pocket-book in the middle of the table, so that a hunk of bread flew off
a plate. A revolting expression of anger, resentment, avarice--all mixed
together--flamed on his face.
"Take everything!" he shouted in an unnatural voice; "plunder me! Take
it all! Strangle me!"
He jumped up from the table, clutched at his head, and ran staggering
about the room.
"Strip me to the last thread!" he shouted in a shrill voice. "Squeeze
out the last drop! Rob me! Wring my neck!"
The student flushed and dropped his eyes. He could not go on eating.
Fedosya Semyonovna, who had not after twenty-five years grown used to
her husband's difficult character, shrank into herself and muttered
something in self-defence. An expression of amazement and dull terror
came into her wasted and birdlike face, which at all times looked dull
and scared. The little boys and the elder daughter Varvara, a girl in
her teens, with a pale ugly face, laid down their spoons and sat mute.
Shiryaev, growing more and more ferocious, uttering words each more
terrible than the one before, dashed up to the table and began shaking
the notes out of his pocket-book.
"Take them!" he muttered, shaking all over. "You've eaten and drunk your
fill, so here's money for you too! I need nothing! Order yourself new
boots and uniforms!"
The student turned pale and got up.
"Listen, papa," he began, gasping for breath. "I... I beg you to end
this, for..."
"Hold your tongue!" the father shouted at him, and so loudly that the
spectacles fell off his nose; "hold your tongue!"
"I used... I used to be able to put up with such scenes, but... but now
I have got out of the way of it. Do you understand? I have got out of
the way of it!"
"Hold your tongue!" cried the father, and he stamped with his feet. "You
must listen to what I say! I shall say what I like, and you hold your
tongue. At your age I was earning my living, while you... Do you know
what you cost me, you scoundrel? I'll turn you out! Wastrel!"
"Yevgraf Ivanovitch," muttered Fedosya Semyonovna, moving her fingers
nervously; "you know he... you know Petya...!"
"Hold your tongue!" Shiryaev shouted out to her, and tears actually came
into his eyes from anger. "It is you who have spoilt them--you! It's all
your fault! He has no respect for us, does not say his prayers, and
earns nothing! I am only one against the ten of you! I'll turn you out
of the house!"
The daughter Varvara gazed fixedly at her mother with her mouth open,
moved her vacant-looking eyes to the window, turned pale, and, uttering
a loud shriek, fell back in her chair. The father, with a curse and a
wave of the hand, ran out into the yard.
This was how domestic scenes usually ended at the Shiryaevs'. But on
this occasion, unfortunately, Pyotr the student was carried away by
overmastering anger. He was just as hasty and ill-tempered as his father
and his grandfather the priest, who used to beat his parishioners about
the head with a stick. Pale and clenching his fists, he went up to his
mother and shouted in the very highest tenor note his voice could reach:
"These reproaches are loathsome! sickening to me! I want nothing from
you! Nothing! I would rather die of hunger than eat another mouthful at
your expense! Take your nasty money back! take it!"
The mother huddled against the wall and waved her hands, as though it
were not her son, but some phantom before her. "What have I done?" she
wailed. "What?"
Like his father, the boy waved his hands and ran into the yard.
Shiryaev's house stood alone on a ravine which ran like a furrow for
four miles along the steppe. Its sides were overgrown with oak saplings
and alders, and a stream ran at the bottom. On one side the house looked
towards the ravine, on the other towards the open country, there were no
fences nor hurdles. Instead there were farm-buildings of all sorts close
to one another, shutting in a small space in front of the house which
was regarded as the yard, and in which hens, ducks, and pigs ran about.
Going out of the house, the student walked along the muddy road towards
the open country. The air was full of a penetrating autumn dampness. The
road was muddy, puddles gleamed here and there, and in the yellow fields
autumn itself seemed looking out from the grass, dismal, decaying, dark.
On the right-hand side of the road was a vegetable-garden cleared of its
crops and gloomy-looking, with here and there sunflowers standing up in
it with hanging heads already black.
Pyotr thought it would not be a bad thing to walk to Moscow on foot; to
walk just as he was, with holes in his boots, without a cap, and without
a farthing of money. When he had gone eighty miles his father,
frightened and aghast, would overtake him, would begin begging him to
turn back or take the money, but he would not even look at him, but
would go on and on.... Bare forests would be followed by desolate
fields, fields by forests again; soon the earth would be white with the
first snow, and the streams would be coated with ice.... Somewhere near
Kursk or near Serpuhovo, exhausted and dying of hunger, he would sink
down and die. His corpse would be found, and there would be a paragraph
in all the papers saying that a student called Shiryaev had died of
hunger....
A white dog with a muddy tail who was wandering about the vegetable-
garden looking for something gazed at him and sauntered after him.
He walked along the road and thought of death, of the grief of his
family, of the moral sufferings of his father, and then pictured all
sorts of adventures on the road, each more marvellous than the one
before--picturesque places, terrible nights, chance encounters. He
imagined a string of pilgrims, a hut in the forest with one little
window shining in the darkness; he stands before the window, begs for a
night's lodging.... They let him in, and suddenly he sees that they are
robbers. Or, better still, he is taken into a big manor-house, where,
learning who he is, they give him food and drink, play to him on the
piano, listen to his complaints, and the daughter of the house, a
beauty, falls in love with him.
Absorbed in his bitterness and such thoughts, young Shiryaev walked on
and on. Far, far ahead he saw the inn, a dark patch against the grey
background of cloud. Beyond the inn, on the very horizon, he could see a
little hillock; this was the railway-station. That hillock reminded him
of the connection existing between the place where he was now standing
and Moscow, where street-lamps were burning and carriages were rattling
in the streets, where lectures were being given. And he almost wept with
depression and impatience. The solemn landscape, with its order and
beauty, the deathlike stillness all around, revolted him and moved him
to despair and hatred!
"Look out!" He heard behind him a loud voice.
An old lady of his acquaintance, a landowner of the neighbourhood, drove
past him in a light, elegant landau. He bowed to her, and smiled all
over his face. And at once he caught himself in that smile, which was so
out of keeping with his gloomy mood. Where did it come from if his whole
heart was full of vexation and misery? And he thought nature itself had
given man this capacity for lying, that even in difficult moments of
spiritual strain he might be able to hide the secrets of his nest as the
fox and the wild duck do. Every family has its joys and its horrors, but
however great they may be, it's hard for an outsider's eye to see them;
they are a secret. The father of the old lady who had just driven by,
for instance, had for some offence lain for half his lifetime under the
ban of the wrath of Tsar Nicolas I.; her husband had been a gambler; of
her four sons, not one had turned out well. One could imagine how many
terrible scenes there must have been in her life, how many tears must
have been shed. And yet the old lady seemed happy and satisfied, and she
had answered his smile by smiling too. The student thought of his
comrades, who did not like talking about their families; he thought of
his mother, who almost always lied when she had to speak of her husband
and children....
Pyotr walked about the roads far from home till dusk, abandoning himself
to dreary thoughts. When it began to drizzle with rain he turned
homewards. As he walked back he made up his mind at all costs to talk to
his father, to explain to him, once and for all, that it was dreadful
and oppressive to live with him.
He found perfect stillness in the house. His sister Varvara was lying
behind a screen with a headache, moaning faintly. His mother, with a
look of amazement and guilt upon her face, was sitting beside her on a
box, mending Arhipka's trousers. Yevgraf Ivanovitch was pacing from one
window to another, scowling at the weather. From his walk, from the way
he cleared his throat, and even from the back of his head, it was
evident he felt himself to blame.
"I suppose you have changed your mind about going today?" he asked.
The student felt sorry for him, but immediately suppressing that
feeling, he said:
"Listen... I must speak to you seriously... yes, seriously. I have
always respected you, and... and have never brought myself to speak to
you in such a tone, but your behaviour... your last action..."
The father looked out of the window and did not speak. The student, as
though considering his words, rubbed his forehead and went on in great
excitement:
"Not a dinner or tea passes without your making an uproar. Your bread
sticks in our throat... nothing is more bitter, more humiliating, than
bread that sticks in one's throat.... Though you are my father, no one,
neither God nor nature, has given you the right to insult and humiliate
us so horribly, to vent your ill-humour on the weak. You have worn my
mother out and made a slave of her, my sister is hopelessly crushed,
while I..."
"It's not your business to teach me," said his father.
"Yes, it is my business! You can quarrel with me as much as you like,
but leave my mother in peace! I will not allow you to torment my
mother!" the student went on, with flashing eyes. "You are spoilt
because no one has yet dared to oppose you. They tremble and are mute
towards you, but now that is over! Coarse, ill-bred man! You are
coarse... do you understand? You are coarse, ill-humoured, unfeeling.
And the peasants can't endure you!"
The student had by now lost his thread, and was not so much speaking as
firing off detached words. Yevgraf Ivanovitch listened in silence, as
though stunned; but suddenly his neck turned crimson, the colour crept
up his face, and he made a movement.
"Hold your tongue!" he shouted.
"That's right!" the son persisted; "you don't like to hear the truth!
Excellent! Very good! begin shouting! Excellent!"
"Hold your tongue, I tell you!" roared Yevgraf Ivanovitch.
Fedosya Semyonovna appeared in the doorway, very pale, with an
astonished face; she tried to say something, but she could not, and
could only move her fingers.
"It's all your fault!" Shiryaev shouted at her. "You have brought him up
like this!"
"I don't want to go on living in this house!" shouted the student,
crying, and looking angrily at his mother. "I don't want to live with
you!"
Varvara uttered a shriek behind the screen and broke into loud sobs.
With a wave of his hand, Shiryaev ran out of the house.
The student went to his own room and quietly lay down. He lay till
midnight without moving or opening his eyes. He felt neither anger nor
shame, but a vague ache in his soul. He neither blamed his father nor
pitied his mother, nor was he tormented by stings of conscience; he
realized that every one in the house was feeling the same ache, and God
only knew which was most to blame, which was suffering most....
At midnight he woke the labourer, and told him to have the horse ready
at five o'clock in the morning for him to drive to the station; he
undressed and got into bed, but could not get to sleep. He heard how his
father, still awake, paced slowly from window to window, sighing, till
early morning. No one was asleep; they spoke rarely, and only in
whispers. Twice his mother came to him behind the screen. Always with
the same look of vacant wonder, she slowly made the cross over him,
shaking nervously.
At five o'clock in the morning he said good-bye to them all
affectionately, and even shed tears. As he passed his father's room, he
glanced in at the door. Yevgraf Ivanovitch, who had not taken off his
clothes or gone to bed, was standing by the window, drumming on the
panes.
"Good-bye; I am going," said his son.
"Good-bye... the money is on the round table..." his father answered,
without turning round.
A cold, hateful rain was falling as the labourer drove him to the
station. The sunflowers were drooping their heads still lower, and the
grass seemed darker than ever.
THE GRASSHOPPER I
ALL Olga Ivanovna's friends and acquaintances were at her wedding.
"Look at him; isn't it true that there is something in him?" she said to
her friends, with a nod towards her husband, as though she wanted to
explain why she was marrying a simple, very ordinary, and in no way
remarkable man.
Her husband, Osip Stepanitch Dymov, was a doctor, and only of the rank
of a titular councillor. He was on the staff of two hospitals: in one a
ward-surgeon and in the other a dissecting demonstrator. Every day from
nine to twelve he saw patients and was busy in his ward, and after
twelve o'clock he went by tram to the other hospital, where he
dissected. His private practice was a small one, not worth more than
five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What more could one say about
him? Meanwhile, Olga Ivanovna and her friends and acquaintances were not
quite ordinary people. Every one of them was remarkable in some way, and
more or less famous; already had made a reputation and was looked upon
as a celebrity; or if not yet a celebrity, gave brilliant promise of
becoming one. There was an actor from the Dramatic Theatre, who was a
great talent of established reputation, as well as an elegant,
intelligent, and modest man, and a capital elocutionist, and who taught
Olga Ivanovna to recite; there was a singer from the opera, a good-
natured, fat man who assured Olga Ivanovna, with a sigh, that she was
ruining herself, that if she would take herself in hand and not be lazy
she might make a remarkable singer; then there were several artists, and
chief among them Ryabovsky, a very handsome, fair young man of five-and-
twenty who painted genre pieces, animal studies, and landscapes, was
successful at exhibitions, and had sold his last picture for five
hundred roubles. He touched up Olga Ivanovna's sketches, and used to say
she might do something. Then a violoncellist, whose instrument used to
sob, and who openly declared that of all the ladies of his acquaintance
the only one who could accompany him was Olga Ivanovna; then there was a
literary man, young but already well known, who had written stories,
novels, and plays. Who else? Why, Vassily Vassilyitch, a landowner and
amateur illustrator and vignettist, with a great feeling for the old
Russian style, the old ballad and epic. On paper, on china, and on
smoked plates, he produced literally marvels. In the midst of this free
artistic company, spoiled by fortune, though refined and modest, who
recalled the existence of doctors only in times of illness, and to whom
the name of Dymov sounded in no way different from Sidorov or Tarasov--in
the midst of this company Dymov seemed strange, not wanted, and small,
though he was tall and broad-shouldered. He looked as though he had on
somebody else's coat, and his beard was like a shopman's. Though if he
had been a writer or an artist, they would have said that his beard
reminded them of Zola.
An artist said to Olga Ivanovna that with her flaxen hair and in her
wedding-dress she was very much like a graceful cherry-tree when it is
covered all over with delicate white blossoms in spring.
"Oh, let me tell you," said Olga Ivanovna, taking his arm, "how it was
it all came to pass so suddenly. Listen, listen!... I must tell you that
my father was on the same staff at the hospital as Dymov. When my poor
father was taken ill, Dymov watched for days and nights together at his
bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen, Ryabovsky! You, my writer, listen;
it is very interesting! Come nearer. Such self-sacrifice, such genuine
sympathy! I sat up with my father, and did not sleep for nights, either.
And all at once--the princess had won the hero's heart--my Dymov fell head
over ears in love. Really, fate is so strange at times! Well, after my
father's death he came to see me sometimes, met me in the street, and
one fine evening, all at once he made me an offer... like snow upon my
head.... I lay awake all night, crying, and fell hellishly in love
myself. And here, as you see, I am his wife. There really is something
strong, powerful, bearlike about him, isn't there? Now his face is
turned three-quarters towards us in a bad light, but when he turns round
look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say to that forehead?
Dymov, we are talking about you!" she called to her husband. "Come here;
hold out your honest hand to Ryabovsky.... That's right, be friends."
Dymov, with a naive and good-natured smile, held out his hand to
Ryabovsky, and said:
"Very glad to meet you. There was a Ryabovsky in my year at the medical
school. Was he a relation of yours?"
II
Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two, Dymov was thirty-one. They got on
splendidly together when they were married. Olga Ivanovna hung all her
drawing-room walls with her own and other people's sketches, in frames
and without frames, and near the piano and furniture arranged
picturesque corners with Japanese parasols, easels, daggers, busts,
photographs, and rags of many colours.... In the dining-room she papered
the walls with peasant woodcuts, hung up bark shoes and sickles, stood
in a corner a scythe and a rake, and so achieved a dining-room in the
Russian style. In her bedroom she draped the ceiling and the walls with
dark cloths to make it like a cavern, hung a Venetian lantern over the
beds, and at the door set a figure with a halberd. And every one thought
that the young people had a very charming little home.
When she got up at eleven o'clock every morning, Olga Ivanovna played
the piano or, if it were sunny, painted something in oils. Then between
twelve and one she drove to her dressmaker's. As Dymov and she had very
little money, only just enough, she and her dressmaker were often put to
clever shifts to enable her to appear constantly in new dresses and make
a sensation with them. Very often out of an old dyed dress, out of bits
of tulle, lace, plush, and silk, costing nothing, perfect marvels were
created, something bewitching--not a dress, but a dream. From the
dressmaker's Olga Ivanovna usually drove to some actress of her
acquaintance to hear the latest theatrical gossip, and incidentally to
try and get hold of tickets for the first night of some new play or for
a benefit performance. From the actress's she had to go to some artist's
studio or to some exhibition or to see some celebrity--either to pay a
visit or to give an invitation or simply to have a chat. And everywhere
she met with a gay and friendly welcome, and was assured that she was
good, that she was sweet, that she was rare.... Those whom she called
great and famous received her as one of themselves, as an equal, and
predicted with one voice that, with her talents, her taste, and her
intelligence, she would do great things if she concentrated herself. She
sang, she played the piano, she painted in oils, she carved, she took
part in amateur performances; and all this not just anyhow, but all with
talent, whether she made lanterns for an illumination or dressed up or
tied somebody's cravat--everything she did was exceptionally graceful,
artistic, and charming. But her talents showed themselves in nothing so
clearly as in her faculty for quickly becoming acquainted and on
intimate terms with celebrated people. No sooner did any one become ever
so little celebrated, and set people talking about him, than she made
his acquaintance, got on friendly terms the same day, and invited him to
her house. Every new acquaintance she made was a veritable fete for her.
She adored celebrated people, was proud of them, dreamed of them every
night. She craved for them, and never could satisfy her craving. The old
ones departed and were forgotten, new ones came to replace them, but to
these, too, she soon grew accustomed or was disappointed in them, and
began eagerly seeking for fresh great men, finding them and seeking for
them again. What for?
Between four and five she dined at home with her husband. His
simplicity, good sense, and kind-heartedness touched her and moved her
up to enthusiasm. She was constantly jumping up, impulsively hugging his
head and showering kisses on it.
"You are a clever, generous man, Dymov," she used to say, "but you have
one very serious defect. You take absolutely no interest in art. You
don't believe in music or painting."
"I don't understand them," he would say mildly. "I have spent all my
life in working at natural science and medicine, and I have never had
time to take an interest in the arts."
"But, you know, that's awful, Dymov!"
"Why so? Your friends don't know anything of science or medicine, but
you don't reproach them with it. Every one has his own line. I don't
understand landscapes and operas, but the way I look at it is that if
one set of sensible people devote their whole lives to them, and other
sensible people pay immense sums for them, they must be of use. I don't
understand them, but not understanding does not imply disbelieving in
them."
"Let me shake your honest hand!"
After dinner Olga Ivanovna would drive off to see her friends, then to a
theatre or to a concert, and she returned home after midnight. So it was
every day.
On Wednesdays she had "At Homes." At these "At Homes" the hostess and
her guests did not play cards and did not dance, but entertained
themselves with various arts. An actor from the Dramatic Theatre
recited, a singer sang, artists sketched in the albums of which Olga
Ivanovna had a great number, the violoncellist played, and the hostess
herself sketched, carved, sang, and played accompaniments. In the
intervals between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked and
argued about literature, the theatre, and painting. There were no
ladies, for Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies wearisome and vulgar
except actresses and her dressmaker. Not one of these entertainments
passed without the hostess starting at every ring at the bell, and
saying, with a triumphant expression, "It is he," meaning by "he," of
course, some new celebrity. Dymov was not in the drawing-room, and no
one remembered his existence. But exactly at half-past eleven the door
leading into the dining-room opened, and Dymov would appear with his
good-natured, gentle smile and say, rubbing his hands:
"Come to supper, gentlemen."
They all went into the dining-room, and every time found on the table
exactly the same things: a dish of oysters, a piece of ham or veal,
sardines, cheese, caviare, mushrooms, vodka, and two decanters of wine.
"My dear maitre d' hotel!" Olga Ivanovna would say, clasping her hands
with enthusiasm, "you are simply fascinating! My friends, look at his
forehead! Dymov, turn your profile. Look! he has the face of a Bengal
tiger and an expression as kind and sweet as a gazelle. Ah, the
darling!"
The visitors ate, and, looking at Dymov, thought, "He really is a nice
fellow"; but they soon forgot about him, and went on talking about the
theatre, music, and painting.
The young people were happy, and their life flowed on without a hitch.
The third week of their honeymoon was spent, however, not quite
happily--sadly, indeed. Dymov caught erysipelas in the hospital, was in
bed for six days, and had to have his beautiful black hair cropped. Olga
Ivanovna sat beside him and wept bitterly, but when he was better she
put a white handkerchief on his shaven head and began to paint him as a
Bedouin. And they were both in good spirits. Three days after he had
begun to go back to the hospital he had another mischance.
"I have no luck, little mother," he said one day at dinner. "I had four
dissections to do today, and I cut two of my fingers at one. And I did
not notice it till I got home."