other things I wrote: "I used to talk fairly often to actors in the
past, men of the noblest character, who honoured me with their
friendship. From my conversations with them I understood that their
activities were guided rather by the whim and fashion of society than by
the free working of their own minds. The best of them in their lifetime
had to play in tragedy, in musical comedy, in French farce, and in
pantomime; yet all through they considered that they were treading the
right path and being useful. You see that this means that you must look
for the cause of the evil, not in the actors, but deeper down, in the
art itself and the attitude of society towards it." This letter of mine
only made Katy cross. "You and I are playing in different operas. I
didn't write to you about men of the noblest character, but about a lot
of sharks who haven't a spark of nobility in them. They are a horde of
savages who came on the stage only because they wouldn't be allowed
anywhere else. The only ground they have for calling themselves artists
is their impudence. Not a single talent among them, but any number of
incapables, drunkards, intriguers, and slanderers. I can't tell you how
bitterly I feel it that the art I love so much is fallen into the hands
of people I despise. It hurts me that the best men should be content to
look at evil from a distance and not want to come nearer. Instead of
taking an active part, they write ponderous platitudes and useless
sermons...." and more in the same strain.
A little while after I received the following: "I have been inhumanly
deceived. I can't go on living any more. Do as you think fit with my
money. I loved you as a father and as my only friend. Forgive me."
So it appeared that he too belonged to the horde of savages. Later on, I
gathered from various hints, that there was an attempt at suicide.
Apparently, Katy tried to poison herself. I think she must have been
seriously ill afterwards, for I got the following letter from Yalta,
where most probably the doctors had sent her. Her last letter to me
contained a request that I should send her at Yalta a thousand roubles,
and it ended with the words: "Forgive me for writing such a sad letter.
I buried my baby yesterday." After she had spent about a year in the
Crimea she returned home.
She had been travelling for about four years, and during these four
years I confess that I occupied a strange and unenviable position in
regard to her. When she announced to me that she was going on to the
stage and afterwards wrote to me about her love; when the desire to
spend took hold of her, as it did periodically, and I had to send her
every now and then one or two thousand roubles at her request; when she
wrote that she intended to die, and afterwards that her baby was dead,---
I was at a loss every time. All my sympathy with her fate consisted in
thinking hard and writing long tedious letters which might as well never
have been written. But then I was in loco parentis and I loved her as a
daughter.
Katy lives half a mile away from me now. She took a five-roomed house
and furnished it comfortably, with the taste that was born in her. If
anyone were to undertake to depict her surroundings, then the dominating
mood of the picture would be indolence. Soft cushions, soft chairs for
her indolent body; carpets for her indolent feet; faded, dim, dull
colours for her indolent eyes; for her indolent soul, a heap of cheap
fans and tiny pictures on the walls, pictures in which novelty of
execution was more noticeable than content; plenty of little tables and
stands, set out with perfectly useless and worthless things, shapeless
scraps instead of curtains.... All this, combined with a horror of
bright colours, of symmetry, and space, betokened a perversion of the
natural taste as well as indolence of the soul. For whole days Katy lies
on the sofa and reads books, mostly novels and stories. She goes outside
her house but once in the day, to come and see me.
I work. Katy sits on the sofa at my side. She is silent, and wraps
herself up in her shawl as though she were cold. Either because she is
sympathetic to me, or I because I had got used to her continual visits
while she was still a little girl, her presence does not prevent me from
concentrating on my work. At long intervals I ask her some question or
other, mechanically, and she answers very curtly; or, for a moment's
rest, I turn towards her and watch how she is absorbed in looking
through some medical review or newspaper. And then I see that the old
expression of confidence in her face is there no more. Her expression
now is cold, indifferent, distracted, like that of a passenger who has
to wait a long while for his train. She dresses as she used--well and
simply, but carelessly. Evidently her clothes and her hair suffer not a
little from the sofas and hammocks on which she lies for days together.
And she is not curious any more. She doesn't ask me questions any more,
as if she had experienced everything in life and did not expect to hear
anything new.
About four o'clock there is a sound of movement in the hall and the
drawing-room. It's Liza come back from the Conservatoire, bringing her
friends with her. You can hear them playing the piano, trying their
voices and giggling. Yegor is laying the table in the dining-room and
making a noise with the plates.
"Good-bye," says Katy. "I shan't go in to see your people. They must
excuse me. I haven't time. Come and see me."
When I escort her into the hall, she looks me over sternly from head to
foot, and says in vexation:
"You get thinner and thinner. Why don't you take a cure? I'll go to
Sergius Fiodorovich and ask him to come. You must let him see you."
"It's not necessary, Katy."
"I can't understand why your family does nothing. They're a nice lot."
She puts on her jacket with her rush. Inevitably, two or three hair-pins
fall out of her careless hair on to the floor. It's too much bother to
tidy her hair now; besides she is in a hurry. She pushes the straggling
strands of hair untidily under her hat and goes away.
As soon as I come into the dining-room, my wife asks:
"Was that Katy with you just now? Why didn't she come to see us. It
really is extraordinary...."
"Mamma!" says Liza reproachfully, "If she doesn't want to come, that's
her affair. There's no need for us to go on our knees."
"Very well; but it's insulting. To sit in the study for three hours,
without thinking of us. But she can do as she likes."
Varya and Liza both hate Katy. This hatred is unintelligible to me;
probably you have to be a woman to understand it. I'll bet my life on it
that you'll hardly find a single one among the hundred and fifty young
men I see almost every day in my audience, or the hundred old ones I
happen to meet every week, who would be able to understand why women
hate and abhor Katy's past, her being pregnant and unmarried and her
illegitimate child. Yet at the same time I cannot bring to mind a single
woman or girl of my acquaintance who would not cherish such feelings,
either consciously or instinctively. And it's not because women are
purer and more virtuous than men. If virtue and purity are not free from
evil feeling, there's precious little difference between them and vice.
I explain it simply by the backward state of women's development. The
sorrowful sense of compassion and the torment of conscience, which the
modern man experiences when he sees distress have much more to tell me
about culture and moral development than have hatred and repulsion. The
modern woman is as lachrymose and as coarse in heart as she was in the
middle ages. And in my opinion those who advise her to be educated like
a man have wisdom on their side.
But still my wife does not like Katy, because she was an actress, and
for her ingratitude, her pride, her extravagances, and all the
innumerable vices one woman can always discover in another.
Besides myself and my family we have two or three of my daughter's girl
friends to dinner and Alexander Adolphovich Gnekker, Liza's admirer and
suitor. He is a fair young man, not more than thirty years old, of
middle height, very fat, broad shouldered, with reddish hair round his
ears and a little stained moustache, which give his smooth chubby face
the look of a doll's. He wears a very short jacket, a fancy waistcoat,
large-striped trousers, very full on the hip and very narrow in the leg,
and brown boots without heels. His eyes stick out like a lobster's, his
tie is like a lobster's tail, and I can't help thinking even that the
smell of lobster soup clings about the whole of this young man. He
visits us every day; but no one in the family knows where he comes from,
where he was educated, or how he lives. He cannot play or sing, but he
has a certain connection with music as well as singing, for he is agent
for somebody's pianos, and is often at the Academy. He knows all the
celebrities, and he manages concerts. He gives his opinion on music with
great authority and I have noticed that everybody hastens to agree with
him.
Rich men always have parasites about them. So do the sciences and the
arts. It seems that there is no science or art in existence, which is
free from such "foreign bodies" as this Mr. Gnekker. I am not a musician
and perhaps I am mistaken about Gnekker, besides I don't know him very
well. But I can't help suspecting the authority and dignity with which
he stands beside the piano and listens when anyone is singing or
playing.
You may be a gentleman and a privy councillor a hundred times over; but
if you have a daughter you can't be guaranteed against the pettinesses
that are so often brought into your house and into your own humour, by
courtings, engagements, and weddings. For instance, I cannot reconcile
myself to my wife's solemn expression every time Gnekker comes to our
house, nor to those bottles of Château Lafitte, port, and sherry which
are put on the table only for him, to convince him beyond doubt of the
generous luxury in which we live. Nor can I stomach the staccato
laughter which Liza learned at the Academy, and her way of screwing up
her eyes, when men are about the house. Above all, I can't understand
why it is that such a creature should come to me every day and have
dinner with me--a creature perfectly foreign to my habits, my science,
and the whole tenour of my life, a creature absolutely unlike the men I
love. My wife and the servants whisper mysteriously that that is "the
bridegroom," but still I can't understand why he's there. It disturbs my
mind just as much as if a Zulu were put next to me at table. Besides, it
seems strange to me that my daughter whom I used to think of as a baby
should be in love with that necktie, those eyes, those chubby cheeks.
Formerly, I either enjoyed my dinner or was indifferent about it. Now it
does nothing but bore and exasperate me. Since I was made an Excellency
and Dean of the Faculty, for some reason or other my family found it
necessary to make a thorough change in our menu and the dinner
arrangements. Instead of the simple food I was used to as a student and
a doctor, I am now fed on potage-puree, with some sossoulki swimming
about in it, and kidneys in Madeira. The title of General and my renown
have robbed me for ever of schi and savoury pies, and roast goose with
apple sauce, and bream with kasha. They robbed me as well of my maid
servant Agasha, a funny, talkative old woman, instead of whom I am now
waited on by Yegor, a stupid, conceited fellow who always has a white
glove in his right hand. The intervals between the courses are short,
but they seem terribly long. There is nothing to fill them. We don't
have any more of the old good-humour, the familiar conversations, the
jokes and the laughter; no more mutual endearments, or the gaiety that
used to animate my children, my wife, and myself when we met at the
dinner table. For a busy man like me dinner was a time to rest and meet
my friends, and a feast for my wife and children, not a very long feast,
to be sure, but a gay and happy one, for they knew that for half an hour
I did not belong to science and my students, but solely to them and to
no one else. No more chance of getting tipsy on a single glass of wine,
no more Agasha, no more bream with kasha, no more the old uproar to
welcome our little contretemps at dinner, when the cat fought the dog
under the table, or Katy's head-band fell down her cheek into her soup.
Our dinner nowadays is as nasty to describe as to eat. On my wife's face
there is pompousness, an assumed gravity, and the usual anxiety. She
eyes our plates nervously: "I see you don't like the meat?... Honestly,
don't you like it?" And I must answer, "Don't worry, my dear. The meat
is very good." She: "You're always taking my part, Nicolai Stiepanich.
You never tell the truth. Why has Alexander Adolphovich eaten so
little?" and the same sort of conversation for the whole of dinner. Liza
laughs staccato and screws up her eyes. I look at both of them, and at
this moment at dinner here I can see quite clearly that their inner
lives have slipped out of my observation long ago. I feel as though once
upon a time I lived at home with a real family, but now I am dining as a
guest with an unreal wife and looking at an unreal Liza. There has been
an utter change in both of them, while I have lost sight of the long
process that led up to the change. No wonder I don't understand
anything. What was the reason of the change? I don't know. Perhaps the
only trouble is that God did not give my wife and daughter the strength
He gave me. From my childhood I have been accustomed to resist outside
influences and have been hardened enough. Such earthly catastrophes as
fame, being made General, the change from comfort to living above my
means, acquaintance with high society, have scarcely touched me. I have
survived safe and sound. But it all fell down like an avalanche on my
weak, unhardened wife and Liza, and crushed them.
Gnekker and the girls talk of fugues and counter-fugues; singers and
pianists, Bach and Brahms, and my wife, frightened of being suspected of
musical ignorance, smiles sympathetically and murmurs: "Wonderful.... Is
it possible?... Why?..." Gnekker eats steadily, jokes gravely, and
listens condescendingly to the ladies' remarks. Now and then he has the
desire to talk bad French, and then he finds it necessary for some
unknown reason to address me magnificently, "Votre Excellence."
And I am morose. Apparently I embarrass them all and they embarrass me.
I never had any intimate acquaintance with class antagonism before, but
now something of the kind torments me indeed. I try to find only bad
traits in Gnekker. It does not take long and then I am tormented because
one of my friends has not taken his place as bridegroom. In another way
too his presence has a bad effect upon me. Usually, when I am left alone
with myself or when I am in the company of people I love, I never think
of my merits; and if I begin to think about them they seem as trivial as
though I had become a scholar only yesterday. But in the presence of a
man like Gnekker my merits appear to me like an extremely high mountain,
whose summit is lost in the clouds, while Gnekkers move about the foot,
so small as hardly to be seen.
After dinner I go up to my study and light my little pipe, the only one
during the whole day, the sole survivor of my old habit of smoking from
morning to night. My wife comes into me while I am smoking and sits down
to speak to me. Just as in the morning, I know beforehand what the
conversation will be.
"We ought to talk seriously, Nicolai Stiepanovich," she begins. "I mean
about Liza. Why won't you attend?"
"Attend to what?"
"You pretend you don't notice anything. It's not right: It's not right
to be unconcerned. Gnekker has intentions about Liza. What do you say to
that?"
"I can't say he's a bad man, because I don't know him; but I've told you
a thousand times already that I don't like him."
"But that's impossible ... impossible...." She rises and walks about in
agitation.
"It's impossible to have such an attitude to a serious matter," she
says. "When our daughter's happiness is concerned, we must put
everything personal aside. I know you don't like him.... Very well....
But if we refuse him now and upset everything, how can you guarantee
that Liza won't have a grievance against us for the rest of her life?
Heaven knows there aren't many young men nowadays. It's quite likely
there won't be another chance. He loves Liza very much and she likes
him, evidently. Of course he hasn't a settled position. But what is
there to do? Please God, he'll get a position in time. He comes of a
good family, and he's rich."
"How did you find that out?"
"He said so himself. His father has a big house in Kharkov and an estate
outside. You must certainly go to Kharkov."
"Why?"
"You'll find out there. You have acquaintances among the professors
there. I'd go myself. But I'm a woman. I can't."
"I will not go to Kharkov," I say morosely.
My wife gets frightened; a tormented expression comes over her face.
"For God's sake, Nicolai Stiepanich," she implores, sobbing, "For God's
sake help me with this burden! It hurts me."
It is painful to look at her.
"Very well, Varya," I say kindly, "If you like--very well I'll go to
Kharkov, and do everything you want."
She puts her handkerchief to her eyes and goes to cry in her room. I am
left alone.
A little later they bring in the lamp. The familiar shadows that have
wearied me for years fall from the chairs and the lamp-shade on to the
walls and the floor. When I look at them it seems that it's night
already, and the cursed insomnia has begun. I lie down on the bed; then
I get up and walk about the room then lie down again. My nervous
excitement generally reaches its highest after dinner, before the
evening. For no reason I begin to cry and hide my head in the pillow.
All the while I am afraid somebody may come in; I am afraid I shall die
suddenly; I am ashamed of my tears; altogether, something intolerable is
happening in my soul. I feel I cannot look at the lamp or the books or
the shadows on the floor, or listen to the voices in the drawing-room
any more. Some invisible, mysterious force pushes me rudely out of my
house. I jump up, dress hurriedly, and go cautiously out into the street
so that the household shall not notice me. Where shall I go?
The answer to this question has long been there in my brain: "To Katy."
III
As usual she is lying on the Turkish divan or the couch and reading
something. Seeing me she lifts her head languidly, sits down, and gives
me her hand.
"You are always lying down like that," I say after a reposeful silence.
"It's unhealthy. You'd far better be doing something."
"Ah?"
"You'd far better be doing something, I say."
"What?... A woman can be either a simple worker or an actress."
"Well, then--if you can't become a worker, be an actress."
She is silent.
"You had better marry," I say, half-joking.
"There's no one to marry: and no use if I did."
"You can't go on living like this."
"Without a husband? As if that mattered. There are as many men as you
like, if you only had the will."
"This isn't right, Katy."
"What isn't right?"
"What you said just now."
Katy sees that I am chagrined, and desires to soften the bad impression.
"Come. Let's come here. Here."
She leads me into a small room, very cosy, and points to the writing
table.
"There. I made it for you. You'll work here. Come every day and bring
your work with you. They only disturb you there at home.... Will you
work here? Would you like to?"
In order not to hurt her by refusing, I answer that I shall work with
her and that I like the room immensely. Then we both sit down in the
cosy room and begin to talk.
The warmth, the cosy surroundings, the presence of a sympathetic being,
rouses in me now not a feeling of pleasure as it used but a strong
desire to complain and grumble. Anyhow it seems to me that if I moan and
complain I shall feel better.
"It's a bad business, my dear," I begin with a sigh. "Very bad."
"What is the matter?"
"I'll tell you what is the matter. The best and most sacred right of
kings is the right to pardon. And I have always felt myself a king so
long as I used this right prodigally. I never judged, I was
compassionate, I pardoned everyone right and left. Where others
protested and revolted I only advised and persuaded. All my life I've
tried to make my society tolerable to the family of students, friends
and servants. And this attitude of mine towards people, I know, educated
every one who came into contact with me. But now I am king no more.
There's something going on in me which belongs only to slaves. Day and
night evil thoughts roam about in my head, and feelings which I never
knew before have made their home in my soul. I hate and despise; I'm
exasperated, disturbed, and afraid. I've become strict beyond measure,
exacting, unkind, and suspicious. Even the things which in the past gave
me the chance of making an extra pun, now bring me a feeling of
oppression. My logic has changed too. I used to despise money alone; now
I cherish evil feelings, not to money, but to the rich, as if they were
guilty. I used to hate violence and arbitrariness; now I hate the people
who employ violence, as if they alone are to blame and not all of us,
who cannot educate one another. What does it all mean? If my new
thoughts and feelings come from a change of my convictions, where could
the change have come from? Has the world grown worse and I better, or
was I blind and indifferent before? But if the change is due to the
general decline of my physical and mental powers--I am sick and losing
weight every day--then I'm in a pitiable position. It means that my new
thoughts are abnormal and unhealthy, that I must be ashamed of them and
consider them valueless...."
"Sickness hasn't anything to do with it," Katy interrupts. "Your eyes
are opened--that's all. You've begun to notice things you didn't want to
notice before for some reason. My opinion is that you must break with
your family finally first of all and then go away."
"You're talking nonsense."
"You don't love them any more. Then, why do you behave unfairly? And is
it a family! Mere nobodies. If they died to-day, no one would notice
their absence to-morrow."
Katy despises my wife and daughter as much as they hate her. It's
scarcely possible nowadays to speak of the right of people to despise
one another. But if you accept Katy's point of view and own that such a
right exists, you will notice that she has the same right to despise my
wife and Liza as they have to hate her.
"Mere nobodies!" she repeats. "Did you have any dinner to-day? It's a
wonder they didn't forget to tell you dinner was ready. I don't know how
they still remember that you exist."
"Katy!" I say sternly. "Please be quiet."
"You don't think it's fun for me to talk about them, do you? I wish I
didn't know them at all. You listen to me, dear. Leave everything and go
away: go abroad--the quicker, the better."
"What nonsense! What about the University?"
"And the University, too. What is it to you? There's no sense in it all.
You've been lecturing for thirty years, and where are your pupils? Have
you many famous scholars? Count them up. But to increase the number of
doctors who exploit the general ignorance and make hundreds of
thousands,--there's no need to be a good and gifted man. You aren't
wanted."
"My God, how bitter you are!" I get terrified. "How bitter you are. Be
quiet, or I'll go away. I can't reply to the bitter things you say."
The maid enters and calls us to tea. Thank God, our conversation changes
round the samovar. I have made my moan, and now I want to indulge
another senile weakness--reminiscences. I tell Katy about my past, to my
great surprise with details that I never suspected I had kept safe in my
memory. And she listens to me with emotion, with pride, holding her
breath. I like particularly to tell how I once was a student at a
seminary and how I dreamed of entering the University.