Kross, probably an insignificant, little man, felt his unimportance so
deeply that he gave full licence to his penknife and carved his name in
deep letters an inch high. I took a pencil out of my pocket
mechanically, and I too scribbled on one of the columns. All that is
irrelevant, however. . . You must forgive me--I don't know how to tell a
story briefly.
"I was sad and a little bored. Boredom, the stillness, and the purring
of the sea gradually brought me to the line of thought we have been
discussing. At that period, towards the end of the 'seventies, it had
begun to be fashionable with the public, and later, at the beginning of
the 'eighties, it gradually passed from the general public into
literature, science, and politics. I was no more than twenty-six at the
time, but I knew perfectly well that life was aimless and had no
meaning, that everything was a deception and an illusion, that in its
essential nature and results a life of penal servitude in Sahalin was
not in any way different from a life spent in Nice, that the difference
between the brain of a Kant and the brain of a fly was of no real
significance, that no one in this world is righteous or guilty, that
everything was stuff and nonsense and damn it all! I lived as though I
were doing a favour to some unseen power which compelled me to live, and
to which I seemed to say: 'Look, I don't care a straw for life, but I am
living!' I thought on one definite line, but in all sorts of keys, and
in that respect I was like the subtle gourmand who could prepare a
hundred appetising dishes from nothing but potatoes. There is no doubt
that I was one-sided and even to some extent narrow, but I fancied at
the time that my intellectual horizon had neither beginning nor end, and
that my thought was as boundless as the sea. Well, as far as I can judge
by myself, the philosophy of which we are speaking has something
alluring, narcotic in its nature, like tobacco or morphia. It becomes a
habit, a craving. You take advantage of every minute of solitude to
gloat over thoughts of the aimlessness of life and the darkness of the
grave. While I was sitting in the summer-house, Greek children with long
noses were decorously walking about the avenues. I took advantage of the
occasion and, looking at them, began reflecting in this style:
"'Why are these children born, and what are they living for? Is there
any sort of meaning in their existence? They grow up, without themselves
knowing what for; they will live in this God-forsaken, comfortless hole
for no sort of reason, and then they will die. . . .'
"And I actually felt vexed with those children because they were walking
about decorously and talking with dignity, as though they did not hold
their little colourless lives so cheap and knew what they were living
for. . . . I remember that far away at the end of an avenue three
feminine figures came into sight. Three young ladies, one in a pink
dress, two in white, were walking arm-in-arm, talking and laughing.
Looking after them, I thought:
"'It wouldn't be bad to have an affair with some woman for a couple of
days in this dull place.'
"I recalled by the way that it was three weeks since I had visited my
Petersburg lady, and thought that a passing love affair would come in
very appropriately for me just now. The young lady in white in the
middle was rather younger and better looking than her companions, and
judging by her manners and her laugh, she was a high-school girl in an
upper form. I looked, not without impure thoughts, at her bust, and at
the same time reflected about her: 'She will be trained in music and
manners, she will be married to some Greek--God help us!--will lead a
grey, stupid, comfortless life, will bring into the world a crowd of
children without knowing why, and then will die. An absurd life!'
"I must say that as a rule I was a great hand at combining my lofty
ideas with the lowest prose.
"Thoughts of the darkness of the grave did not prevent me from giving
busts and legs their full due. Our dear Baron's exalted ideas do not
prevent him from going on Saturdays to Vukolovka on amatory expeditions.
To tell the honest truth, as far as I remember, my attitude to women was
most insulting. Now, when I think of that high-school girl, I blush for
my thoughts then, but at the time my conscience was perfectly
untroubled. I, the son of honourable parents, a Christian, who had
received a superior education, not naturally wicked or stupid, felt not
the slightest uneasiness when I paid women Blutgeld, as the Germans call
it, or when I followed high-school girls with insulting looks. . . . The
trouble is that youth makes its demands, and our philosophy has nothing
in principle against those demands, whether they are good or whether
they are loathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death
inevitable is not interested in the struggle against nature or the
conception of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will
die and rot just the same. . . . Secondly, my friends, our philosophy
instils even into very young people what is called reasonableness. The
predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst us.
Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty analysis.
Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold people--it's no
use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity. That virtue is only known
to those who are warm, affectionate, and capable of love. Thirdly, our
philosophy denies the significance of each individual personality. It's
easy to see that if I deny the personality of some Natalya Stepanovna,
it's absolutely nothing to me whether she is insulted or not. To-day one
insults her dignity as a human being and pays her Blutgeld, and next day
thinks no more of her.
"So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Another
woman's figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her head
uncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walked along
the avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking hold of the
parapet, looked indifferently below and into the distance over the sea.
As she came in she paid no attention to me, as though she did not notice
me. I scrutinised her from foot to head (not from head to foot, as one
scrutinises men) and found that she was young, not more than five-and-
twenty, nice-looking, with a good figure, in all probability married and
belonging to the class of respectable women. She was dressed as though
she were at home, but fashionably and with taste, as ladies are, as a
rule, in N.
"'This one would do nicely,' I thought, looking at her handsome figure
and her arms; 'she is all right. . . . She is probably the wife of some
doctor or schoolmaster. . . .'
"But to make up to her--that is, to make her the heroine of one of those
impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone--was not easy and,
indeed, hardly possible. I felt that as I gazed at her face. The way she
looked, and the expression of her face, suggested that the sea, the
smoke in the distance, and the sky had bored her long, long ago, and
wearied her sight. She seemed to be tired, bored, and thinking about
something dreary, and her face had not even that fussy, affectedly
indifferent expression which one sees in the face of almost every woman
when she is conscious of the presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.
"The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, sat down on
a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw that she had no
thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance, did not
arouse in her even simple curiosity. But yet I made up my mind to speak
to her, and asked: 'Madam, allow me to ask you at what time do the
waggonettes go from here to the town?'
"'At ten or eleven, I believe. . . .'"
"I thanked her. She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly there was
a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on her passionless
face. . . . I made haste to assume an indifferent expression and to fall
into a suitable attitude; she was catching on! She suddenly jumped up
from the seat, as though something had bitten her, and examining me
hurriedly, with a gentle smile, asked timidly:
"'Oh, aren't you Ananyev?'
"'Yes, I am Ananyev,' I answered.
"'And don't you recognise me? No?'
"I was a little confused. I looked intently at her, and--would you
believe it?--I recognised her not from her face nor her figure, but from
her gentle, weary smile. It was Natalya Stepanovna, or, as she was
called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head over ears in love with
seven or eight years before, when I was wearing the uniform of a high-
school boy. The doings of far, vanished days, the days of long ago. . .
. I remember this Kisotchka, a thin little high-school girl of fifteen
or sixteen, when she was something just for a schoolboy's taste, created
by nature especially for Platonic love. What a charming little girl she
was! Pale, fragile, light--she looked as though a breath would send her
flying like a feather to the skies--a gentle, perplexed face, little
hands, soft long hair to her belt, a waist as thin as a
wasp's--altogether something ethereal, transparent like moonlight--in
fact, from the point of view of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . .
. Wasn't I in love with her! I did not sleep at night. I wrote verses. .
. . Sometimes in the evenings she would sit on a seat in the park while
we schoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently; in response to our
compliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would shrink nervously
from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile gently, and at such
times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten. As we gazed at her
every one of us had a desire to caress her and stroke her like a cat,
hence her nickname of Kisotchka.
"In the course of the seven or eight years since we had met, Kisotchka
had greatly changed. She had grown more robust and stouter, and had
quite lost the resemblance to a soft, fluffy kitten. It was not that her
features looked old or faded, but they had somehow lost their brilliance
and looked sterner, her hair seemed shorter, she looked taller, and her
shoulders were quite twice as broad, and what was most striking, there
was already in her face the expression of motherliness and resignation
commonly seen in respectable women of her age, and this, of course, I
had never seen in her before. . . . In short, of the school-girlish and
the Platonic her face had kept the gentle smile and nothing more. . . .
"We got into conversation. Learning that I was already an engineer,
Kisotchka was immensely delighted.
"'How good that is!' she said, looking joyfully into my face. 'Ah, how
good! And how splendid you all are! Of all who left with you, not one
has been a failure--they have all turned out well. One an engineer,
another a doctor, a third a teacher, another, they say, is a celebrated
singer in Petersburg. . . . You are all splendid, all of you. . . . Ah,
how good that is!'
"Kisotchka's eyes shone with genuine goodwill and gladness. She was
admiring me like an elder sister or a former governess. 'While I looked
at her sweet face and thought, It wouldn't be bad to get hold of her to-
day!'
"'Do you remember, Natalya Stepanovna,' I asked her, 'how I once brought
you in the park a bouquet with a note in it? You read my note, and such
a look of bewilderment came into your face. . . .'
"'No, I don't remember that,' she said, laughing. 'But I remember how
you wanted to challenge Florens to a duel over me. . . .'
"'Well, would you believe it, I don't remember that. . . .'
"'Well, that's all over and done with . . .' sighed Kisotchka. 'At one
time I was your idol, and now it is my turn to look up to all of you. .
. .'
"From further conversation I learned that two years after leaving the
high school, Kisotchka had been married to a resident in the town who
was half Greek, half Russian, had a post either in the bank or in the
insurance society, and also carried on a trade in corn. He had a strange
surname, something in the style of Populaki or Skarandopulo. . . .
Goodness only knows--I have forgotten. . . . As a matter of fact,
Kisotchka spoke little and with reluctance about herself. The
conversation was only about me. She asked me about the College of
Engineering, about my comrades, about Petersburg, about my plans, and
everything I said moved her to eager delight and exclamations of, 'Oh,
how good that is!'
"We went down to the sea and walked over the sands; then when the night
air began to blow chill and damp from the sea we climbed up again. All
the while our talk was of me and of the past. We walked about until the
reflection of the sunset had died away from the windows of the summer
villas.
"'Come in and have some tea,' Kisotchka suggested. 'The samovar must
have been on the table long ago. . . . I am alone at home,' she said, as
her villa came into sight through the green of the acacias. 'My husband
is always in the town and only comes home at night, and not always then,
and I must own that I am so dull that it's simply deadly.'
"I followed her in, admiring her back and shoulders. I was glad that she
was married. Married women are better material for temporary love
affairs than girls. I was also pleased that her husband was not at home.
At the same time I felt that the affair would not come off. . . .
"We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low ceilings,
and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians like having
at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniture which they
are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), but from certain
details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husband were not badly
off, and must be spending five or six thousand roubles a year. I
remember that in the middle of the room which Kisotchka called the
dining-room there was a round table, supported for some reason on six
legs, and on it a samovar and cups. At the edge of the table lay an open
book, a pencil, and an exercise book. I glanced at the book and
recognised it as 'Malinin and Burenin's Arithmetical Examples.' It was
open, as I now remember, at the 'Rules of Compound Interest.'
"'To whom are you giving lessons?' I asked Kisotchka.
"'Nobody,' she answered. 'I am just doing some. . . . I have nothing to
do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums.'
"'Have you any children?'
"'I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.'
"We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good it
was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success. And the
more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the stronger was my
conviction that I should go away without having gained my object. I was
a connoisseur in love affairs in those days, and could accurately gauge
my chances of success. You can boldly reckon on success if you are
tracking down a fool or a woman as much on the look out for new
experiences and sensations as yourself, or an adventuress to whom you
are a stranger. If you come across a sensible and serious woman, whose
face has an expression of weary submission and goodwill, who is
genuinely delighted at your presence, and, above all, respects you, you
may as well turn back. To succeed in that case needs longer than one
day.
"And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by day.
She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me too, and the
surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not at home, no servants
visible, stillness around. . . . Though I had little confidence in
success, I made up my mind to begin the attack anyway. First of all it
was necessary to get into a familiar tone and to change Kisotchka's
lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous one.
"'Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,' I began. 'Let us
talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the sake of old
times, to call you Kisotchka.'
"She allowed me.
"'Tell me, please, Kisotchka,' I went on, 'what is the matter with all
the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days they were all
so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asks about anyone,
one is told such things that one is quite shocked at human nature. . . .
One young lady has eloped with an officer; another has run away and
carried off a high-school boy with her; another--a married woman--has run
away from her husband with an actor; a fourth has left her husband and
gone off with an officer, and so on and so on. It's a regular epidemic!
If it goes on like this there won't be a girl or a young woman left in
your town!'
"I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in response
I should have gone on in this style: 'You had better look out,
Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!' She would
have dropped her eyes and said: 'As though anyone would care to carry me
off; there are plenty younger and better looking . . . .' And I should
have said: 'Nonsense, Kisotchka--I for one should be delighted!' And so
on in that style, and it would all have gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka
did not laugh in response; on the contrary, she looked grave and sighed.
"'All you have been told is true,' she said. 'My cousin Sonya ran away
from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is wrong. . . . Everyone
ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but I do not condemn
them or blame them. . . . Circumstances are sometimes too strong for
anyone!'
"'That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce a regular
epidemic?'
"'It's very simple and easy to understand,' replied Kisotchka, raising
her eyebrows. 'There is absolutely nothing for us educated girls and
women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to go to the
University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact, as men do.
They have to be married. . . . And whom would you have them marry? You
boys leave the high-school and go away to the University, never to
return to your native town again, and you marry in Petersburg or Moscow,
while the girls remain. . . . To whom are they to be married? Why, in
the absence of decent cultured men, goodness knows what sort of men they
marry--stockbrokers and such people of all kinds, who can do nothing but
drink and get into rows at the club. . . . A girl married like that, at
random. . . . And what is her life like afterwards? You can understand:
a well-educated, cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if
she meets a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor--well, she
gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs away
from her husband. And one can't condemn her!'
"'If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?' I asked.
"'Yes, of course,' said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know every girl
fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogether life
is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is stifling
for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here they laugh at
Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if they could see into
her soul they would not laugh. . . .'"
Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one, then
howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the wall of the
hut. . . . Ananyev's face was puckered with pity; he broke off his story
and went out. For two minutes he could be heard outside comforting his
dog. "Good dog! poor dog!"
"Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking," said Von Schtenberg,
laughing. "He is a good fellow," he added after a brief silence.
Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling
and stroking his chest, went on:
"And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put off
my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned myself to my
failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is more, under the
influence of Kisotchka's voice, the evening air, and the stillness, I
gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental mood. I remember I sat in
an easy chair by the wide-open window and glanced at the trees and
darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias and the lime trees were just
the same as they had been eight years before; just as then, in the days
of my childhood, somewhere far away there was the tinkling of a wretched
piano, and the public had just the same habit of sauntering to and fro
along the avenues, but the people were not the same. Along the avenues
there walked now not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration,
but schoolboys and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt
melancholy. When to my inquiries about acquaintances I five times
received from Kisotchka the answer, 'He is dead,' my melancholy changed
into the feeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And
sitting there at the window, looking at the promenading public and
listening to the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first
time in my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replace
another, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eight
years may have in a man's life!
"Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off, grew
sentimental, and began telling a long story about something or other.
Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness. And time
passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of the acacias and
lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer walking up and down
the avenues, the piano was silent and the only sound was the even murmur
of the sea.
"Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make much of
him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractive and
he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talk and talk
and talk. . . . His hosts cannot keep their eyes open, it's past their
bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That was what I did. Once I
chanced to look at the clock; it was half-past ten. I began saying good-
bye.
"'Have another glass before your walk,' said Kisotchka.
"I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot it was
time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men's voices,
footsteps and the clank of spurs.
"'I think my husband has come in . . . .' said Kisotchka listening.
"The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I saw two
men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout, solid,
dark man with a hooked nose, wearing a straw hat, and the other a young
officer in a white tunic. As they passed the door they both glanced
casually and indifferently at Kisotchka and me, and I fancied both of
them were drunk.
"'She told you a lie then, and you believed her!' we heard a loud voice
with a marked nasal twang say a minute later. 'To begin with, it wasn't
at the big club but at the little one.'
"'You are angry, Jupiter, so you are wrong . . . .' said another voice,
obviously the officer's, laughing and coughing. 'I say, can I stay the
night? Tell me honestly, shall I be in your way?'
"'What a question! Not only you can, but you must. What will you have,
beer or wine?'
"They were sitting two rooms away from us, talking loudly, and
apparently feeling no interest in Kisotchka or her visitor. A
perceptible change came over Kisotchka on her husband's arrival. At
first she flushed red, then her face wore a timid, guilty expression;
she seemed to be troubled by some anxiety, and I began to fancy that she
was ashamed to show me her husband and wanted me to go.
"I began taking leave. Kisotchka saw me to the front door. I remember
well her gentle mournful smile and kind patient eyes as she pressed my
hand and said:
"'Most likely we shall never see each other again. Well, God give you
every blessing. Thank you!'
"Not one sigh, not one fine phrase. As she said good-bye she was holding
the candle in her hand; patches of light danced over her face and neck,
as though chasing her mournful smile. I pictured to myself the old
Kisotchka whom one used to want to stroke like a cat, I looked intently
at the present Kisotchka, and for some reason recalled her words:
'Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him.' And I had a
pang at my heart. I instinctively guessed how it was, and my conscience
whispered to me that I, in my happiness and indifference, was face to
face with a good, warm-hearted, loving creature, who was broken by
suffering.
"I said good-bye and went to the gate. By now it was quite dark. In the
south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets dark rapidly.
Towards ten o'clock it is so dark that you can't see an inch before your
nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before, almost groping, I
found my way to the gate.