the way he works all day long for his daily bread, a new expression in
his face, and even in his walk--it's all so extraordinary that I don't
know what to call it."
The zoologist took Samoylenko's sleeve and went on with emotion in his
voice:
"You tell him and his wife that when I went away I was full of
admiration for them and wished them all happiness . . . and I beg him,
if he can, not to remember evil against me. He knows me. He knows that
if I could have foreseen this change, then I might have become his best
friend."
"Go in and say good-bye to him."
"No, that wouldn't do."
"Why? God knows, perhaps you'll never see him again."
The zoologist reflected, and said:
"That's true."
Samoylenko tapped softly at the window. Laevsky started and looked
round.
"Vanya, Nikolay Vassilitch wants to say goodbye to you," said
Samoylenko. "He is just going away."
Laevsky got up from the table, and went into the passage to open the
door. Samoylenko, the zoologist, and the deacon went into the house.
"I can only come for one minute," began the zoologist, taking off his
goloshes in the passage, and already wishing he had not given way to his
feelings and come in, uninvited. "It is as though I were forcing myself
on him," he thought, "and that's stupid."
"Forgive me for disturbing you," he said as he went into the room with
Laevsky, "but I'm just going away, and I had an impulse to see you. God
knows whether we shall ever meet again."
"I am very glad to see you. . . . Please come in," said Laevsky, and he
awkwardly set chairs for his visitors as though he wanted to bar their
way, and stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his hands.
"I should have done better to have left my audience in the street,"
thought Von Koren, and he said firmly: "Don't remember evil against me,
Ivan Andreitch. To forget the past is, of course, impossible --it is too
painful, and I've not come here to apologise or to declare that I was
not to blame. I acted sincerely, and I have not changed my convictions
since then. . . . It is true that I see, to my great delight, that I was
mistaken in regard to you, but it's easy to make a false step even on a
smooth road, and, in fact, it's the natural human lot: if one is not
mistaken in the main, one is mistaken in the details. Nobody knows the
real truth."
"No, no one knows the truth," said Laevsky.
"Well, good-bye. . . . God give you all happiness."
Von Koren gave Laevsky his hand; the latter took it and bowed.
"Don't remember evil against me," said Von Koren. "Give my greetings to
your wife, and say I am very sorry not to say good-bye to her."
"She is at home."
Laevsky went to the door of the next room, and said:
"Nadya, Nikolay Vassilitch wants to say goodbye to you."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna came in; she stopped near the doorway and looked
shyly at the visitors. There was a look of guilt and dismay on her face,
and she held her hands like a schoolgirl receiving a scolding.
"I'm just going away, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna," said Von Koren, "and have
come to say good-bye."
She held out her hand uncertainly, while Laevsky bowed.
"What pitiful figures they are, though!" thought Von Koren. "The life
they are living does not come easy to them. I shall be in Moscow and
Petersburg; can I send you anything?" he asked.
"Oh!" said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she looked anxiously at her
husband. "I don't think there's anything. . . ."
"No, nothing . . ." said Laevsky, rubbing his hands. "Our greetings."
Von Koren did not know what he could or ought to say, though as he went
in he thought he would say a very great deal that would be warm and good
and important. He shook hands with Laevsky and his wife in silence, and
left them with a depressed feeling.
"What people!" said the deacon in a low voice, as he walked behind them.
"My God, what people! Of a truth, the right hand of God has planted this
vine! Lord! Lord! One man vanquishes thousands and another tens of
thousands. Nikolay Vassilitch," he said ecstatically, "let me tell you
that to-day you have conquered the greatest of man's enemies--pride."
"Hush, deacon! Fine conquerors we are! Conquerors ought to look like
eagles, while he's a pitiful figure, timid, crushed; he bows like a
Chinese idol, and I, I am sad. . . ."
They heard steps behind them. It was Laevsky, hurrying after them to see
him off. The orderly was standing on the quay with the two portmanteaus,
and at a little distance stood four boatmen.
"There is a wind, though. . . . Brrr!" said Samoylenko. "There must be a
pretty stiff storm on the sea now! You are not going off at a nice time,
Koyla."
"I'm not afraid of sea-sickness."
"That's not the point. . . . I only hope these rascals won't upset you.
You ought to have crossed in the agent's sloop. Where's the agent's
sloop?" he shouted to the boatmen.
"It has gone, Your Excellency."
"And the Customs-house boat?"
"That's gone, too."
"Why didn't you let us know," said Samoylenko angrily. "You dolts!"
"It's all the same, don't worry yourself . . ." said Von Koren. "Well,
good-bye. God keep you."
Samoylenko embraced Von Koren and made the sign of the cross over him
three times.
"Don't forget us, Kolya. . . . Write. . . . We shall look out for you
next spring."
"Good-bye, deacon," said Von Koren, shaking hands with the deacon.
"Thank you for your company and for your pleasant conversation. Think
about the expedition."
"Oh Lord, yes! to the ends of the earth," laughed the deacon. "I've
nothing against it."
Von Koren recognised Laevsky in the darkness, and held out his hand
without speaking. The boatmen were by now below, holding the boat, which
was beating against the piles, though the breakwater screened it from
the breakers. Von Koren went down the ladder, jumped into the boat, and
sat at the helm.
"Write!" Samoylenko shouted to him. "Take care of yourself."
"No one knows the real truth," thought Laevsky, turning up the collar of
his coat and thrusting his hands into his sleeves.
The boat turned briskly out of the harbour into the open sea. It
vanished in the waves, but at once from a deep hollow glided up onto a
high breaker, so that they could distinguish the men and even the oars.
The boat moved three yards forward and was sucked two yards back.
"Write!" shouted Samoylenko; "it's devilish weather for you to go in."
"Yes, no one knows the real truth . . ." thought Laevsky, looking
wearily at the dark, restless sea.
"It flings the boat back," he thought; "she makes two steps forward and
one step back; but the boatmen are stubborn, they work the oars
unceasingly, and are not afraid of the high waves. The boat goes on and
on. Now she is out of sight, but in half an hour the boatmen will see
the steamer lights distinctly, and within an hour they will be by the
steamer ladder. So it is in life. . . . In the search for truth man
makes two steps forward and one step back. Suffering, mistakes, and
weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst for truth and
stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows? Perhaps they will
reach the real truth at last."
"Go--o--od-by--e," shouted Samoylenko.
"There's no sight or sound of them," said the deacon. "Good luck on the
journey!"
It began to spot with rain.
EXCELLENT PEOPLE
ONCE upon a time there lived in Moscow a man called Vladimir Semyonitch
Liadovsky. He took his degree at the university in the faculty of law
and had a post on the board of management of some railway; but if you
had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at
you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would
answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone:
"My work is literature."
After completing his course at the university, Vladimir Semyonitch had
had a paragraph of theatrical criticism accepted by a newspaper. From
this paragraph he passed on to reviewing, and a year later he had
advanced to writing a weekly article on literary matters for the same
paper. But it does not follow from these facts that he was an amateur,
that his literary work was of an ephemeral, haphazard character.
Whenever I saw his neat spare figure, his high forehead and long mane of
hair, when I listened to his speeches, it always seemed to me that his
writing, quite apart from what and how he wrote, was something
organically part of him, like the beating of his heart, and that his
whole literary programme must have been an integral part of his brain
while he was a baby in his mother's womb. Even in his walk, his
gestures, his manner of shaking off the ash from his cigarette, I could
read this whole programme from A to Z, with all its claptrap, dulness,
and honourable sentiments. He was a literary man all over when with an
inspired face he laid a wreath on the coffin of some celebrity, or with
a grave and solemn face collected signatures for some address; his
passion for making the acquaintance of distinguished literary men, his
faculty for finding talent even where it was absent, his perpetual
enthusiasm, his pulse that went at one hundred and twenty a minute, his
ignorance of life, the genuinely feminine flutter with which he threw
himself into concerts and literary evenings for the benefit of destitute
students, the way in which he gravitated towards the young--all this
would have created for him the reputation of a writer even if he had not
written his articles.
He was one of those writers to whom phrases like, "We are but few," or
"What would life be without strife? Forward!" were pre-eminently
becoming, though he never strove with any one and never did go forward.
It did not even sound mawkish when he fell to discoursing of ideals.
Every anniversary of the university, on St. Tatiana's Day, he got drunk,
chanted Gaudeamus out of tune, and his beaming and perspiring
countenance seemed to say: "See, I'm drunk; I'm keeping it up!" But even
that suited him.
Vladimir Semyonitch had genuine faith in his literary vocation and his
whole programme. He had no doubts, and was evidently very well pleased
with himself. Only one thing grieved him--the paper for which he worked
had a limited circulation and was not very influential. But Vladimir
Semyonitch believed that sooner or later he would succeed in getting on
to a solid magazine where he would have scope and could display
himself--and what little distress he felt on this score was pale beside
the brilliance of his hopes.
Visiting this charming man, I made the acquaintance of his sister, Vera
Semyonovna, a woman doctor. At first sight, what struck me about this
woman was her look of exhaustion and extreme ill-health. She was young,
with a good figure and regular, rather large features, but in comparison
with her agile, elegant, and talkative brother she seemed angular,
listless, slovenly, and sullen. There was something strained, cold,
apathetic in her movements, smiles, and words; she was not liked, and
was thought proud and not very intelligent.
In reality, I fancy, she was resting.
"My dear friend," her brother would often say to me, sighing and
flinging back his hair in his picturesque literary way, "one must never
judge by appearances! Look at this book: it has long ago been read. It
is warped, tattered, and lies in the dust uncared for; but open it, and
it will make you weep and turn pale. My sister is like that book. Lift
the cover and peep into her soul, and you will be horror-stricken. Vera
passed in some three months through experiences that would have been
ample for a whole lifetime!"
Vladimir Semyonitch looked round him, took me by the sleeve, and began
to whisper:
"You know, after taking her degree she married, for love, an architect.
It's a complete tragedy! They had hardly been married a month
when--whew--her husband died of typhus. But that was not all. She caught
typhus from him, and when, on her recovery, she learnt that her Ivan was
dead, she took a good dose of morphia. If it had not been for vigorous
measures taken by her friends, my Vera would have been by now in
Paradise. Tell me, isn't it a tragedy? And is not my sister like an
ingénue, who has played already all the five acts of her life? The
audience may stay for the farce, but the ingénue must go home to rest."
After three months of misery Vera Semyonovna had come to live with her
brother. She was not fitted for the practice of medicine, which
exhausted her and did not satisfy her; she did not give one the
impression of knowing her subject, and I never once heard her say
anything referring to her medical studies.
She gave up medicine, and, silent and unoccupied, as though she were a
prisoner, spent the remainder of her youth in colourless apathy, with
bowed head and hanging hands. The only thing to which she was not
completely indifferent, and which brought some brightness into the
twilight of her life, was the presence of her brother, whom she loved.
She loved him himself and his programme, she was full of reverence for
his articles; and when she was asked what her brother was doing, she
would answer in a subdued voice as though afraid of waking or
distracting him: "He is writing. . . ." Usually when he was at his work
she used to sit beside him, her eyes fixed on his writing hand. She used
at such moments to look like a sick animal warming itself in the sun. .
. .
One winter evening Vladimir Semyonitch was sitting at his table writing
a critical article for his newspaper: Vera Semyonovna was sitting beside
him, staring as usual at his writing hand. The critic wrote rapidly,
without erasures or corrections. The pen scratched and squeaked. On the
table near the writing hand there lay open a freshly-cut volume of a
thick magazine, containing a story of peasant life, signed with two
initials. Vladimir Semyonitch was enthusiastic; he thought the author
was admirable in his handling of the subject, suggested Turgenev in his
descriptions of nature, was truthful, and had an excellent knowledge of
the life of the peasantry. The critic himself knew nothing of peasant
life except from books and hearsay, but his feelings and his inner
convictions forced him to believe the story. He foretold a brilliant
future for the author, assured him he should await the conclusion of the
story with great impatience, and so on.
"Fine story!" he said, flinging himself back in his chair and closing
his eyes with pleasure. "The tone is extremely good."
Vera Semyonovna looked at him, yawned aloud, and suddenly asked an
unexpected question. In the evening she had a habit of yawning nervously
and asking short, abrupt questions, not always relevant.
"Volodya," she asked, "what is the meaning of non-resistance to evil?"
"Non-resistance to evil!" repeated her brother, opening his eyes.
"Yes. What do you understand by it?"
"You see, my dear, imagine that thieves or brigands attack you, and you,
instead of . . ."
"No, give me a logical definition."
"A logical definition? Um! Well." Vladimir Semyonitch pondered. "Non-
resistance to evil means an attitude of non-interference with regard to
all that in the sphere of mortality is called evil."
Saying this, Vladimir Semyonitch bent over the table and took up a
novel. This novel, written by a woman, dealt with the painfulness of the
irregular position of a society lady who was living under the same roof
with her lover and her illegitimate child. Vladimir Semyonitch was
pleased with the excellent tendency of the story, the plot and the
presentation of it. Making a brief summary of the novel, he selected the
best passages and added to them in his account: "How true to reality,
how living, how picturesque! The author is not merely an artist; he is
also a subtle psychologist who can see into the hearts of his
characters. Take, for example, this vivid description of the emotions of
the heroine on meeting her husband," and so on.
"Volodya," Vera Semyonovna interrupted his critical effusions, "I've
been haunted by a strange idea since yesterday. I keep wondering where
we should all be if human life were ordered on the basis of non-
resistance to evil?"
"In all probability, nowhere. Non-resistance to evil would give the full
rein to the criminal will, and, to say nothing of civilisation, this
would leave not one stone standing upon another anywhere on earth."
"What would be left?"
"Bashi-Bazouke and brothels. In my next article I'll talk about that
perhaps. Thank you for reminding me."
And a week later my friend kept his promise. That was just at the
period--in the eighties--when people were beginning to talk and write of
non-resistance, of the right to judge, to punish, to make war; when some
people in our set were beginning to do without servants, to retire into
the country, to work on the land, and to renounce animal food and carnal
love.
After reading her brother's article, Vera Semyonovna pondered and hardly
perceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
"Very nice!" she said. "But still there's a great deal I don't
understand. For instance, in Leskov's story 'Belonging to the Cathedral'
there is a queer gardener who sows for the benefit of all--for customers,
for beggars, and any who care to steal. Did he behave sensibly?"
From his sister's tone and expression Vladimir Semyonitch saw that she
did not like his article, and, almost for the first time in his life,
his vanity as an author sustained a shock. With a shade of irritation he
answered:
"Theft is immoral. To sow for thieves is to recognise the right of
thieves to existence. What would you think if I were to establish a
newspaper and, dividing it into sections, provide for blackmailing as
well as for liberal ideas? Following the example of that gardener, I
ought, logically, to provide a section for blackmailers, the
intellectual scoundrels? Yes."
Vera Semyonovna made no answer. She got up from the table, moved
languidly to the sofa and lay down.
"I don't know, I know nothing about it," she said musingly. "You are
probably right, but it seems to me, I feel somehow, that there's
something false in our resistance to evil, as though there were
something concealed or unsaid. God knows, perhaps our methods of
resisting evil belong to the category of prejudices which have become so
deeply rooted in us, that we are incapable of parting with them, and
therefore cannot form a correct judgment of them."
"How do you mean?"
"I don't know how to explain to you. Perhaps man is mistaken in thinking
that he is obliged to resist evil and has a right to do so, just as he
is mistaken in thinking, for instance, that the heart looks like an ace
of hearts. It is very possible in resisting evil we ought not to use
force, but to use what is the very opposite of force--if you, for
instance, don't want this picture stolen from you, you ought to give it
away rather than lock it up. . . ."
"That's clever, very clever! If I want to marry a rich, vulgar woman,
she ought to prevent me from such a shabby action by hastening to make
me an offer herself!"
The brother and sister talked till midnight without understanding each
other. If any outsider had overheard them he would hardly have been able
to make out what either of them was driving at.
They usually spent the evening at home. There were no friends' houses to
which they could go, and they felt no need for friends; they only went
to the theatre when there was a new play--such was the custom in literary
circles--they did not go to concerts, for they did not care for music.
"You may think what you like," Vera Semyonovna began again the next day,
"but for me the question is to a great extent settled. I am firmly
convinced that I have no grounds for resisting evil directed against me
personally. If they want to kill me, let them. My defending myself will
not make the murderer better. All I have now to decide is the second
half of the question: how I ought to behave to evil directed against my
neighbours?"
"Vera, mind you don't become rabid!" said Vladimir Semyonitch, laughing.
"I see non-resistance is becoming your idée fixe!"
He wanted to turn off these tedious conversations with a jest, but
somehow it was beyond a jest; his smile was artificial and sour. His
sister gave up sitting beside his table and gazing reverently at his
writing hand, and he felt every evening that behind him on the sofa lay
a person who did not agree with him. And his back grew stiff and numb,
and there was a chill in his soul. An author's vanity is vindictive,
implacable, incapable of forgiveness, and his sister was the first and
only person who had laid bare and disturbed that uneasy feeling, which
is like a big box of crockery, easy to unpack but impossible to pack up
again as it was before.
Weeks and months passed by, and his sister clung to her ideas, and did
not sit down by the table. One spring evening Vladimir Semyonitch was
sitting at his table writing an article. He was reviewing a novel which
described how a village schoolmistress refused the man whom she loved
and who loved her, a man both wealthy and intellectual, simply because
marriage made her work as a schoolmistress impossible. Vera Semyonovna
lay on the sofa and brooded.
"My God, how slow it is!" she said, stretching. "How insipid and empty
life is! I don't know what to do with myself, and you are wasting your
best years in goodness knows what. Like some alchemist, you are
rummaging in old rubbish that nobody wants. My God!"
Vladimir Semyonitch dropped his pen and slowly looked round at his
sister.
"It's depressing to look at you!" said his sister. "Wagner in 'Faust'
dug up worms, but he was looking for a treasure, anyway, and you are
looking for worms for the sake of the worms."
"That's vague!"
"Yes, Volodya; all these days I've been thinking, I've been thinking
painfully for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that you
are hopelessly reactionary and conventional. Come, ask yourself what is
the object of your zealous, conscientious work? Tell me, what is it?
Why, everything has long ago been extracted that can be extracted from
that rubbish in which you are always rummaging. You may pound water in a
mortar and analyse it as long as you like, you'll make nothing more of
it than the chemists have made already. . . ."
"Indeed!" drawled Vladimir Semyonitch, getting up. "Yes, all this is old
rubbish because these ideas are eternal; but what do you consider new,
then?"
"You undertake to work in the domain of thought; it is for you to think
of something new. It's not for me to teach you."
"Me--an alchemist!" the critic cried in wonder and indignation, screwing
up his eyes ironically. "Art, progress--all that is alchemy?"
"You see, Volodya, it seems to me that if all you thinking people had
set yourselves to solving great problems, all these little questions
that you fuss about now would solve themselves by the way. If you go up
in a balloon to see a town, you will incidentally, without any effort,
see the fields and the villages and the rivers as well. When stearine is
manufactured, you get glycerine as a by-product. It seems to me that
contemporary thought has settled on one spot and stuck to it. It is
prejudiced, apathetic, timid, afraid to take a wide titanic flight, just
as you and I are afraid to climb on a high mountain; it is
conservative."