it had not noticed Goussiev, it swam up under him, and he rolled over on
its back; it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm,
translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with its two rows of
teeth. The pilot-fish were wildly excited; they stopped to see what was
going to happen. The shark played with the body, then slowly opened its
mouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the sail-cloth was ripped
open from head to foot; one of the bars fell out, frightening the pilot-
fish and striking the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom.
And above the surface, the clouds were huddling up about the setting
sun; one cloud was like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, another
like a pair of scissors.... From behind the clouds came a broad green
ray reaching up to the very middle of the sky; a little later a violet
ray was flung alongside this, and then others gold and pink.... The sky
was soft and lilac, pale and tender. At first beneath the lovely,
glorious sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took on
colour--sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost impossible to name in
human language. MY LIFE
THE STORY OF A PROVINCIAL
THE director said to me: "I only keep you out of respect for your worthy
father, or you would have gone long since." I replied: "You flatter me,
your Excellency, but I suppose I am in a position to go." And then I
heard him saying: "Take the fellow away, he is getting on my nerves."
Two days later I was dismissed. Ever since I had been grown up, to the
great sorrow of my father, the municipal architect, I had changed my
position nine times, going from one department to another, but all the
departments were as like each other as drops of water; I had to sit and
write, listen to inane and rude remarks, and just wait until I was
dismissed.
When I told my father, he was sitting back in his chair with his eyes
shut. His thin, dry face, with a dove-coloured tinge where he shaved
(his face was like that of an old Catholic organist), wore an expression
of meek submission. Without answering my greeting or opening his eyes,
he said:
"If my dear wife, your mother, were alive, your life would be a constant
grief to her. I can see the hand of Providence in her untimely death.
Tell me, you unhappy boy," he went on, opening his eyes, "what am I to
do with you?"
When I was younger my relations and friends knew what to do with me;
some advised me to go into the army as a volunteer, others were for
pharmacy, others for the telegraph service; but now that I was twenty-
four and was going grey at the temples and had already tried the army
and pharmacy and the telegraph service, and every possibility seemed to
be exhausted, they gave me no more advice, but only sighed and shook
their heads.
"What do you think of yourself?" my father went on. "At your age other
young men have a good social position, and just look at yourself: a lazy
lout, a beggar, living on your father!"
And, as usual, he went on to say that young men were going to the dogs
through want of faith, materialism, and conceit, and that amateur
theatricals should be prohibited because they seduce young people from
religion and their duty.
"To-morrow we will go together, and you shall apologise to the director
and promise to do your work conscientiously," he concluded. "You must
not be without a position in society for a single day."
"Please listen to me," said I firmly, though I did not anticipate
gaining anything by speaking. "What you call a position in society is
the privilege of capital and education. But people who are poor and
uneducated have to earn their living by hard physical labour, and I see
no reason why I should be an exception."
"It is foolish and trivial of you to talk of physical labour," said my
father with some irritation. "Do try to understand, you idiot, and get
it into your brainless head, that in addition to physical strength you
have a divine spirit; a sacred fire, by which you are distinguished from
an ass or a reptile and bringing you nigh to God. This sacred fire has
been kept alight for thousands of years by the best of mankind. Your
great-grandfather, General Pologniev, fought at Borodino; your
grandfather was a poet, an orator, and a marshal of the nobility; your
uncle was an educationalist; and I, your father, am an architect! Have
all the Polognievs kept the sacred fire alight for you to put it out?"
"There must be justice," said I. "Millions of people have to do manual
labour."
"Let them. They can do nothing else! Even a fool or a criminal can do
manual labour. It is the mark of a slave and a barbarian, whereas the
sacred fire is given only to a few!"
It was useless to go on with the conversation. My father worshipped
himself and would not be convinced by anything unless he said it
himself. Besides, I knew quite well that the annoyance with which he
spoke of unskilled labour came not so much from any regard for the
sacred fire, as from a secret fear that I should become a working man
and the talk of the town. But the chief thing was that all my
schoolfellows had long ago gone through the University and were making
careers for themselves, and the son of the director of the State Bank
was already a collegiate assessor, while I, an only son, was nothing! It
was useless and unpleasant to go on with the conversation, but I still
sat there and raised objections in the hope of making myself understood.
The problem was simple and clear: how was I to earn my living? But he
could not see its simplicity and kept on talking with sugary rounded
phrases about Borodino and the sacred fire, and my uncle, and the
forgotten poet who wrote bad, insincere verses, and he called me a
brainless fool. But how I longed to be understood! In spite of
everything, I loved my father and my sister, and from boyhood I have had
a habit of considering them, so strongly rooted that I shall probably
never get rid of it; whether I am right or wrong I am always afraid of
hurting them, and go in terror lest my father's thin neck should go red
with anger and he should have an apoplectic fit.
"It is shameful and degrading for a man of my age to sit in a stuffy
room and compete with a typewriting-machine," I said. "What has that to
do with the sacred fire?"
"Still, it is intellectual work," said my father. "But that's enough.
Let us drop the conversation and I warn you that if you refuse to return
to your office and indulge your contemptible inclinations, then you will
lose my love and your sister's. I shall cut you out of my will--that I
swear, by God!"
With perfect sincerity, in order to show the purity of my motives, by
which I hope to be guided all through my life, I said:
"The matter of inheritance does not strike me as important. I renounce
any rights I may have."
For some unexpected reason these words greatly offended my father. He
went purple in the face.
"How dare you talk to me like that, you fool!" he cried to me in a thin,
shrill voice. "You scoundrel!" And he struck me quickly and dexterously
with a familiar movement; once--twice. "You forget yourself!"
When I was a boy and my father struck me, I used to stand bolt upright
like a soldier and look him straight in the face; and, exactly as if I
were still a boy, I stood erect, and tried to look into his eyes. My
father was old and very thin, but his spare muscles must have been as
strong as whip-cord, for he hit very hard.
I returned to the hall, but there he seized his umbrella and struck me
several times over the head and shoulders; at that moment my sister
opened the drawing-room door to see what the noise was, but immediately
drew back with an expression of pity and horror, and said not one word
in my defence.
My intention not to return to the office, but to start a new working
life, was unshakable. It only remained to choose the kind of work--and
there seemed to be no great difficulty about that, because I was strong,
patient, and willing. I was prepared to face a monotonous, laborious
life, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough surroundings, always
overshadowed with the thought of finding a job and a living. And--who
knows--returning from work in the Great Gentry Street, I might often envy
Dolyhikov, the engineer, who lives by intellectual work, but I was happy
in thinking of my coming troubles. I used to dream of intellectual
activity, and to imagine myself a teacher, a doctor, a writer, but my
dreams remained only dreams. A liking for intellectual pleasures--like
the theatre and reading--grew into a passion with me, but I did not know
whether I had any capacity for intellectual work. At school I had an
unconquerable aversion for the Greek language, so that I had to leave
when I was in the fourth class. Teachers were got to coach me up for the
fifth class, and then I went into various departments, spending most of
my time in perfect idleness, and this, I was told, was intellectual
work.
My activity in the education department or in the municipal office
required neither mental effort, nor talent, nor personal ability, nor
creative spiritual impulse; it was purely mechanical, and such
intellectual work seemed to me lower than manual labour. I despise it
and I do not think that it for a moment justifies an idle, careless
life, because it is nothing but a swindle, and only a kind of idleness.
In all probability I have never known real intellectual work.
It was evening. We lived in Great Gentry Street--the chief street in the
town--and our rank and fashion walked up and down it in the evenings, as
there were no public gardens. The street was very charming, and was
almost as good as a garden, for it had two rows of poplar-trees, which
smelt very sweet, especially after rain, and acacias, and tall trees,
and apple-trees hung over the fences and hedges. May evenings, the scent
of the lilac, the hum of the cockchafers, the warm, still air--how new
and extraordinary it all is, though spring comes every year! I stood by
the gate and looked at the passers-by. With most of them I had grown up
and had played with them, but now my presence might upset them, because
I was poorly dressed, in unfashionable clothes, and people made fun of
my very narrow trousers and large, clumsy boots, and called them
macaroni-on-steamboats. And I had a bad reputation in the town because I
had no position and went to play billiards in low caf?, and had once
been taken up, for no particular offence, by the political police.
In a large house opposite, Dolyhikov's, the engineer's, some one was
playing the piano. It was beginning to get dark and the stars were
beginning to shine. And slowly, answering people's salutes, my father
passed with my sister on his arm. He was wearing an old top hat with a
broad curly brim.
"Look!" he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the very umbrella
with which he had just struck me. "Look at the sky! Even the smallest
stars are worlds! How insignificant man is in comparison with the
universe."
And he said this in a tone that seemed to convey that he found it
extremely flattering and pleasant to be so insignificant. What an
untalented man he was! Unfortunately, he was the only architect in the
town, and during the last fifteen or twenty years I could not remember
one decent house being built. When he had to design a house, as a rule
he would draw first the hall and the drawing-room; as in olden days
schoolgirls could only begin to dance by the fireplace, so his artistic
ideas could only evolve from the hall and drawing-room. To them he would
add the dining-room, nursery, study, connecting them with doors, so that
in the end they were just so many passages, and each room had two or
three doors too many. His houses were obscure, extremely confused, and
limited. Every time, as though he felt something was missing, he had
recourse to various additions, plastering them one on top of the other,
and there would be various lobbies, and passages, and crooked staircases
leading to the entresol, where it was only possible to stand in a
stooping position, and where instead of a floor there would be a thin
flight of stairs like a Russian bath, and the kitchen would always be
under the house with a vaulted ceiling and a brick floor. The front of
his houses always had a hard, stubborn expression, with stiff, French
lines, low, squat roofs, and fat, pudding-like chimneys surmounted with
black cowls and squeaking weathercocks. And somehow all the houses built
by my father were like each other, and vaguely reminded me of a top hat,
and the stiff, obstinate back of his head. In the course of time the
people of the town grew used to my father's lack of talent, which took
root and became our style.
My father introduced the style into my sister's life. To begin with, he
gave her the name of Cleopatra (and he called me Misail). When she was a
little girl he used to frighten her by telling her about the stars and
our ancestors; and explained the nature of life and duty to her at great
length; and now when she was twenty-six he went on in the same way,
allowing her to take no one's arm but his own, and somehow imagining
that sooner or later an ardent young man would turn up and wish to enter
into marriage with her out of admiration for his qualities. And she
adored my father, was afraid of him, and believed in his extraordinary
intellectual powers.
It got quite dark and the street grew gradually empty. In the house
opposite the music stopped. The gate was wide open and out into the
street, careering with all its bells jingling, came a troika. It was the
engineer and his daughter going for a drive. Time to go to bed!
I had a room in the house, but I lived in the courtyard in a hut, under
the same roof as the coach-house, which had been built probably as a
harness-room--for there were big nails in the walls--but now it was not
used, and my father for thirty years had kept his newspapers there,
which for some reason he had bound half-yearly and then allowed no one
to touch. Living there I was less in touch with my father and his
guests, and I used to think that if I did not live in a proper room and
did not go to the house every day for meals, my father's reproach that I
was living on him lost some of its sting.
My sister was waiting for me. She had brought me supper unknown to my
father; a small piece of cold veal and a slice of bread. In the family
there were sayings: "Money loves an account," or "A copeck saves a
rouble," and so on, and my sister, impressed by such wisdom, did her
best to cut down expenses and made us feed rather meagrely. She put the
plate on the table, sat on my bed, and began to cry.
"Misail," she said, "what are you doing to us?"
She did not cover her face, her tears ran down her cheeks and hands, and
her expression was sorrowful. She fell on the pillow, gave way to her
tears, trembling all over and sobbing.
"You have left your work again!" she said. "How awful!"
"Do try to understand, sister!" I said, and because she cried I was
filled with despair.
As though it were deliberately arranged, the paraffin in my little lamp
ran out, and the lamp smoked and guttered, and the old hooks in the wall
looked terrible and their shadows flickered.
"Spare us!" said my sister, rising up. "Father is in an awful state, and
I am ill. I shall go mad. What will become of you?" she asked, sobbing
and holding out her hands to me. "I ask you, I implore you, in the name
of our dear mother, to go back to your work."
"I cannot, Cleopatra," I said, feeling that only a little more would
make me give in. "I cannot."
"Why?" insisted my sister, "why? If you have not made it up with your
chief, look for another place. For instance, why shouldn't you work on
the railway? I have just spoken to Aniuta Blagovo, and she assures me
you would be taken on, and she even promised to do what she could for
you. For goodness sake, Misail, think! Think it over, I implore you!"
We talked a little longer and I gave in. I said that the thought of
working on the railway had never come into my head, and that I was ready
to try.
She smiled happily through her tears and clasped my hand, and still she
cried, because she could not stop, and I went into the kitchen for
paraffin.
II
Among the supporters of amateur theatricals, charity concerts, and
tableaux vivants the leaders were the Azhoguins, who lived in their own
house in Great Gentry house the Street. They used to lend their house
and assume the necessary trouble and expense. They were a rich
landowning family, and had about three thousand urskins, with a
magnificent farm in the neighbourhood, but they did not care for village
life and lived in the town summer and winter. The family consisted of a
mother, a tall, spare, delicate lady, who had short hair, wore a blouse
and a plain skirt ? l'Anglais, and three daughters, who were spoken of,
not by their names, but as the eldest, the middle, and the youngest;
they all had ugly, sharp chins, and they were short-sighted, high-
shouldered, dressed in the same style as their mother, had an unpleasant
lisp, and yet they always took part in every play and were always doing
something for charity--acting, reciting, singing. They were very serious
and never smiled, and even in burlesque operettas they acted without
gaiety and with a businesslike air, as though they were engaged in
bookkeeping.
I loved our plays, especially the rehearsals, which were frequent,
rather absurd, and noisy, and we were always given supper after them. I
had no part in the selection of the pieces and the casting of the
characters. I had to look after the stage. I used to design the scenery
and copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to look
after the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale,
and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, and
during rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkened
wings and shyly say nothing.
I used to paint the scenery in the Azhoguins' coach-house or yard. I was
assisted by a house-painter, or, as he called himself, a decorating
contractor, named Andrey Ivanov, a man of about fifty, tall and very
thin and pale, with a narrow chest, hollow temples, and dark rings under
his eyes, he was rather awful to look at. He had some kind of wasting
disease, and every spring and autumn he was said to be on the point of
death, but he would go to bed for a while and then get up and say with
surprise: "I'm not dead this time!"
In the town he was called Radish, and people said it was his real name.
He loved the theatre as much as I, and no sooner did he hear that a play
was in hand than he gave up all his work and went to the Azhoguins' to
paint scenery.
The day after my conversation with my sister I worked from morning till
night at the Azhoguins'. The rehearsal was fixed for seven o'clock, and
an hour before it began all the players were assembled, and the eldest,
the middle, and the youngest Miss Azhoguin were reading their parts on
the stage. Radish, in a long, brown overcoat with a scarf wound round
his neck, was standing, leaning with his head against the wall, looking
at the stage with a rapt expression. Mrs. Azhoguin went from guest to
guest saying something pleasant to every one. She had a way of gazing
into one's face and speaking in a hushed voice as though she were
telling a secret.
"It must be difficult to paint scenery," she said softly, coming up to
me. "I was just talking to Mrs. Mufke about prejudice when I saw you
come in. Mon Dieu! All my life I have struggled against prejudice. To
convince the servants that all their superstitions are nonsense I always
light three candles, and I begin all my important business on the
thirteenth."
The daughter of Dolyhikov, the engineer, was there, a handsome, plump,
fair girl, dressed, as people said in our town, in Parisian style. She
did not act, but at rehearsals a chair was put for her on the stage, and
the plays did not begin until she appeared in the front row, to astonish
everybody with the brilliance of her clothes. As coming from the
metropolis, she was allowed to make remarks during rehearsals, and she
did so with an affable, condescending smile, and it was clear that she
regarded our plays as a childish amusement. It was said that she had
studied singing at the Petersburg conservatoire and had sung for a
winter season in opera. I liked her very much, and during rehearsals or
the performance, I never took my eyes off her.
I had taken the book and began to prompt when suddenly my sister
appeared. Without taking off her coat and hat she came up to me and
said:
"Please come!"
I went. Behind the stage in the doorway stood Aniuta Blagovo, also
wearing a hat with a dark veil. She was the daughter of the vice-
president of the Court, who had been appointed to our town years ago,
almost as soon as the High Court was established. She was tall and had a
good figure, and was considered indispensable for the tableaux vivants,
and when she represented a fairy or a muse, her face would burn with
shame; but she took no part in the plays, and would only look in at
rehearsals, on some business, and never enter the hall. And it was
evident now that she had only looked in for a moment.
"My father has mentioned you," she said drily, not looking at me and
blushing.... "Dolyhikov has promised to find you something to do on the
railway. If you go to his house to-morrow, he will see you."
I bowed and thanked her for her kindness.
"And you must leave this," she said, pointing to my book.
She and my sister went up to Mrs. Azhoguin and began to whisper, looking
at me.
"Indeed," said Mrs. Azhoguin, coming up to me, and gazing into my face.
"Indeed, if it takes you from your more serious business"--she took the
book out of my hands--"then you must hand it over to some one else. Don't
worry, my friend. It will be all right."
I said good-bye and left in some confusion. As I went down-stairs I saw
my sister and Aniuta Blagovo going away; they were talking animatedly, I
suppose about my going on the railway, and they hurried away. My sister
had never been to a rehearsal before, and she was probably tortured by
her conscience and by her fear of my father finding out that she had
been to the Azhoguins' without permission.
The next day I went to see Dolyhikov at one o'clock. The man servant
showed me into a charming room, which was the engineer's drawing-room
and study. Everything in it was charming and tasteful, and to a man like
myself, unused to such things, very strange. Costly carpets, huge
chairs, bronzes, pictures in gold and velvet frames; photographs on the
walls of beautiful women, clever, handsome faces, and striking
attitudes; from the drawing-room a door led straight into the garden, by
a veranda, and I saw lilac and a table laid for breakfast, rolls, and a
bunch of roses; and there was a smell of spring, and good cigars, and
happiness--and everything seemed to say, here lives a man who has worked
and won the highest happiness here on earth. At the table the engineer's
daughter was sitting reading a newspaper.
"Do you want my father?" she asked. "He is having a shower-bath. He will
be down presently. Please take a chair."
I sat down.
"I believe you live opposite?" she asked after a short silence.
"Yes."
"When I have nothing to do I look out of the window. You must excuse
me," she added, turning to her newspaper, "and I often see you and your
sister. She has such a kind, wistful expression."
Dolyhikov came in. He was wiping his neck with a towel.
"Papa, this is Mr. Pologniev," said his daughter.
"Yes, yes. Blagovo spoke to me." He turned quickly to me, but did not
hold out his hand. "But what do you think I can give you? I'm not
bursting with situations. You are queer people!" he went on in a loud
voice and as though he were scolding me. "I get about twenty people
every day, as though I were a Department of State. I run a railway, sir.
I employ hard labour; I need mechanics, navvies, joiners, well-sinkers,
and you can only sit and write. That's all! You are all clerks!"
And he exhaled the same air of happiness as his carpets and chairs. He
was stout, healthy, with red cheeks and a broad chest; he looked clean
in his pink shirt and wide trousers, just like a china figure of a post-
boy. He had a round, bristling beard--and not a single grey hair--and a
nose with a slight bridge, and bright, innocent, dark eyes.
"What can you do?" he went on. "Nothing! I am an engineer and well-to-
do, but before I was given this railway I worked very hard for a long
time. I was an engine-driver for two years, I worked in Belgium as an
ordinary lubricator. Now, my dear man, just think--what work can I offer
you?"
"I quite agree," said I, utterly abashed, not daring to meet his bright,
innocent eyes.
"Are you any good with the telegraph?" he asked after some thought.
"Yes. I have been in the telegraph service."