left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into sight and the stream
itself gleamed in the sunlight, yellow, turbid, frantic.
"I see nothing fine in that, Sasha," answered Laevsky. "To be in
continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination. In
comparison with what my imagination can give me, all these streams and
rocks are trash, and nothing else."
The carriages now were by the banks of the stream. The high mountain
banks gradually grew closer, the valley shrank together and ended in a
gorge; the rocky mountain round which they were driving had been piled
together by nature out of huge rocks, pressing upon each other with such
terrible weight, that Samoylenko could not help gasping every time he
looked at them. The dark and beautiful mountain was cleft in places by
narrow fissures and gorges from which came a breath of dewy moisture and
mystery; through the gorges could be seen other mountains, brown, pink,
lilac, smoky, or bathed in vivid sunlight. From time to time as they
passed a gorge they caught the sound of water falling from the heights
and splashing on the stones.
"Ach, the damned mountains!" sighed Laevsky. "How sick I am of them!"
At the place where the Black River falls into the Yellow, and the water
black as ink stains the yellow and struggles with it, stood the Tatar
Kerbalay's duhan, with the Russian flag on the roof and with an
inscription written in chalk: "The Pleasant duhan." Near it was a little
garden, enclosed in a hurdle fence, with tables and chairs set out in
it, and in the midst of a thicket of wretched thornbushes stood a single
solitary cypress, dark and beautiful.
Kerbalay, a nimble little Tatar in a blue shirt and a white apron, was
standing in the road, and, holding his stomach, he bowed low to welcome
the carriages, and smiled, showing his glistening white teeth.
"Good-evening, Kerbalay," shouted Samoylenko. "We are driving on a
little further, and you take along the samovar and chairs! Look sharp!"
Kerbalay nodded his shaven head and muttered something, and only those
sitting in the last carriage could hear: "We've got trout, your
Excellency."
"Bring them, bring them!" said Von Koren.
Five hundred paces from the duhan the carriages stopped. Samoylenko
selected a small meadow round which there were scattered stones
convenient for sitting on, and a fallen tree blown down by the storm
with roots overgrown by moss and dry yellow needles. Here there was a
fragile wooden bridge over the stream, and just opposite on the other
bank there was a little barn for drying maize, standing on four low
piles, and looking like the hut on hen's legs in the fairy tale; a
little ladder sloped from its door.
The first impression in all was a feeling that they would never get out
of that place again. On all sides wherever they looked, the mountains
rose up and towered above them, and the shadows of evening were stealing
rapidly, rapidly from the duhan and dark cypress, making the narrow
winding valley of the Black River narrower and the mountains higher.
They could hear the river murmuring and the unceasing chirrup of the
grasshoppers.
"Enchanting!" said Marya Konstantinovna, heaving deep sighs of ecstasy.
"Children, look how fine! What peace!"
"Yes, it really is fine," assented Laevsky, who liked the view, and for
some reason felt sad as he looked at the sky and then at the blue smoke
rising from the chimney of the duhan. "Yes, it is fine," he repeated.
"Ivan Andreitch, describe this view," Marya Konstantinovna said
tearfully.
"Why?" asked Laevsky. "The impression is better than any description.
The wealth of sights and sounds which every one receives from nature by
direct impression is ranted about by authors in a hideous and
unrecognisable way."
"Really?" Von Koren asked coldly, choosing the biggest stone by the side
of the water, and trying to clamber up and sit upon it. "Really?" he
repeated, looking directly at Laevsky. "What of 'Romeo and Juliet'? Or,
for instance, Pushkin's 'Night in the Ukraine'? Nature ought to come and
bow down at their feet."
"Perhaps," said Laevsky, who was too lazy to think and oppose him.
"Though what is 'Romeo and Juliet' after all?" he added after a short
pause. "The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses
under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort
of animal as all the rest of us."
"Whatever one talks to you about, you always bring it round to . . ."
Von Koren glanced round at Katya and broke off.
"What do I bring it round to?" asked Laevsky.
"One tells you, for instance, how beautiful a bunch of grapes is, and
you answer: 'Yes, but how ugly it is when it is chewed and digested in
one's stomach!' Why say that? It's not new, and . . . altogether it is a
queer habit."
Laevsky knew that Von Koren did not like him, and so was afraid of him,
and felt in his presence as though every one were constrained and some
one were standing behind his back. He made no answer and walked away,
feeling sorry he had come.
"Gentlemen, quick march for brushwood for the fire!" commanded
Samoylenko.
They all wandered off in different directions, and no one was left but
Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandritch. Kerbalay brought chairs,
spread a rug on the ground, and set a few bottles of wine.
The police captain, Kirilin, a tall, good-looking man, who in all
weathers wore his great-coat over his tunic, with his haughty
deportment, stately carriage, and thick, rather hoarse voice, looked
like a young provincial chief of police; his expression was mournful and
sleepy, as though he had just been waked against his will.
"What have you brought this for, you brute?" he asked Kerbalay,
deliberately articulating each word. "I ordered you to give us kvarel,
and what have you brought, you ugly Tatar? Eh? What?"
"We have plenty of wine of our own, Yegor Alekseitch," Nikodim
Alexandritch observed, timidly and politely.
"What? But I want us to have my wine, too; I'm taking part in the picnic
and I imagine I have full right to contribute my share. I im-ma-gine so!
Bring ten bottles of kvarel."
"Why so many?" asked Nikodim Alexandritch, in wonder, knowing Kirilin
had no money.
"Twenty bottles! Thirty!" shouted Kirilin.
"Never mind, let him," Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandritch;
"I'll pay."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was in a light-hearted, mischievous mood; she
wanted to skip and jump, to laugh, to shout, to tease, to flirt. In her
cheap cotton dress with blue pansies on it, in her red shoes and the
same straw hat, she seemed to herself, little, simple, light, ethereal
as a butterfly. She ran over the rickety bridge and looked for a minute
into the water, in order to feel giddy; then, shrieking and laughing,
ran to the other side to the drying-shed, and she fancied that all the
men were admiring her, even Kerbalay. When in the rapidly falling
darkness the trees began to melt into the mountains and the horses into
the carriages, and a light gleamed in the windows of the duhan, she
climbed up the mountain by the little path which zigzagged between
stones and thorn-bushes and sat on a stone. Down below, the camp-fire
was burning. Near the fire, with his sleeves tucked up, the deacon was
moving to and fro, and his long black shadow kept describing a circle
round it; he put on wood, and with a spoon tied to a long stick he
stirred the cauldron. Samoylenko, with a copper-red face, was fussing
round the fire just as though he were in his own kitchen, shouting
furiously:
"Where's the salt, gentlemen? I bet you've forgotten it. Why are you all
sitting about like lords while I do the work?"
Laevsky and Nikodim Alexandritch were sitting side by side on the fallen
tree looking pensively at the fire. Marya Konstantinovna, Katya, and
Kostya were taking the cups, saucers, and plates out of the baskets. Von
Koren, with his arms folded and one foot on a stone, was standing on a
bank at the very edge of the water, thinking about something. Patches of
red light from the fire moved together with the shadows over the ground
near the dark human figures, and quivered on the mountain, on the trees,
on the bridge, on the drying-shed; on the other side the steep, scooped-
out bank was all lighted up and glimmering in the stream, and the
rushing turbid water broke its reflection into little bits.
The deacon went for the fish which Kerbalay was cleaning and washing on
the bank, but he stood still half-way and looked about him.
"My God, how nice it is!" he thought. "People, rocks, the fire, the
twilight, a monstrous tree--nothing more, and yet how fine it is!"
On the further bank some unknown persons made their appearance near the
drying-shed. The flickering light and the smoke from the camp-fire
puffing in that direction made it impossible to get a full view of them
all at once, but glimpses were caught now of a shaggy hat and a grey
beard, now of a blue shirt, now of a figure, ragged from shoulder to
knee, with a dagger across the body; then a swarthy young face with
black eyebrows, as thick and bold as though they had been drawn in
charcoal. Five of them sat in a circle on the ground, and the other five
went into the drying-shed. One was standing at the door with his back to
the fire, and with his hands behind his back was telling something,
which must have been very interesting, for when Samoylenko threw on
twigs and the fire flared up, and scattered sparks and threw a glaring
light on the shed, two calm countenances with an expression on them of
deep attention could be seen, looking out of the door, while those who
were sitting in a circle turned round and began listening to the
speaker. Soon after, those sitting in a circle began softly singing
something slow and melodious, that sounded like Lenten Church music. . .
. Listening to them, the deacon imagined how it would be with him in ten
years' time, when he would come back from the expedition: he would be a
young priest and monk, an author with a name and a splendid past; he
would be consecrated an archimandrite, then a bishop; and he would serve
mass in the cathedral; in a golden mitre he would come out into the body
of the church with the ikon on his breast, and blessing the mass of the
people with the triple and the double candelabra, would proclaim: "Look
down from Heaven, O God, behold and visit this vineyard which Thy Hand
has planted," and the children with their angel voices would sing in
response: "Holy God. . ."
"Deacon, where is that fish?" he heard Samoylenko's voice.
As he went back to the fire, the deacon imagined the Church procession
going along a dusty road on a hot July day; in front the peasants
carrying the banners and the women and children the ikons, then the boy
choristers and the sacristan with his face tied up and a straw in his
hair, then in due order himself, the deacon, and behind him the priest
wearing his calotte and carrying a cross, and behind them, tramping in
the dust, a crowd of peasants--men, women, and children; in the crowd his
wife and the priest's wife with kerchiefs on their heads. The choristers
sing, the babies cry, the corncrakes call, the lark carols. . . . Then
they make a stand and sprinkle the herd with holy water. . . . They go
on again, and then kneeling pray for rain. Then lunch and talk. . . .
"And that's nice too . . ." thought the deacon. VII
Kirilin and Atchmianov climbed up the mountain by the path. Atchmianov
dropped behind and stopped, while Kirilin went up to Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna.
"Good-evening," he said, touching his cap.
"Good-evening."
"Yes!" said Kirilin, looking at the sky and pondering.
"Why 'yes'?" asked Nadyezhda Fyodorovna after a brief pause, noticing
that Atchmianov was watching them both.
"And so it seems," said the officer, slowly, "that our love has withered
before it has blossomed, so to speak. How do you wish me to understand
it? Is it a sort of coquetry on your part, or do you look upon me as a
nincompoop who can be treated as you choose."
"It was a mistake! Leave me alone!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said sharply,
on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him with terror and
asking herself with bewilderment, could there really have been a moment
when that man attracted her and had been near to her?
"So that's it!" said Kirilin; he thought in silence for a few minutes
and said: "Well, I'll wait till you are in a better humour, and
meanwhile I venture to assure you I am a gentleman, and I don't allow
any one to doubt it. Adieu!"
He touched his cap again and walked off, making his way between the
bushes. After a short interval Atchmianov approached hesitatingly.
"What a fine evening!" he said with a slight Armenian accent.
He was nice-looking, fashionably dressed, and behaved unaffectedly like
a well-bred youth, but Nadyezhda Fyodorovna did not like him because she
owed his father three hundred roubles; it was displeasing to her, too,
that a shopkeeper had been asked to the picnic, and she was vexed at his
coming up to her that evening when her heart felt so pure.
"The picnic is a success altogether," he said, after a pause.
"Yes," she agreed, and as though suddenly remembering her debt, she said
carelessly: "Oh, tell them in your shop that Ivan Andreitch will come
round in a day or two and will pay three hundred roubles . . . . I don't
remember exactly what it is."
"I would give another three hundred if you would not mention that debt
every day. Why be prosaic?"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna laughed; the amusing idea occurred to her that if
she had been willing and sufficiently immoral she might in one minute be
free from her debt. If she, for instance, were to turn the head of this
handsome young fool! How amusing, absurd, wild it would be really! And
she suddenly felt a longing to make him love her, to plunder him, throw
him over, and then to see what would come of it.
"Allow me to give you one piece of advice," Atchmianov said timidly. "I
beg you to beware of Kirilin. He says horrible things about you
everywhere."
"It doesn't interest me to know what every fool says of me," Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of playing with handsome
young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.
"We must go down," she said; "they're calling us."
The fish soup was ready by now. They were ladling it out by platefuls,
and eating it with the religious solemnity with which this is only done
at a picnic; and every one thought the fish soup very good, and thought
that at home they had never eaten anything so nice. As is always the
case at picnics, in the mass of dinner napkins, parcels, useless greasy
papers fluttering in the wind, no one knew where was his glass or where
his bread. They poured the wine on the carpet and on their own knees,
spilt the salt, while it was dark all round them and the fire burnt more
dimly, and every one was too lazy to get up and put wood on. They all
drank wine, and even gave Kostya and Katya half a glass each. Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna drank one glass and then another, got a little drunk and
forgot about Kirilin.
"A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening," said Laevsky, growing lively
with the wine. "But I should prefer a fine winter to all this. 'His
beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.'"
"Every one to his taste," observed Von Koren.
Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating upon
his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face: this
hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which there
probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and enervated
him, and unable to stand up against it, he said in a propitiatory tone:
"I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I'm not a
naturalist. I envy you."
"Well, I don't envy you, and don't regret it," said Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna. "I don't understand how any one can seriously interest
himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are suffering."
Laevsky shared her opinion. He was absolutely ignorant of natural
science, and so could never reconcile himself to the authoritative tone
and the learned and profound air of the people who devoted themselves to
the whiskers of ants and the claws of beetles, and he always felt vexed
that these people, relying on these whiskers, claws, and something they
called protoplasm (he always imagined it in the form of an oyster),
should undertake to decide questions involving the origin and life of
man. But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's words he heard a note of falsity, and
simply to contradict her he said: "The point is not the ladybirds, but
the deductions made from them." VIII
It was late, eleven o'clock, when they began to get into the carriages
to go home. They took their seats, and the only ones missing were
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Atchmianov, who were running after one another,
laughing, the other side of the stream.
"Make haste, my friends," shouted Samoylenko.
"You oughtn't to give ladies wine," said Von Koren in a low voice.
Laevsky, exhausted by the picnic, by the hatred of Von Koren, and by his
own thoughts, went to meet Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and when, gay and
happy, feeling light as a feather, breathless and laughing, she took him
by both hands and laid her head on his breast, he stepped back and said
dryly:
"You are behaving like a . . . cocotte."
It sounded horribly coarse, so that he felt sorry for her at once. On
his angry, exhausted face she read hatred, pity and vexation with
himself, and her heart sank at once. She realised instantly that she had
gone too far, had been too free and easy in her behaviour, and overcome
with misery, feeling herself heavy, stout, coarse, and drunk, she got
into the first empty carriage together with Atchmianov. Laevsky got in
with Kirilin, the zoologist with Samoylenko, the deacon with the ladies,
and the party set off.
"You see what the Japanese monkeys are like," Von Koren began, rolling
himself up in his cloak and shutting his eyes. "You heard she doesn't
care to take an interest in beetles and ladybirds because the people are
suffering. That's how all the Japanese monkeys look upon people like us.
They're a slavish, cunning race, terrified by the whip and the fist for
ten generations; they tremble and burn incense only before violence; but
let the monkey into a free state where there's no one to take it by the
collar, and it relaxes at once and shows itself in its true colours.
Look how bold they are in picture galleries, in museums, in theatres, or
when they talk of science: they puff themselves out and get excited,
they are abusive and critical . . . they are bound to criticise--it's the
sign of the slave. You listen: men of the liberal professions are more
often sworn at than pickpockets--that's because three-quarters of society
are made up of slaves, of just such monkeys. It never happens that a
slave holds out his hand to you and sincerely says 'Thank you' to you
for your work."
"I don't know what you want," said Samoylenko, yawning; "the poor thing,
in the simplicity of her heart, wanted to talk to you of scientific
subjects, and you draw a conclusion from that. You're cross with him for
something or other, and with her, too, to keep him company. She's a
splendid woman."
"Ah, nonsense! An ordinary kept woman, depraved and vulgar. Listen,
Alexandr Daviditch; when you meet a simple peasant woman, who isn't
living with her husband, who does nothing but giggle, you tell her to go
and work. Why are you timid in this case and afraid to tell the truth?
Simply because Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is kept, not by a sailor, but by an
official."
"What am I to do with her?" said Samoylenko, getting angry. "Beat her or
what?
"Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that's like
making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or a
sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes
in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which threatens it and
the next generation from the existence of ladies like Nadyezhda
Ivanovna."
"Fyodorovna," Samoylenko corrected. "But what ought society to do?"
"Society? That's its affair. To my thinking the surest and most direct
method is--compulsion. Manu militari she ought to be returned to her
husband; and if her husband won't take her in, then she ought to be sent
to penal servitude or some house of correction."
"Ouf!" sighed Samoylenko. He paused and asked quietly: "You said the
other day that people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed. . . . Tell me,
if you . . . if the State or society commissioned you to destroy him,
could you . . . bring yourself to it?"
"My hand would not tremble." IX
When they got home, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went into their
dark, stuffy, dull rooms. Both were silent. Laevsky lighted a candle,
while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down, and without taking off her cloak
and hat, lifted her melancholy, guilty eyes to him.
He knew that she expected an explanation from him, but an explanation
would be wearisome, useless and exhausting, and his heart was heavy
because he had lost control over himself and been rude to her. He
chanced to feel in his pocket the letter which he had been intending
every day to read to her, and thought if he were to show her that letter
now, it would turn her thoughts in another direction.
"It is time to define our relations," he thought. "I will give it her;
what is to be will be."
He took out the letter and gave it her.
"Read it. It concerns you."
Saying this, he went into his own room and lay down on the sofa in the
dark without a pillow. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna read the letter, and it
seemed to her as though the ceiling were falling and the walls were
closing in on her. It seemed suddenly dark and shut in and terrible. She
crossed herself quickly three times and said:
"Give him peace, O Lord . . . give him peace. . . ."
And she began crying.
"Vanya," she called. "Ivan Andreitch!"
There was no answer. Thinking that Laevsky had come in and was standing
behind her chair, she sobbed like a child, and said:
"Why did you not tell me before that he was dead? I wouldn't have gone
to the picnic; I shouldn't have laughed so horribly. . . . The men said
horrid things to me. What a sin, what a sin! Save me, Vanya, save me. .
. . I have been mad. . . . I am lost. . . ."
Laevsky heard her sobs. He felt stifled and his heart was beating
violently. In his misery he got up, stood in the middle of the room,
groped his way in the dark to an easy-chair by the table, and sat down.
"This is a prison . . ." he thought. "I must get away . . . I can't bear
it."
It was too late to go and play cards; there were no restaurants in the
town. He lay down again and covered his ears that he might not hear her
sobbing, and he suddenly remembered that he could go to Samoylenko. To
avoid going near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he got out of the window into the
garden, climbed over the garden fence and went along the street. It was
dark. A steamer, judging by its lights, a big passenger one, had just
come in. He heard the clank of the anchor chain. A red light was moving
rapidly from the shore in the direction of the steamer: it was the
Customs boat going out to it.
"The passengers are asleep in their cabins . . ." thought Laevsky, and
he envied the peace of mind of other people.
The windows in Samoylenko's house were open. Laevsky looked in at one of
them, then in at another; it was dark and still in the rooms.
"Alexandr Daviditch, are you asleep?" he called. "Alexandr Daviditch!"
He heard a cough and an uneasy shout:
"Who's there? What the devil?"
"It is I, Alexandr Daviditch; excuse me."
A little later the door opened; there was a glow of soft light from the
lamp, and Samoylenko's huge figure appeared all in white, with a white
nightcap on his head.
"What now?" he asked, scratching himself and breathing hard from
sleepiness. "Wait a minute; I'll open the door directly."
"Don't trouble; I'll get in at the window. . . ."
Laevsky climbed in at the window, and when he reached Samoylenko, seized
him by the hand.
"Alexandr Daviditch," he said in a shaking voice, "save me! I beseech
you, I implore you. Understand me! My position is agonising. If it goes
on for another two days I shall strangle myself like . . . like a dog."
"Wait a bit. . . . What are you talking about exactly?"
"Light a candle."
"Oh . . . oh! . . ." sighed Samoylenko, lighting a candle. "My God! My
God! . . . Why, it's past one, brother."