank on his breast.
He looked with almost tearful tenderness at Von Koren and the deacon,
and muttered:
"The younger generation. . . A scientific star and a luminary of the
Church. . . . I shouldn't wonder if the long-skirted alleluia will be
shooting up into a bishop; I dare say I may come to kissing his hand. .
. . Well . . . please God. . . ."
Soon a snore was heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tea and
went out into the street.
"Are you going to the harbour again to catch sea-gudgeon?" asked the
zoologist.
"No, it's too hot."
"Come and see me. You can pack up a parcel and copy something for me. By
the way, we must have a talk about what you are to do. You must work,
deacon. You can't go on like this."
"Your words are just and logical," said the deacon. "But my laziness
finds an excuse in the circumstances of my present life. You know
yourself that an uncertain position has a great tendency to make people
apathetic. God only knows whether I have been sent here for a time or
permanently. I am living here in uncertainty, while my wife is
vegetating at her father's and is missing me. And I must confess my
brain is melting with the heat."
"That's all nonsense," said the zoologist. "You can get used to the
heat, and you can get used to being without the deaconess. You mustn't
be slack; you must pull yourself together." V
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went to bathe in the morning, and her cook, Olga,
followed her with a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge. In the
bay stood two unknown steamers with dirty white funnels, obviously
foreign cargo vessels. Some men dressed in white and wearing white shoes
were walking along the harbour, shouting loudly in French, and were
answered from the steamers. The bells were ringing briskly in the little
church of the town.
"To-day is Sunday!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna remembered with pleasure.
She felt perfectly well, and was in a gay holiday humour. In a new
loose-fitting dress of coarse thick tussore silk, and a big wide-brimmed
straw hat which was bent down over her ears, so that her face looked out
as though from a basket, she fancied she looked very charming. She
thought that in the whole town there was only one young, pretty,
intellectual woman, and that was herself, and that she was the only one
who knew how to dress herself cheaply, elegantly, and with taste. That
dress, for example, cost only twenty-two roubles, and yet how charming
it was! In the whole town she was the only one who could be attractive,
while there were numbers of men, so they must all, whether they would or
not, be envious of Laevsky.
She was glad that of late Laevsky had been cold to her, reserved and
polite, and at times even harsh and rude; in the past she had met all
his outbursts, all his contemptuous, cold or strange incomprehensible
glances, with tears, reproaches, and threats to leave him or to starve
herself to death; now she only blushed, looked guiltily at him, and was
glad he was not affectionate to her. If he had abused her, threatened
her, it would have been better and pleasanter, since she felt hopelessly
guilty towards him. She felt she was to blame, in the first place, for
not sympathising with the dreams of a life of hard work, for the sake of
which he had given up Petersburg and had come here to the Caucasus, and
she was convinced that he had been angry with her of late for precisely
that. When she was travelling to the Caucasus, it seemed that she would
find here on the first day a cosy nook by the sea, a snug little garden
with shade, with birds, with little brooks, where she could grow flowers
and vegetables, rear ducks and hens, entertain her neighbours, doctor
poor peasants and distribute little books amongst them. It had turned
out that the Caucasus was nothing but bare mountains, forests, and huge
valleys, where it took a long time and a great deal of effort to find
anything and settle down; that there were no neighbours of any sort;
that it was very hot and one might be robbed. Laevsky had been in no
hurry to obtain a piece of land; she was glad of it, and they seemed to
be in a tacit compact never to allude to a life of hard work. He was
silent about it, she thought, because he was angry with her for being
silent about it.
In the second place, she had without his knowledge during those two
years bought various trifles to the value of three hundred roubles at
Atchmianov's shop. She had bought the things by degrees, at one time
materials, at another time silk or a parasol, and the debt had grown
imperceptibly.
"I will tell him about it to-day . . .", she used to decide, but at once
reflected that in Laevsky's present mood it would hardly be convenient
to talk to him of debts.
Thirdly, she had on two occasions in Laevsky's absence received a visit
from Kirilin, the police captain: once in the morning when Laevsky had
gone to bathe, and another time at midnight when he was playing cards.
Remembering this, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna flushed crimson, and looked round
at the cook as though she might overhear her thoughts. The long,
insufferably hot, wearisome days, beautiful languorous evenings and
stifling nights, and the whole manner of living, when from morning to
night one is at a loss to fill up the useless hours, and the persistent
thought that she was the prettiest young woman in the town, and that her
youth was passing and being wasted, and Laevsky himself, though honest
and idealistic, always the same, always lounging about in his slippers,
biting his nails, and wearying her with his caprices, led by degrees to
her becoming possessed by desire, and as though she were mad, she
thought of nothing else day and night. Breathing, looking, walking, she
felt nothing but desire. The sound of the sea told her she must love;
the darkness of evening--the same; the mountains--the same. . . . And when
Kirilin began paying her attentions, she had neither the power nor the
wish to resist, and surrendered to him. . . .
Now the foreign steamers and the men in white reminded her for some
reason of a huge hall; together with the shouts of French she heard the
strains of a waltz, and her bosom heaved with unaccountable delight. She
longed to dance and talk French.
She reflected joyfully that there was nothing terrible about her
infidelity. Her soul had no part in her infidelity; she still loved
Laevsky, and that was proved by the fact that she was jealous of him,
was sorry for him, and missed him when he was away. Kirilin had turned
out to be very mediocre, rather coarse though handsome; everything was
broken off with him already and there would never be anything more. What
had happened was over; it had nothing to do with any one, and if Laevsky
found it out he would not believe in it.
There was only one bathing-house for ladies on the sea-front; men bathed
under the open sky. Going into the bathing-house, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna
found there an elderly lady, Marya Konstantinovna Bityugov, and her
daughter Katya, a schoolgirl of fifteen; both of them were sitting on a
bench undressing. Marya Konstantinovna was a good-natured, enthusiastic,
and genteel person, who talked in a drawling and pathetic voice. She had
been a governess until she was thirty-two, and then had married
Bityugov, a Government official--a bald little man with his hair combed
on to his temples and with a very meek disposition. She was still in
love with him, was jealous, blushed at the word "love," and told every
one she was very happy.
"My dear," she cried enthusiastically, on seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
assuming an expression which all her acquaintances called "almond-oily."
"My dear, how delightful that you have come! We'll bathe together
--that's enchanting!"
Olga quickly flung off her dress and chemise, and began undressing her
mistress.
"It's not quite so hot to-day as yesterday?" said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
shrinking at the coarse touch of the naked cook. "Yesterday I almost
died of the heat."
"Oh, yes, my dear; I could hardly breathe myself. Would you believe it?
I bathed yesterday three times! Just imagine, my dear, three times!
Nikodim Alexandritch was quite uneasy."
"Is it possible to be so ugly?" thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, looking at
Olga and the official's wife; she glanced at Katya and thought: "The
little girl's not badly made."
"Your Nikodim Alexandritch is very charming!" she said. "I'm simply in
love with him."
"Ha, ha, ha!" cried Marya Konstantinovna, with a forced laugh; "that's
quite enchanting."
Free from her clothes, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna felt a desire to fly. And it
seemed to her that if she were to wave her hands she would fly upwards.
When she was undressed, she noticed that Olga looked scornfully at her
white body. Olga, a young soldier's wife, was living with her lawful
husband, and so considered herself superior to her mistress. Marya
Konstantinovna and Katya were afraid of her, and did not respect her.
This was disagreeable, and to raise herself in their opinion, Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna said:
"At home, in Petersburg, summer villa life is at its height now. My
husband and I have so many friends! We ought to go and see them."
"I believe your husband is an engineer?" said Marya Konstantinovna
timidly.
"I am speaking of Laevsky. He has a great many acquaintances. But
unfortunately his mother is a proud aristocrat, not very intelligent. .
. ."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna threw herself into the water without finishing;
Marya Konstantinovna and Katya made their way in after her.
"There are so many conventional ideas in the world," Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna went on, "and life is not so easy as it seems."
Marya Konstantinovna, who had been a governess in aristocratic families
and who was an authority on social matters, said:
"Oh yes! Would you believe me, my dear, at the Garatynskys' I was
expected to dress for lunch as well as for dinner, so that, like an
actress, I received a special allowance for my wardrobe in addition to
my salary."
She stood between Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Katya as though to screen her
daughter from the water that washed the former.
Through the open doors looking out to the sea they could see some one
swimming a hundred paces from their bathing-place.
"Mother, it's our Kostya," said Katya.
"Ach, ach!" Marya Konstantinovna cackled in her dismay. "Ach, Kostya!"
she shouted, "Come back! Kostya, come back!"
Kostya, a boy of fourteen, to show off his prowess before his mother and
sister, dived and swam farther, but began to be exhausted and hurried
back, and from his strained and serious face it could be seen that he
could not trust his own strength.
"The trouble one has with these boys, my dear!" said Marya
Konstantinovna, growing calmer. "Before you can turn round, he will
break his neck. Ah, my dear, how sweet it is, and yet at the same time
how difficult, to be a mother! One's afraid of everything."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna put on her straw hat and dashed out into the open
sea. She swam some thirty feet and then turned on her back. She could
see the sea to the horizon, the steamers, the people on the sea-front,
the town; and all this, together with the sultry heat and the soft,
transparent waves, excited her and whispered that she must live, live. .
. . A sailing-boat darted by her rapidly and vigorously, cleaving the
waves and the air; the man sitting at the helm looked at her, and she
liked being looked at. . . .
After bathing, the ladies dressed and went away together.
"I have fever every alternate day, and yet I don't get thin," said
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, licking her lips, which were salt from the bathe,
and responding with a smile to the bows of her acquaintances. "I've
always been plump, and now I believe I'm plumper than ever."
"That, my dear, is constitutional. If, like me, one has no
constitutional tendency to stoutness, no diet is of any use. . . . But
you've wetted your hat, my dear."
"It doesn't matter; it will dry."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna saw again the men in white who were walking on the
sea-front and talking French; and again she felt a sudden thrill of joy,
and had a vague memory of some big hall in which she had once danced, or
of which, perhaps, she had once dreamed. And something at the bottom of
her soul dimly and obscurely whispered to her that she was a pretty,
common, miserable, worthless woman. . . .
Marya Konstantinovna stopped at her gate and asked her to come in and
sit down for a little while.
"Come in, my dear," she said in an imploring voice, and at the same time
she looked at Nadyezhda Fyodorovna with anxiety and hope; perhaps she
would refuse and not come in!
"With pleasure," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, accepting. "You know how I
love being with you!"
And she went into the house. Marya Konstantinovna sat her down and gave
her coffee, regaled her with milk rolls, then showed her photographs of
her former pupils, the Garatynskys, who were by now married. She showed
her, too, the examination reports of Kostya and Katya. The reports were
very good, but to make them seem even better, she complained, with a
sigh, how difficult the lessons at school were now. . . . She made much
of her visitor, and was sorry for her, though at the same time she was
harassed by the thought that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna might have a
corrupting influence on the morals of Kostya and Katya, and was glad
that her Nikodim Alexandritch was not at home. Seeing that in her
opinion all men are fond of "women like that," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna
might have a bad effect on Nikodim Alexandritch too.
As she talked to her visitor, Marya Konstantinovna kept remembering that
they were to have a picnic that evening, and that Von Koren had
particularly begged her to say nothing about it to the "Japanese
monkeys"--that is, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; but she dropped a
word about it unawares, crimsoned, and said in confusion:
"I hope you will come too!" VI
It was agreed to drive about five miles out of town on the road to the
south, to stop near a duhan at the junction of two streams --the Black
River and the Yellow River--and to cook fish soup. They started out soon
after five. Foremost of the party in a char-à-banc drove Samoylenko and
Laevsky; they were followed by Marya Konstantinovna, Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna, Katya and Kostya, in a coach with three horses, carrying
with them the crockery and a basket with provisions. In the next
carriage came the police captain, Kirilin, and the young Atchmianov, the
son of the shopkeeper to whom Nadyezhda Fyodorovna owed three hundred
roubles; opposite them, huddled up on the little seat with his feet
tucked under him, sat Nikodim Alexandritch, a neat little man with hair
combed on to his temples. Last of all came Von Koren and the deacon; at
the deacon's feet stood a basket of fish.
"R-r-right!" Samoylenko shouted at the top of his voice when he met a
cart or a mountaineer riding on a donkey.
"In two years' time, when I shall have the means and the people ready, I
shall set off on an expedition," Von Koren was telling the deacon. "I
shall go by the sea-coast from Vladivostok to the Behring Straits, and
then from the Straits to the mouth of the Yenisei. We shall make the
map, study the fauna and the flora, and make detailed geological,
anthropological, and ethnographical researches. It depends upon you to
go with me or not."
"It's impossible," said the deacon.
"Why?"
"I'm a man with ties and a family."
"Your wife will let you go; we will provide for her. Better still if you
were to persuade her for the public benefit to go into a nunnery; that
would make it possible for you to become a monk, too, and join the
expedition as a priest. I can arrange it for you."
The deacon was silent.
"Do you know your theology well?" asked the zoologist.
"No, rather badly."
"H'm! . . . I can't give you any advice on that score, because I don't
know much about theology myself. You give me a list of books you need,
and I will send them to you from Petersburg in the winter. It will be
necessary for you to read the notes of religious travellers, too; among
them are some good ethnologists and Oriental scholars. When you are
familiar with their methods, it will be easier for you to set to work.
And you needn't waste your time till you get the books; come to me, and
we will study the compass and go through a course of meteorology. All
that's indispensable."
"To be sure . . ." muttered the deacon, and he laughed. "I was trying to
get a place in Central Russia, and my uncle, the head priest, promised
to help me. If I go with you I shall have troubled them for nothing."
"I don't understand your hesitation. If you go on being an ordinary
deacon, who is only obliged to hold a service on holidays, and on the
other days can rest from work, you will be exactly the same as you are
now in ten years' time, and will have gained nothing but a beard and
moustache; while on returning from this expedition in ten years' time
you will be a different man, you will be enriched by the consciousness
that something has been done by you."
From the ladies' carriage came shrieks of terror and delight. The
carriages were driving along a road hollowed in a literally overhanging
precipitous cliff, and it seemed to every one that they were galloping
along a shelf on a steep wall, and that in a moment the carriages would
drop into the abyss. On the right stretched the sea; on the left was a
rough brown wall with black blotches and red veins and with climbing
roots; while on the summit stood shaggy fir-trees bent over, as though
looking down in terror and curiosity. A minute later there were shrieks
and laughter again: they had to drive under a huge overhanging rock.
"I don't know why the devil I'm coming with you," said Laevsky. "How
stupid and vulgar it is! I want to go to the North, to run away, to
escape; but here I am, for some reason, going to this stupid picnic."