three of my daughter's friends and Alexandr Adolfovitch Gnekker, her
admirer and suitor. He is a fair-haired young man under thirty, of
medium height, very stout and broad-shouldered, with red whiskers near
his ears, and little waxed moustaches which make his plump smooth face
look like a toy. He is dressed in a very short reefer jacket, a flowered
waistcoat, breeches very full at the top and very narrow at the ankle,
with a large check pattern on them, and yellow boots without heels. He
has prominent eyes like a crab's, his cravat is like a crab's neck, and
I even fancy there is a smell of crab-soup about the young man's whole
person. He visits us every day, but no one in my family knows anything
of his origin nor of the place of his education, nor of his means of
livelihood. He neither plays nor sings, but has some connection with
music and singing, sells somebody's pianos somewhere, is frequently at
the Conservatoire, is acquainted with all the celebrities, and is a
steward at the concerts; he criticizes music with great authority, and I
have noticed that people are eager to agree with him.
Rich people always have dependents hanging about them; the arts and
sciences have the same. I believe there is not an art nor a science in
the world free from "foreign bodies" after the style of this Mr.
Gnekker. I am not a musician, and possibly I am mistaken in regard to
Mr. Gnekker, of whom, indeed, I know very little. But his air of
authority and the dignity with which he takes his stand beside the piano
when any one is playing or singing strike me as very suspicious.
You may be ever so much of a gentleman and a privy councillor, but if
you have a daughter you cannot be secure of immunity from that petty
bourgeois atmosphere which is so often brought into your house and into
your mood by the attentions of suitors, by matchmaking and marriage. I
can never reconcile myself, for instance, to the expression of triumph
on my wife's face every time Gnekker is in our company, nor can I
reconcile myself to the bottles of Lafitte, port and sherry which are
only brought out on his account, that he may see with his own eyes the
liberal and luxurious way in which we live. I cannot tolerate the habit
of spasmodic laughter Liza has picked up at the Conservatoire, and her
way of screwing up her eyes whenever there are men in the room. Above
all, I cannot understand why a creature utterly alien to my habits, my
studies, my whole manner of life, completely different from the people I
like, should come and see me every day, and every day should dine with
me. My wife and my servants mysteriously whisper that he is a suitor,
but still I don't understand his presence; it rouses in me the same
wonder and perplexity as if they were to set a Zulu beside me at the
table. And it seems strange to me, too, that my daughter, whom I am used
to thinking of as a child, should love that cravat, those eyes, those
soft cheeks....
In the old days I used to like my dinner, or at least was indifferent
about it; now it excites in me no feeling but weariness and irritation.
Ever since I became an "Excellency" and one of the Deans of the Faculty
my family has for some reason found it necessary to make a complete
change in our menu and dining habits. Instead of the simple dishes to
which I was accustomed when I was a student and when I was in practice,
now they feed me with a puree with little white things like circles
floating about in it, and kidneys stewed in madeira. My rank as a
general and my fame have robbed me for ever of cabbage-soup and savoury
pies, and goose with apple-sauce, and bream with boiled grain. They have
robbed me of our maid-servant Agasha, a chatty and laughter-loving old
woman, instead of whom Yegor, a dull-witted and conceited fellow with a
white glove on his right hand, waits at dinner. The intervals between
the courses are short, but they seem immensely long because there is
nothing to occupy them. There is none of the gaiety of the old days, the
spontaneous talk, the jokes, the laughter; there is nothing of mutual
affection and the joy which used to animate the children, my wife, and
me when in old days we met together at meals. For me, the celebrated man
of science, dinner was a time of rest and reunion, and for my wife and
children a fete--brief indeed, but bright and joyous--in which they knew
that for half an hour I belonged, not to science, not to students, but
to them alone. Our real exhilaration from one glass of wine is gone for
ever, gone is Agasha, gone the bream with boiled grain, gone the uproar
that greeted every little startling incident at dinner, such as the cat
and dog fighting under the table, or Katya's bandage falling off her
face into her soup-plate.
To describe our dinner nowadays is as uninteresting as to eat it. My
wife's face wears a look of triumph and affected dignity, and her
habitual expression of anxiety. She looks at our plates and says, "I see
you don't care for the joint. Tell me; you don't like it, do you?" and I
am obliged to answer: "There is no need for you to trouble, my dear; the
meat is very nice." And she will say: "You always stand up for me,
Nikolay Stepanovitch, and you never tell the truth. Why is Alexandr
Adolfovitch eating so little?" And so on in the same style all through
dinner. Liza laughs spasmodically and screws up her eyes. I watch them
both, and it is only now at dinner that it becomes absolutely evident to
me that the inner life of these two has slipped away out of my ken. I
have a feeling as though I had once lived at home with a real wife and
children and that now I am dining with visitors, in the house of a sham
wife who is not the real one, and am looking at a Liza who is not the
real Liza. A startling change has taken place in both of them; I have
missed the long process by which that change was effected, and it is no
wonder that I can make nothing of it. Why did that change take place? I
don't know. Perhaps the whole trouble is that God has not given my wife
and daughter the same strength of character as me. From childhood I have
been accustomed to resisting external influences, and have steeled
myself pretty thoroughly. Such catastrophes in life as fame, the rank of
a general, the transition from comfort to living beyond our means,
acquaintance with celebrities, etc., have scarcely affected me, and I
have remained intact and unashamed; but on my wife and Liza, who have
not been through the same hardening process and are weak, all this has
fallen like an avalanche of snow, overwhelming them. Gnekker and the
young ladies talk of fugues, of counterpoint, of singers and pianists,
of Bach and Brahms, while my wife, afraid of their suspecting her of
ignorance of music, smiles to them sympathetically and mutters: "That's
exquisite... really! You don't say so!..." Gnekker eats with solid
dignity, jests with solid dignity, and condescendingly listens to the
remarks of the young ladies. From time to time he is moved to speak in
bad French, and then, for some reason or other, he thinks it necessary
to address me as "Votre Excellence."
And I am glum. Evidently I am a constraint to them and they are a
constraint to me. I have never in my earlier days had a close knowledge
of class antagonism, but now I am tormented by something of that sort. I
am on the lookout for nothing but bad qualities in Gnekker; I quickly
find them, and am fretted at the thought that a man not of my circle is
sitting here as my daughter's suitor. His presence has a bad influence
on me in other ways, too. As a rule, when I am alone or in the society
of people I like, never think of my own achievements, or, if I do recall
them, they seem to me as trivial as though I had only completed my
studies yesterday; but in the presence of people like Gnekker my
achievements in science seem to be a lofty mountain the top of which
vanishes into the clouds, while at its foot Gnekkers are running about
scarcely visible to the naked eye.
After dinner I go into my study and there smoke my pipe, the only one in
the whole day, the sole relic of my old bad habit of smoking from
morning till night. While I am smoking my wife comes in and sits down to
talk to me. Just as in the morning, I know beforehand what our
conversation is going to be about.
"I must talk to you seriously, Nikolay Stepanovitch," she begins. "I
mean about Liza.... Why don't you pay attention to it?"
"To what?"
"You pretend to notice nothing. But that is not right. We can't shirk
responsibility.... Gnekker has intentions in regard to Liza.... What do
you say?"
"That he is a bad man I can't say, because I don't know him, but that I
don't like him I have told you a thousand times already."
"But you can't... you can't!"
She gets up and walks about in excitement.
"You can't take up that attitude to a serious step," she says. "When it
is a question of our daughter's happiness we must lay aside all personal
feeling. I know you do not like him.... Very good... if we refuse him
now, if we break it all off, how can you be sure that Liza will not have
a grievance against us all her life? Suitors are not plentiful nowadays,
goodness knows, and it may happen that no other match will turn up....
He is very much in love with Liza, and she seems to like him.... Of
course, he has no settled position, but that can't be helped. Please
God, in time he will get one. He is of good family and well off."
"Where did you learn that?"
"He told us so. His father has a large house in Harkov and an estate in
the neighbourhood. In short, Nikolay Stepanovitch, you absolutely must
go to Harkov."
"What for?"
"You will find out all about him there.... You know the professors
there; they will help you. I would go myself, but I am a woman. I
cannot...."
"I am not going to Harkov," I say morosely.
My wife is frightened, and a look of intense suffering comes into her
face.
"For God's sake, Nikolay Stepanovitch," she implores me, with tears in
her voice--"for God's sake, take this burden off me! I am so worried!"
It is painful for me to look at her.
"Very well, Varya," I say affectionately, "if you wish it, then
certainly I will go to Harkov and do all you want."
She presses her handkerchief to her eyes and goes off to her room to
cry, and I am left alone.
A little later lights are brought in. The armchair and the lamp-shade
cast familiar shadows that have long grown wearisome on the walls and on
the floor, and when I look at them I feel as though the night had come
and with it my accursed sleeplessness. I lie on my bed, then get up and
walk about the room, then lie down again. As a rule it is after dinner,
at the approach of evening, that my nervous excitement reaches its
highest pitch. For no reason I begin crying and burying my head in the
pillow. At such times I am afraid that some one may come in; I am afraid
of suddenly dying; I am ashamed of my tears, and altogether there is
something insufferable in my soul. I feel that I can no longer bear the
sight of my lamp, of my books, of the shadows on the floor. I cannot
bear the sound of the voices coming from the drawing-room. Some force
unseen, uncomprehended, is roughly thrusting me out of my flat. I leap
up hurriedly, dress, and cautiously, that my family may not notice, slip
out into the street. Where am I to go?
The answer to that question has long been ready in my brain. To Katya.
III
As a rule she is lying on the sofa or in a lounge-chair reading. Seeing
me, she raises her head languidly, sits up, and shakes hands.
"You are always lying down," I say, after pausing and taking breath.
"That's not good for you. You ought to occupy yourself with something."
"What?"
"I say you ought to occupy yourself in some way."
"With what? A woman can be nothing but a simple workwoman or an
actress."
"Well, if you can't be a workwoman, be an actress."
She says nothing.
"You ought to get married," I say, half in jest.
"There is no one to marry. There's no reason to, either."
"You can't live like this."
"Without a husband? Much that matters; I could have as many men as I
like if I wanted to."
"That's ugly, Katya."
"What is ugly?"
"Why, what you have just said."
Noticing that I am hurt and wishing to efface the disagreeable
impression, Katya says:
"Let us go; come this way."
She takes me into a very snug little room, and says, pointing to the
writing-table:
"Look... I have got that ready for you. You shall work here. Come here
every day and bring your work with you. They only hinder you there at
home. Will you work here? Will you like to?"
Not to wound her by refusing, I answer that I will work here, and that I
like the room very much. Then we both sit down in the snug little room
and begin talking.
The warm, snug surroundings and the presence of a sympathetic person
does not, as in old days, arouse in me a feeling of pleasure, but an
intense impulse to complain and grumble. I feel for some reason that if
I lament and complain I shall feel better.
"Things are in a bad way with me, my dear--very bad...."
"What is it?"
"You see how it is, my dear; the best and holiest right of kings is the
right of mercy. And I have always felt myself a king, since I have made
unlimited use of that right. I have never judged, I have been indulgent,
I have readily forgiven every one, right and left. Where others have
protested and expressed indignation, I have only advised and persuaded.
All my life it has been my endeavour that my society should not be a
burden to my family, to my students, to my colleagues, to my servants.
And I know that this attitude to people has had a good influence on all
who have chanced to come into contact with me. But now I am not a king.
Something is happening to me that is only excusable in a slave; day and
night my brain is haunted by evil thoughts, and feelings such as I never
knew before are brooding in my soul. I am full of hatred, and contempt,
and indignation, and loathing, and dread. I have become excessively
severe, exacting, irritable, ungracious, suspicious. Even things that in
old days would have provoked me only to an unnecessary jest and a good-
natured laugh now arouse an oppressive feeling in me. My reasoning, too,
has undergone a change: in old days I despised money; now I harbour an
evil feeling, not towards money, but towards the rich as though they
were to blame: in old days I hated violence and tyranny, but now I hate
the men who make use of violence, as though they were alone to blame,
and not all of us who do not know how to educate each other. What is the
meaning of it? If these new ideas and new feelings have come from a
change of convictions, what is that change due to? Can the world have
grown worse and I better, or was I blind before and indifferent? If this
change is the result of a general decline of physical and intellectual
powers--I am ill, you know, and every day I am losing weight--my position
is pitiable; it means that my new ideas are morbid and abnormal; I ought
to be ashamed of them and think them of no consequence...."
"Illness has nothing to do with it," Katya interrupts me; "it's simply
that your eyes are opened, that's all. You have seen what in old days,
for some reason, you refused to see. To my thinking, what you ought to
do first of all, is to break with your family for good, and go away."
"You are talking nonsense."
"You don't love them; why should you force your feelings? Can you call
them a family? Nonentities! If they died today, no one would notice
their absence tomorrow."
Katya despises my wife and Liza as much as they hate her. One can hardly
talk at this date of people's having a right to despise one another. But
if one looks at it from Katya's standpoint and recognizes such a right,
one can see she has as much right to despise my wife and Liza as they
have to hate her.
"Nonentities," she goes on. "Have you had dinner today? How was it they
did not forget to tell you it was ready? How is it they still remember
your existence?"
"Katya," I say sternly, "I beg you to be silent."
"You think I enjoy talking about them? I should be glad not to know them
at all. Listen, my dear: give it all up and go away. Go abroad. The
sooner the better."
"What nonsense! What about the University?"
"The University, too. What is it to you? There's no sense in it, anyway.
You have been lecturing for thirty years, and where are your pupils? Are
many of them celebrated scientific men? Count them up! And to multiply
the doctors who exploit ignorance and pile up hundreds of thousands for
themselves, there is no need to be a good and talented man. You are not
wanted."
"Good heavens! how harsh you are!" I cry in horror. "How harsh you are!
Be quiet or I will go away! I don't know how to answer the harsh things
you say!"
The maid comes in and summons us to tea. At the samovar our
conversation, thank God, changes. After having had my grumble out, I
have a longing to give way to another weakness of old age,
reminiscences. I tell Katya about my past, and to my great astonishment
tell her incidents which, till then, I did not suspect of being still
preserved in my memory, and she listens to me with tenderness, with
pride, holding her breath. I am particularly fond of telling her how I
was educated in a seminary and dreamed of going to the University.
"At times I used to walk about our seminary garden..." I would tell her.
"If from some faraway tavern the wind floated sounds of a song and the
squeaking of an accordion, or a sledge with bells dashed by the garden-
fence, it was quite enough to send a rush of happiness, filling not only
my heart, but even my stomach, my legs, my arms.... I would listen to
the accordion or the bells dying away in the distance and imagine myself
a doctor, and paint pictures, one better than another. And here, as you
see, my dreams have come true. I have had more than I dared to dream of.
For thirty years I have been the favourite professor, I have had
splendid comrades, I have enjoyed fame and honour. I have loved, married
from passionate love, have had children. In fact, looking back upon it,
I see my whole life as a fine composition arranged with talent. Now all
that is left to me is not to spoil the end. For that I must die like a
man. If death is really a thing to dread, I must meet it as a teacher, a
man of science, and a citizen of a Christian country ought to meet it,
with courage and untroubled soul. But I am spoiling the end; I am
sinking, I fly to you, I beg for help, and you tell me 'Sink; that is
what you ought to do.'"
But here there comes a ring at the front-door. Katya and I recognize it,
and say:
"It must be Mihail Fyodorovitch."
And a minute later my colleague, the philologist Mihail Fyodorovitch, a
tall, well-built man of fifty, clean-shaven, with thick grey hair and
black eyebrows, walks in. He is a good-natured man and an excellent
comrade. He comes of a fortunate and talented old noble family which has
played a prominent part in the history of literature and enlightenment.
He is himself intelligent, talented, and very highly educated, but has
his oddities. To a certain extent we are all odd and all queer fish, but
in his oddities there is something exceptional, apt to cause anxiety
among his acquaintances. I know a good many people for whom his oddities
completely obscure his good qualities.
Coming in to us, he slowly takes off his gloves and says in his velvety
bass:
"Good-evening. Are you having tea? That's just right. It's diabolically
cold."
Then he sits down to the table, takes a glass, and at once begins
talking. What is most characteristic in his manner of talking is the
continually jesting tone, a sort of mixture of philosophy and drollery
as in Shakespeare's gravediggers. He is always talking about serious
things, but he never speaks seriously. His judgments are always harsh
and railing, but, thanks to his soft, even, jesting tone, the harshness
and abuse do not jar upon the ear, and one soon grows used to them.
Every evening he brings with him five or six anecdotes from the
University, and he usually begins with them when he sits down to table.
"Oh, Lord!" he sighs, twitching his black eyebrows ironically. "What
comic people there are in the world!"
"Well?" asks Katya.
"As I was coming from my lecture this morning I met that old idiot N.
N---- on the stairs.... He was going along as usual, sticking out his chin
like a horse, looking for some one to listen to his grumblings at his
migraine, at his wife, and his students who won't attend his lectures.
'Oh,' I thought, 'he has seen me--I am done for now; it is all up....'"
And so on in the same style. Or he will begin like this:
"I was yesterday at our friend Z. Z----'s public lecture. I wonder how it
is our alma mater--don't speak of it after dark--dare display in public
such noodles and patent dullards as that Z. Z---- Why, he is a European
fool! Upon my word, you could not find another like him all over Europe!
He lectures--can you imagine?--as though he were sucking a sugar-
stick--sue, sue, sue;... he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly decipher
his own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like a bishop
on a bicycle, and, what's worse, you can never make out what he is
trying to say. The deadly dulness is awful, the very flies expire. It
can only be compared with the boredom in the assembly-hall at the yearly
meeting when the traditional address is read--damn it!"
And at once an abrupt transition:
"Three years ago--Nikolay Stepanovitch here will remember it--I had to
deliver that address. It was hot, stifling, my uniform cut me under the
arms--it was deadly! I read for half an hour, for an hour, for an hour
and a half, for two hours.... 'Come,' I thought; 'thank God, there are
only ten pages left!' And at the end there were four pages that there
was no need to read, and I reckoned to leave them out. 'So there are
only six really,' I thought; 'that is, only six pages left to read.'
But, only fancy, I chanced to glance before me, and, sitting in the
front row, side by side, were a general with a ribbon on his breast and
a bishop. The poor beggars were numb with boredom; they were staring
with their eyes wide open to keep awake, and yet they were trying to put
on an expression of attention and to pretend that they understood what I
was saying and liked it. 'Well,' I thought, 'since you like it you shall
have it! I'll pay you out;' so I just gave them those four pages too."
As is usual with ironical people, when he talks nothing in his face
smiles but his eyes and eyebrows. At such times there is no trace of
hatred or spite in his eyes, but a great deal of humour, and that
peculiar fox-like slyness which is only to be noticed in very observant
people. Since I am speaking about his eyes, I notice another peculiarity
in them. When he takes a glass from Katya, or listens to her speaking,
or looks after her as she goes out of the room for a moment, I notice in
his eyes something gentle, beseeching, pure....
The maid-servant takes away the samovar and puts on the table a large
piece of cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne--a rather
poor wine of which Katya had grown fond in the Crimea. Mihail
Fyodorovitch takes two packs of cards off the whatnot and begins to play
patience. According to him, some varieties of patience require great
concentration and attention, yet while he lays out the cards he does not
leave off distracting his attention with talk. Katya watches his cards
attentively, and more by gesture than by words helps him in his play.
She drinks no more than a couple of wine-glasses of wine the whole
evening; I drink four glasses, and the rest of the bottle falls to the
share of Mihail Fyodorovitch, who can drink a great deal and never get
drunk.
Over our patience we settle various questions, principally of the higher
order, and what we care for most of all--that is, science and learning--is
more roughly handled than anything.
"Science, thank God, has outlived its day," says Mihail Fyodorovitch
emphatically. "Its song is sung. Yes, indeed. Mankind begins to feel
impelled to replace it by something different. It has grown on the soil
of superstition, been nourished by superstition, and is now just as much
the quintessence of superstition as its defunct granddames, alchemy,
metaphysics, and philosophy. And, after all, what has it given to
mankind? Why, the difference between the learned Europeans and the
Chinese who have no science is trifling, purely external. The Chinese
know nothing of science, but what have they lost thereby?"
"Flies know nothing of science, either," I observe, "but what of that?"
"There is no need to be angry, Nikolay Stepanovitch. I only say this
here between ourselves... I am more careful than you think, and I am not
going to say this in public--God forbid! The superstition exists in the
multitude that the arts and sciences are superior to agriculture,
commerce, superior to handicrafts. Our sect is maintained by that
superstition, and it is not for you and me to destroy it. God forbid!"
After patience the younger generation comes in for a dressing too.
"Our audiences have degenerated," sighs Mihail Fyodorovitch. "Not to
speak of ideals and all the rest of it, if only they were capable of
work and rational thought! In fact, it's a case of 'I look with mournful
eyes on the young men of today.'"