morning to the servants' kitchen and went down on their knees there, and
that twenty sacks of rye had been stolen at night out of the barn, the
wall having first been broken in, and by the general depression which
was fostered by conversations, newspapers, and horrible weather--worried
by all this, I worked listlessly and ineffectively. I was writing "A
History of Railways"; I had to read a great number of Russian and
foreign books, pamphlets, and articles in the magazines, to make
calculations, to refer to logarithms, to think and to write; then again
to read, calculate, and think; but as soon as I took up a book or began
to think, my thoughts were in a muddle, my eyes began blinking, I would
get up from the table with a sigh and begin walking about the big rooms
of my deserted country-house. When I was tired of walking about I would
stand still at my study window, and, looking across the wide courtyard,
over the pond and the bare young birch-trees and the great fields
covered with recently fallen, thawing snow, I saw on a low hill on the
horizon a group of mud-coloured huts from which a black muddy road ran
down in an irregular streak through the white field. That was Pestrovo,
concerning which my anonymous correspondent had written to me. If it had
not been for the crows who, foreseeing rain or snowy weather, floated
cawing over the pond and the fields, and the tapping in the carpenter's
shed, this bit of the world about which such a fuss was being made would
have seemed like the Dead Sea; it was all so still, motionless,
lifeless, and dreary!
My uneasiness hindered me from working and concentrating myself; I did
not know what it was, and chose to believe it was disappointment. I had
actually given up my post in the Department of Ways and Communications,
and had come here into the country expressly to live in peace and to
devote myself to writing on social questions. It had long been my
cherished dream. And now I had to say good-bye both to peace and to
literature, to give up everything and think only of the peasants. And
that was inevitable, because I was convinced that there was absolutely
nobody in the district except me to help the starving. The people
surrounding me were uneducated, unintellectual, callous, for the most
part dishonest, or if they were honest, they were unreasonable and
unpractical like my wife, for instance. It was impossible to rely on
such people, it was impossible to leave the peasants to their fate, so
that the only thing left to do was to submit to necessity and see to
setting the peasants to rights myself.
I began by making up my mind to give five thousand roubles to the
assistance of the starving peasants. And that did not decrease, but only
aggravated my uneasiness. As I stood by the window or walked about the
rooms I was tormented by the question which had not occurred to me
before: how this money was to be spent. To have bread bought and to go
from hut to hut distributing it was more than one man could do, to say
nothing of the risk that in your haste you might give twice as much to
one who was well-fed or to one who was making money out of his fellows
as to the hungry. I had no faith in the local officials. All these
district captains and tax inspectors were young men, and I distrusted
them as I do all young people of today, who are materialistic and
without ideals. The District Zemstvo, the Peasant Courts, and all the
local institutions, inspired in me not the slightest desire to appeal to
them for assistance. I knew that all these institutions who were busily
engaged in picking out plums from the Zemstvo and the Government pie had
their mouths always wide open for a bite at any other pie that might
turn up.
The idea occurred to me to invite the neighbouring landowners and
suggest to them to organize in my house something like a committee or a
centre to which all subscriptions could be forwarded, and from which
assistance and instructions could be distributed throughout the
district; such an organization, which would render possible frequent
consultations and free control on a big scale, would completely meet my
views. But I imagined the lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the
noise, the waste of time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that
mixed provincial company would inevitably bring into my house, and I
made haste to reject my idea.
As for the members of my own household, the last thing I could look for
was help or support from them. Of my father's household, of the
household of my childhood, once a big and noisy family, no one remained
but the governess Mademoiselle Marie, or, as she was now called, Marya
Gerasimovna, an absolutely insignificant person. She was a precise
little old lady of seventy, who wore a light grey dress and a cap with
white ribbons, and looked like a china doll. She always sat in the
drawing-room reading.
Whenever I passed by her, she would say, knowing the reason for my
brooding:
"What can you expect, Pasha? I told you how it would be before. You can
judge from our servants."
My wife, Natalya Gavrilovna, lived on the lower storey, all the rooms of
which she occupied. She slept, had her meals, and received her visitors
downstairs in her own rooms, and took not the slightest interest in how
I dined, or slept, or whom I saw. Our relations with one another were
simple and not strained, but cold, empty, and dreary as relations are
between people who have been so long estranged, that even living under
the same roof gives no semblance of nearness. There was no trace now of
the passionate and tormenting love--at one time sweet, at another bitter
as wormwood--which I had once felt for Natalya Gavrilovna. There was
nothing left, either, of the outbursts of the past--the loud
altercations, upbraidings, complaints, and gusts of hatred which had
usually ended in my wife's going abroad or to her own people, and in my
sending money in small but frequent instalments that I might sting her
pride oftener. (My proud and sensitive wife and her family live at my
expense, and much as she would have liked to do so, my wife could not
refuse my money: that afforded me satisfaction and was one comfort in my
sorrow.) Now when we chanced to meet in the corridor downstairs or in
the yard, I bowed, she smiled graciously. We spoke of the weather, said
that it seemed time to put in the double windows, and that some one with
bells on their harness had driven over the dam. And at such times I read
in her face: "I am faithful to you and am not disgracing your good name
which you think so much about; you are sensible and do not worry me; we
are quits."
I assured myself that my love had died long ago, that I was too much
absorbed in my work to think seriously of my relations with my wife.
But, alas! that was only what I imagined. When my wife talked aloud
downstairs I listened intently to her voice, though I could not
distinguish one word. When she played the piano downstairs I stood up
and listened. When her carriage or her saddlehorse was brought to the
door, I went to the window and waited to see her out of the house; then
I watched her get into her carriage or mount her horse and ride out of
the yard. I felt that there was something wrong with me, and was afraid
the expression of my eyes or my face might betray me. I looked after my
wife and then watched for her to come back that I might see again from
the window her face, her shoulders, her fur coat, her hat. I felt
dreary, sad, infinitely regretful, and felt inclined in her absence to
walk through her rooms, and longed that the problem that my wife and I
had not been able to solve because our characters were incompatible,
should solve itself in the natural way as soon as possible--that is, that
this beautiful woman of twenty-seven might make haste and grow old, and
that my head might be grey and bald.
One day at lunch my bailiff informed me that the Pestrovo peasants had
begun to pull the thatch off the roofs to feed their cattle. Marya
Gerasimovna looked at me in alarm and perplexity.
"What can I do?" I said to her. "One cannot fight single-handed, and I
have never experienced such loneliness as I do now. I would give a great
deal to find one man in the whole province on whom I could rely."
"Invite Ivan Ivanitch," said Marya Gerasimovna.
"To be sure!" I thought, delighted. "That is an idea! C'est raison," I
hummed, going to my study to write to Ivan Ivanitch. "C'est raison,
c'est raison."
II
Of all the mass of acquaintances who, in this house twenty-five to
thirty-five years ago, had eaten, drunk, masqueraded, fallen in love,
married, bored us with accounts of their splendid packs of hounds and
horses, the only one still living was Ivan Ivanitch Bragin. At one time
he had been very active, talkative, noisy, and given to falling in love,
and had been famous for his extreme views and for the peculiar charm of
his face, which fascinated men as well as women; now he was an old man,
had grown corpulent, and was living out his days with neither views nor
charm. He came the day after getting my letter, in the evening just as
the samovar was brought into the dining-room and little Marya
Gerasimovna had begun slicing the lemon.
"I am very glad to see you, my dear fellow," I said gaily, meeting him.
"Why, you are stouter than ever...."
"It isn't getting stout; it's swelling," he answered. "The bees must
have stung me."
With the familiarity of a man laughing at his own fatness, he put his
arms round my waist and laid on my breast his big soft head, with the
hair combed down on the forehead like a Little Russian's, and went off
into a thin, aged laugh.
"And you go on getting younger," he said through his laugh. "I wonder
what dye you use for your hair and beard; you might let me have some of
it." Sniffing and gasping, he embraced me and kissed me on the cheek.
"You might give me some of it," he repeated. "Why, you are not forty,
are you?"
"Alas, I am forty-six!" I said, laughing.
Ivan Ivanitch smelt of tallow candles and cooking, and that suited him.
His big, puffy, slow-moving body was swathed in a long frock-coat like a
coachman's full coat, with a high waist, and with hooks and eyes instead
of buttons, and it would have been strange if he had smelt of eau-de-
Cologne, for instance. In his long, unshaven, bluish double chin, which
looked like a thistle, his goggle eyes, his shortness of breath, and in
the whole of his clumsy, slovenly figure, in his voice, his laugh, and
his words, it was difficult to recognize the graceful, interesting
talker who used in old days to make the husbands of the district jealous
on account of their wives.
"I am in great need of your assistance, my friend," I said, when we were
sitting in the dining-room, drinking tea. "I want to organize relief for
the starving peasants, and I don't know how to set about it. So perhaps
you will be so kind as to advise me."
"Yes, yes, yes," said Ivan Ivanitch, sighing. "To be sure, to be sure,
to be sure...."
"I would not have worried you, my dear fellow, but really there is no
one here but you I can appeal to. You know what people are like about
here."
"To be sure, to be sure, to be sure.... Yes."
I thought that as we were going to have a serious, business consultation
in which any one might take part, regardless of their position or
personal relations, why should I not invite Natalya Gavrilovna.
"Tres faciunt collegium," I said gaily. "What if we were to ask Natalya
Gavrilovna? What do you think? Fenya," I said, turning to the maid, "ask
Natalya Gavrilovna to come upstairs to us, if possible at once. Tell her
it's a very important matter."
A little later Natalya Gavrilovna came in. I got up to meet her and
said:
"Excuse us for troubling you, Natalie. We are discussing a very
important matter, and we had the happy thought that we might take
advantage of your good advice, which you will not refuse to give us.
Please sit down."
Ivan Ivanitch kissed her hand while she kissed his forehead; then, when
we all sat down to the table, he, looking at her tearfully and
blissfully, craned forward to her and kissed her hand again. She was
dressed in black, her hair was carefully arranged, and she smelt of
fresh scent. She had evidently dressed to go out or was expecting
somebody. Coming into the dining-room, she held out her hand to me with
simple friendliness, and smiled to me as graciously as she did to Ivan
Ivanitch--that pleased me; but as she talked she moved her fingers, often
and abruptly leaned back in her chair and talked rapidly, and this
jerkiness in her words and movements irritated me and reminded me of her
native town--Odessa, where the society, men and women alike, had wearied
me by its bad taste.
"I want to do something for the famine-stricken peasants," I began, and
after a brief pause I went on: "Money, of course, is a great thing, but
to confine oneself to subscribing money, and with that to be satisfied,
would be evading the worst of the trouble. Help must take the form of
money, but the most important thing is a proper and sound organization.
Let us think it over, my friends, and do something."
Natalya Gavrilovna looked at me inquiringly and shrugged her shoulders
as though to say, "What do I know about it?"
"Yes, yes, famine..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch. "Certainly... yes."
"It's a serious position," I said, "and assistance is needed as soon as
possible. I imagine the first point among the principles which we must
work out ought to be promptitude. We must act on the military principles
of judgment, promptitude, and energy."
"Yes, promptitude..." repeated Ivan Ivanitch in a drowsy and listless
voice, as though he were dropping asleep. "Only one can't do anything.
The crops have failed, and so what's the use of all your judgment and
energy?... It's the elements.... You can't go against God and fate."
"Yes, but that's what man has a head for, to contend against the
elements."
"Eh? Yes... that's so, to be sure.... Yes."
Ivan Ivanitch sneezed into his handkerchief, brightened up, and as
though he had just woken up, looked round at my wife and me.
"My crops have failed, too." He laughed a thin little laugh and gave a
sly wink as though this were really funny. "No money, no corn, and a
yard full of labourers like Count Sheremetyev's. I want to kick them
out, but I haven't the heart to."
Natalya Gavrilovna laughed, and began questioning him about his private
affairs. Her presence gave me a pleasure such as I had not felt for a
long time, and I was afraid to look at her for fear my eyes would betray
my secret feeling. Our relations were such that that feeling might seem
surprising and ridiculous.
She laughed and talked with Ivan Ivanitch without being in the least
disturbed that she was in my room and that I was not laughing.
"And so, my friends, what are we to do?" I asked after waiting for a
pause. "I suppose before we do anything else we had better immediately
open a subscription-list. We will write to our friends in the capitals
and in Odessa, Natalie, and ask them to subscribe. When we have got
together a little sum we will begin buying corn and fodder for the
cattle; and you, Ivan Ivanitch, will you be so kind as to undertake
distributing the relief? Entirely relying on your characteristic tact
and efficiency, we will only venture to express a desire that before you
give any relief you make acquaintance with the details of the case on
the spot, and also, which is very important, you should be careful that
corn should be distributed only to those who are in genuine need, and
not to the drunken, the idle, or the dishonest."
"Yes, yes, yes..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch. "To be sure, to be sure."
"Well, one won't get much done with that slobbering wreck," I thought,
and I felt irritated.
"I am sick of these famine-stricken peasants, bother them! It's nothing
but grievances with them!" Ivan Ivanitch went on, sucking the rind of
the lemon. "The hungry have a grievance against those who have enough,
and those who have enough have a grievance against the hungry. Yes...
hunger stupefies and maddens a man and makes him savage; hunger is not a
potato. When a man is starving he uses bad language, and steals, and may
do worse.... One must realize that."
Ivan Ivanitch choked over his tea, coughed, and shook all over with a
squeaky, smothered laughter.
"'There was a battle at Pol... Poltava,'" he brought out, gesticulating
with both hands in protest against the laughter and coughing which
prevented him from speaking. "'There was a battle at Poltava!' When
three years after the Emancipation we had famine in two districts here,
Fyodor Fyodoritch came and invited me to go to him. 'Come along, come
along,' he persisted, and nothing else would satisfy him. 'Very well,
let us go,' I said. And, so we set off. It was in the evening; there was
snow falling. Towards night we were getting near his place, and suddenly
from the wood came 'bang!' and another time 'bang!' 'Oh, damn it
all!'... I jumped out of the sledge, and I saw in the darkness a man
running up to me, knee-deep in the snow. I put my arm round his
shoulder, like this, and knocked the gun out of his hand. Then another
one turned up; I fetched him a knock on the back of his head so that he
grunted and flopped with his nose in the snow. I was a sturdy chap then,
my fist was heavy; I disposed of two of them, and when I turned round
Fyodor was sitting astride of a third. We did not let our three fine
fellows go; we tied their hands behind their backs so that they might
not do us or themselves any harm, and took the fools into the kitchen.
We were angry with them and at the same time ashamed to look at them;
they were peasants we knew, and were good fellows; we were sorry for
them. They were quite stupid with terror. One was crying and begging our
pardon, the second looked like a wild beast and kept swearing, the third
knelt down and began to pray. I said to Fedya: 'Don't bear them a
grudge; let them go, the rascals!' He fed them, gave them a bushel of
flour each, and let them go: 'Get along with you,' he said. So that's
what he did.... The Kingdom of Heaven be his and everlasting peace! He
understood and did not bear them a grudge; but there were some who did,
and how many people they ruined! Yes... Why, over the affair at the
Klotchkovs' tavern eleven men were sent to the disciplinary battalion.
Yes.... And now, look, it's the same thing. Anisyin, the investigating
magistrate, stayed the night with me last Thursday, and he told me about
some landowner.... Yes.... They took the wall of his barn to pieces at
night and carried off twenty sacks of rye. When the gentleman heard that
such a crime had been committed, he sent a telegram to the Governor and
another to the police captain, another to the investigating
magistrate!... Of course, every one is afraid of a man who is fond of
litigation. The authorities were in a flutter and there was a general
hubbub. Two villages were searched."
"Excuse me, Ivan Ivanitch," I said. "Twenty sacks of rye were stolen
from me, and it was I who telegraphed to the Governor. I telegraphed to
Petersburg, too. But it was by no means out of love for litigation, as
you are pleased to express it, and not because I bore them a grudge. I
look at every subject from the point of view of principle. From the
point of view of the law, theft is the same whether a man is hungry or
not."
"Yes, yes..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch in confusion. "Of course... To be
sure, yes."
Natalya Gavrilovna blushed.
"There are people..." she said and stopped; she made an effort to seem
indifferent, but she could not keep it up, and looked into my eyes with
the hatred that I know so well. "There are people," she said, "for whom
famine and human suffering exist simply that they may vent their hateful
and despicable temperaments upon them."
I was confused and shrugged my shoulders.
"I meant to say generally," she went on, "that there are people who are
quite indifferent and completely devoid of all feeling of sympathy, yet
who do not pass human suffering by, but insist on meddling for fear
people should be able to do without them. Nothing is sacred for their
vanity."
"There are people," I said softly, "who have an angelic character, but
who express their glorious ideas in such a form that it is difficult to
distinguish the angel from an Odessa market-woman."
I must confess it was not happily expressed.
My wife looked at me as though it cost her a great effort to hold her
tongue. Her sudden outburst, and then her inappropriate eloquence on the
subject of my desire to help the famine-stricken peasants, were, to say
the least, out of place; when I had invited her to come upstairs I had
expected quite a different attitude to me and my intentions. I cannot
say definitely what I had expected, but I had been agreeably agitated by
the expectation. Now I saw that to go on speaking about the famine would
be difficult and perhaps stupid.
"Yes..." Ivan Ivanitch muttered inappropriately. "Burov, the merchant,
must have four hundred thousand at least. I said to him: 'Hand over one
or two thousand to the famine. You can't take it with you when you die,
anyway.' He was offended. But we all have to die, you know. Death is not
a potato."
A silence followed again.
"So there's nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to loneliness,"
I sighed. "One cannot fight single-handed. Well, I will try single-
handed. Let us hope that my campaign against the famine will be more
successful than my campaign against indifference."
"I am expected downstairs," said Natalya Gavrilovna.
She got up from the table and turned to Ivan Ivanitch.
"So you will look in upon me downstairs for a minute? I won't say good-
bye to you."
And she went away.
Ivan Ivanitch was now drinking his seventh glass of tea, choking,
smacking his lips, and sucking sometimes his moustache, sometimes the
lemon. He was muttering something drowsily and listlessly, and I did not
listen but waited for him to go. At last, with an expression that
suggested that he had only come to me to take a cup of tea, he got up
and began to take leave. As I saw him out I said:
"And so you have given me no advice."
"Eh? I am a feeble, stupid old man," he answered. "What use would my
advice be? You shouldn't worry yourself.... I really don't know why you
worry yourself. Don't disturb yourself, my dear fellow! Upon my word,
there's no need," he whispered genuinely and affectionately, soothing me
as though I were a child. "Upon my word, there's no need."
"No need? Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their huts, and
they say there is typhus somewhere already."
"Well, what of it? If there are good crops next year, they'll thatch
them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after us. Anyway,
we have to die--if not now, later. Don't worry yourself, my dear."
"I can't help worrying myself," I said irritably.
We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule. Ivan Ivanitch suddenly
took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something evidently very
important, looked at me in silence for a couple of minutes.
"Pavel Andreitch!" he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set face
and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he had once
been famous and which was truly charming. "Pavel Andreitch, I speak to
you as a friend: try to be different! One is ill at ease with you, my
dear fellow, one really is!"
He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded away, his
eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly:
"Yes, yes.... Excuse an old man.... It's all nonsense... yes."
As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to balance
himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck, he gave me the
unpleasant impression of a sort of crab.
"You ought to go away, your Excellency," he muttered. "To Petersburg or
abroad.... Why should you live here and waste your golden days? You are
young, wealthy, and healthy.... Yes.... Ah, if I were younger I would
whisk away like a hare, and snap my fingers at everything."
III