humanity or the doctor's vocation. He thought for a while and said with
a sigh.
"Well, let us go!"
He went off quickly, with a step that was now sure, to his study and
soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced
impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied
him out of the house.
Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the hall. Now in the darkness
the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the
long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face
Aboguin's big face could now be seen and a little student's cap which
hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in
front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.
"Believe me, I'm able to appreciate your magnanimity," murmured Aboguin,
as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. "We'll whirl away.
Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!"
The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings,
which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save that
at the end of the yard a bright light from someone's window broke
through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the
separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove
into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the
whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began
to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they
knew that the doctor's son was dead and Aboguin's wife ill. Then began
to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big
black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now
the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it
became completely still.
Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once
Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured.
"It's terrible pain. One never loves his nearest so much as when there
is the risk of losing them."
And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov
gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him,
and he began to move impatiently.
"Let me go," he said in anguish. "I'll come to you later. I only want to
send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone."
Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattling against the
stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss
about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in the
scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank
disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth
and boundless as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim lights
were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel with the
road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on the hill a
big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a mist, and
surrounded with fine clouds which seemed to be gazing upon it from every
side, and guarding it, lest it should disappear.
In all nature one felt something hopeless and sick. Like a fallen woman
who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think of her past, the earth
languished with reminiscence of spring and summer and waited in apathy
for ineluctable winter. Wherever one's glance turned nature showed
everywhere like a dark, cold, bottomless pit, whence neither Kirilov nor
Aboguin nor the red half-moon could escape....
The nearer the carriage approached the destination the more impatient
did Aboguin become. He moved about, jumped up and stared over the
driver's shoulder in front of him. And when at last the carriage drew up
at the foot of the grand staircase, nicely covered with a striped linen
awning and he looked up at the lighted windows of the first floor one
could hear his breath trembling.
"If anything happens ... I shan't survive it," he said entering the hall
with the doctor and slowly rubbing his hands in his agitation. "But I
can't hear any noise. That means it's all right so far," he added,
listening to the stillness.
No voices or steps were heard in the hall. For all the bright
illumination the whole house seemed asleep. Now the doctor and Aboguin
who had been in darkness up till now could examine each other. The
doctor was tall, with a stoop, slovenly dressed, and his face was plain.
There was something unpleasantly sharp, ungracious, and severe in his
thick negro lips, his aquiline nose and his faded, indifferent look. His
tangled hair, his sunken temples, the early grey in his long thin beard,
that showed his shining chin, his pale grey complexion and the slipshod
awkwardness of his manners--the hardness of it all suggested to the mind
bad times undergone, an unjust lot and weariness of life and men. To
look at the hard figure of the man, you could not believe that he had a
wife and could weep over his child. Aboguin revealed something
different. He was robust, solid and fair-haired, with a big head and
large, yet soft, features, exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion. In
his carriage, his tight-buttoned coat and his mane of hair you felt
something noble and leonine. He walked with his head straight and his
chest prominent, he spoke in a pleasant baritone, and in his manner of
removing his scarf or arranging his hair there appeared a subtle, almost
feminine, elegance. Even his pallor and childish fear as he glanced
upwards to the staircase while taking off his coat, did not disturb his
carriage or take from the satisfaction, the health and aplomb which his
figure breathed.
"There's no one about, nothing I can hear," he said walking upstairs.
"No commotion. May God be good!"
He accompanied the doctor through the hall to a large salon, where a big
piano showed dark and a lustre hung in a white cover. Thence they both
passed into a small and beautiful drawing-room, very cosy, filled with a
pleasant, rosy half-darkness.
"Please sit here a moment, Doctor," said Aboguin, "I ... I won't be a
second. I'll just have a look and tell them."
Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the drawing-room, the pleasant
half-darkness, even his presence in a stranger's unfamiliar house
evidently did not move him. He sat in a chair looking at his hands burnt
with carbolic acid. He had no more than a glimpse of the bright red
lampshade, the cello case, and when he looked sideways across the room
to where the dock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid and
satisfied as Aboguin himself.
It was still.... Somewhere far away in the other rooms someone uttered a
loud "Ah!" A glass door, probably a cupboard door, rang, and again
everything was still. After five minutes had passed, Kirilov did not
look at his hands any more. He raised his eyes to the door through which
Aboguin had disappeared.
Aboguin was standing on the threshold, but not the same man as went out.
The expression of satisfaction and subtle elegance had disappeared from
him. His face and hands, the attitude of his body were distorted with a
disgusting expression either of horror or of tormenting physical pain.
His nose, lips, moustache, all his features were moving and as it were
trying to tear themselves away from his face, but the eyes were as
though laughing from pain.
Aboguin took a long heavy step into the middle of the room, stooped,
moaned, and shook his fists.
"Deceived!" he cried, emphasising the syllable cei. "She deceived me!
She's gone! She fell ill and sent me for the doctor only to run away
with this fool Papchinsky. My God!" Aboguin stepped heavily towards the
doctor, thrust his white soft fists before his face, and went on
wailing, shaking his fists the while.
"She's gone off! She's deceived me! But why this lie? My God, my God!
Why this dirty, foul trick, this devilish, serpent's game? What have I
done to her? She's gone off." Tears gushed from his eyes. He turned on
his heel and began to pace the drawing-room. Now in his short jacket and
his fashionable narrow trousers in which his legs seemed too thin for
his body, he was extraordinarily like a lion. Curiosity kindled in the
doctor's impassive face. He rose and eyed Aboguin.
"Well, where's the patient?"
"The patient, the patient," cried Aboguin, laughing, weeping, and still
shaking his fists. "She's not ill, but accursed. Vile--dastardly. The
Devil himself couldn't have planned a fouler trick. She sent me so that
she could run away with a fool, an utter clown, an Alphonse! My God, far
better she should have died. I'll not bear it. I shall not bear it."
The doctor stood up straight. His eyes began to blink, filled with
tears; his thin beard began to move with his jaw right and left.
"What's this?" he asked, looking curiously about. "My child's dead. My
wife in anguish, alone in all the house.... I can hardly stand on my
feet, I haven't slept for three nights ... and I'm made to play in a
vulgar comedy, to play the part of a stage property! I don't ... I don't
understand it!"
Aboguin opened one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor and trod on
it, as upon an insect he wished to crush.
"And I didn't see ... didn't understand," he said through his set teeth,
brandishing one fist round his head, with an expression as though
someone had trod on a corn. "I didn't notice how he came to see us every
day. I didn't notice that he came in a carriage to-day! What was the
carriage for? And I didn't see! Innocent!"
"I don't ... I don't understand," the doctor murmured. "What's it all
mean? It's jeering at a man, laughing at a man's suffering! That's
impossible.... I've never seen it in my life before!"
With the dull bewilderment of a man who has just begun to understand
that someone has bitterly offended him, the doctor shrugged his
shoulders, waved his hands and not knowing what to say or do, dropped
exhausted into a chair.
"Well, she didn't love me any more. She loved another man. Very well.
But why the deceit, why this foul treachery?" Aboguin spoke with tears
in his voice. "Why, why? What have I done to you? Listen, doctor," he
said passionately approaching Kirilov. "You were the unwilling witness
of my misfortune, and I am not going to hide the truth from you. I swear
I loved this woman. I loved her with devotion, like a slave. I
sacrificed everything for her. I broke with my family, I gave up the
service and my music. I forgave her things I could not have forgiven my
mother and sister.... I never once gave her an angry look ... I never
gave her any cause. Why this lie then? I do not demand love, but why
this abominable deceit? If you don't love any more then speak out
honestly, above all when you know what I feel about this matter...."
With tears in his eyes and trembling in all his bones, Aboguin was
pouring out his soul to the doctor. He spoke passionately, pressing both
hands to his heart. He revealed all the family secrets without
hesitation, as though he were glad that these secrets were being tom
from his heart. Had he spoken thus for an hour or two and poured out all
his soul, he would surely have been easier.
Who can say whether, had the doctor listened and given him friendly
sympathy, he would not, as so often happens, have been reconciled to his
grief unprotesting, without turning to unprofitable follies? But it
happened otherwise. While Aboguin was speaking the offended doctor
changed countenance visibly. The indifference and amazement in his face
gradually gave way to an expression of bitter outrage, indignation, and
anger. His features became still sharper, harder, and more forbidding.
When Aboguin put before his eyes the photograph of his young wife, with
a pretty, but dry, inexpressive face like a nun's, and asked if it were
possible to look at that face and grant that it could express a lie, the
doctor suddenly started away, with flashing eyes, and said, coarsely
forging out each several word:
"Why do you tell me all this? I do not want to hear! I don't want to,"
he cried and banged his fist upon the table. "I don't want your trivial
vulgar secrets--to Hell with them. You dare not tell me such
trivialities. Or do you think I have not yet been insulted enough! That
I'm a lackey to whom you can give the last insult? Yes?"
Aboguin drew back from Kirilov and stared at him in surprise.
"Why did you bring me here?" the doctor went on, shaking his beard. "You
marry out of high spirits, get angry out of high spirits, and make a
melodrama--but where do I come in? What have I got to do with your
romances? Leave me alone I Get on with your noble grabbing, parade your
humane ideas, play--" the doctor gave a side-glance at the cello-
case--"the double-bass and the trombone, stuff yourselves like capons,
but don't dare to jeer at a real man! If you can't respect him, then you
can at least spare him your attentions."
"What does all this mean?" Aboguin asked, blushing.
"It means that it's vile and foul to play with a man I I'm a doctor. You
consider doctors and all men who work and don't reek of scent and
harlotry, your footmen, your mauvais tons. Very well, but no one gave
you the right to turn a man who suffers into a property."
"How dare you say that?" Aboguin asked quietly. Again his face began to
twist about, this time in visible anger.
"How dare you bring me here to listen to trivial rubbish, when you know
that I'm in sorrow?" the doctor cried and banged his fists on the table
once more. "Who gave you the right to jeer at another's grief?"
"You're mad," cried Aboguin. "You're ungenerous. I too am deeply unhappy
and ... and ..."
"Unhappy"--the doctor gave a sneering laugh--"Don't touch the word, it's
got nothing to do with you. Wasters who can't get money on a bill call
themselves unhappy too. A capon's unhappy, oppressed with all its
superfluous fat. You worthless lot!"
"Sir, you're forgetting yourself," Aboguin gave a piercing scream. "For
words like those, people are beaten. Do you understand?"
Aboguin thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book,
found two notes and flung them on the table.
"There's your fee," he said, and his nostrils trembled. "You're paid."
"You dare not offer me money," said the doctor, and brushed the notes
from the table to the floor. "You don't settle an insult with money."
Aboguin and the doctor stood face to face, heaping each other with
undeserved insults. Never in their lives, even in a frenzy, had they
said so much that was unjust and cruel and absurd. In both the
selfishness of the unhappy is violently manifest. Unhappy men are
selfish, wicked, unjust, and less able to understand each other than
fools. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them; and just
where one would imagine that people should be united by the community of
grief, there is more injustice and cruelty done than among the
comparatively contented.
"Send me home, please," the doctor cried, out of breath.
Aboguin rang the bell violently. Nobody came. He rang once more; then
flung the bell angrily to the floor. It struck dully on the carpet and
gave out a mournful sound like a death-moan. The footman appeared.
"Where have you been hiding, damn you?" The master sprang upon him with
clenched fists. "Where have you been just now? Go away and tell them to
said the carriage round for this gentleman, and get the brougham ready
for me. Wait," he called out as the footman turned to go. "Not a single
traitor remains to-morrow. Pack off all of you! I will engage new ones
... Rabble!"
While they waited Aboguin and the doctor were silent. Already the
expression of satisfaction and the subtle elegance had returned to the
former. He paced the drawing-room, shook his head elegantly and
evidently was planning something. His anger was not yet cool, but he
tried to make as if he did not notice his enemy.... The doctor stood
with one hand on the edge of the table, looking at Aboguin with that
deep, rather cynical, ugly contempt with which only grief and an unjust
lot can look, when they see satiety and elegance before them.
A little later, when the doctor took his seat in the carriage and drove
away, his eyes still glanced contemptuously. It was dark, much darker
than an hour ago. The red half-moon had now disappeared behind the
little hill, and the clouds which watched it lay in dark spots round the
stars. The brougham with the red lamps began to rattle on the road and
passed the doctor. It was Aboguin on his way to protest, to commit all
manner of folly.
All the way the doctor thought not of his wife or Andrey, but only of
Aboguin and those who lived in the house he just left. His thoughts were
unjust, inhuman, and cruel. He passed sentence on Aboguin, his wife,
Papchinsky, and all those who live in rosy semi-darkness and smell of
scent. All the way he hated them, and his heart ached with his contempt
for them. The conviction he formed about them would last his life long.
Time will pass and Kirilov's sorrow, but this conviction, unjust and
unworthy of the human heart, will not pass, but will remain in the
doctor's mind until the grave. A TRIFLING OCCURRENCE
Nicolai Ilyich Byelyaev, a Petersburg landlord, very fond of the
racecourse, a well fed, pink young man of about thirty-two, once called
towards evening on Madame Irnin--Olga Ivanovna--with whom he had a
liaison, or, to use his own phrase, spun out a long and tedious romance.
And indeed the first pages of this romance, pages of interest and
inspiration, had been read long ago; now they dragged on and on, and
presented neither novelty nor interest.
Finding that Olga Ivanovna was not at home, my hero lay down a moment on
the drawing-room sofa and began to wait.
"Good evening, Nicolai Ilyich," he suddenly heard a child's voice say.
"Mother will be in in a moment. She's gone to the dressmaker's with
Sonya."
In the same drawing-room on the sofa lay Olga Vassilievna's son,
Alyosha, a boy about eight years old, well built, well looked after,
dressed up like a picture in a velvet jacket and long black stockings.
He lay on a satin pillow, and apparently imitating an acrobat whom he
had lately seen in the circus, lifted up first one leg then the other.
When his elegant legs began to be tired, he moved his hands, or he
jumped up impetuously and then went on all fours, trying to stand with
his legs in the air. All this he did with a most serious face, breathing
heavily, as if he himself found no happiness in God's gift of such a
restless body.
"Ah, how do you do, my friend?" said Byelyaev. "Is it you? I didn't
notice you. Is your mother well?"
At the moment Alyosha had just taken hold of the toe of his left foot in
his right hand and got into a most awkward pose. He turned head over
heels, jumped up, and glanced from under the big, fluffy lampshade at
Byelyaev.
"How can I put it?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "As a matter of
plain fact mother is never well. You see she's a woman, and women,
Nicolai Ilyich, have always some pain or another."
For something to do, Byelyaev began to examine Alyosha's face. All the
time he had been acquainted with Olga Ivanovna he had never once turned
his attention to the boy and had completely ignored his existence. A boy
is stuck in front of your eyes, but what is he doing here, what is his
rôle?--you don't want to give a single thought to the question.
In the evening dusk Alyosha's face with a pale forehead and steady black
eyes unexpectedly reminded Byelyaev of Olga Vassilievna as she was in
the first pages of the romance. He had the desire to be affectionate to
the boy.
"Come here, whipper-snapper," he said. "Come and let me have a good look
at you, quite close."
The boy jumped off the sofa and ran to Byelyaev.
"Well?" Nicolai Ilyich began, putting his hand on the thin shoulders.
"And how are things with you?"
"How shall I put it?... They used to be much better before."
"How?"
"Quite simple. Before, Sonya and I only had to do music and reading, and
now we're given French verses to learn. You've had your hair cut
lately?"
"Yes, just lately."
"That's why I noticed it. Your beard's shorter. May I touch it ...
doesn't it hurt?"
"No, not a bit."
"Why is it that it hurts if you pull one hair, and when you pull a whole
lot, it doesn't hurt a bit? Ah, ah I You know it's a pity you don't have
side-whiskers. You should shave here, and at the sides ... and leave the
hair just here."
The boy pressed close to Byelyaev and began to play with his watch-
chain.
"When I go to the gymnasium," he said, "Mother is going to buy me a
watch. I'll ask her to buy me a chain just like this. What a fine locket
I Father has one just the same, but yours has stripes, here, and his has
got letters.... Inside it's mother's picture. Father has another chain
now, not in links, but like a ribbon...."
"How do you know? Do you see your father?"
"I? Mm ... no ... I ..."
Alyosha blushed and in the violent confusion of being detected in a lie
began to scratch the locket busily with his finger-nail. Byelyaev looked
steadily at his face and asked:
"Do you see your father?"
"No ... no!"
"But, be honest--on your honour. By your face I can see you're not
telling me the truth. If you made a slip of the tongue by mistake,
what's the use of shuffling. Tell me, do you see him? As one friend to
another."
Alyosha mused.
"And you won't tell Mother?" he asked.
"What next."
"On your word of honour."
"My word of honour."
"Swear an oath."
"What a nuisance you are! What do you take me for?"
Alyosha looked round, made big eyes and began to whisper.
"Only for God's sake don't tell Mother! Never tell it to anyone at all,
because it's a secret. God forbid that Mother should ever get to know;
then I and Sonya and Pelagueia will pay for it.... Listen. Sonya and I
meet Father every Tuesday and Friday. When Pelagueia takes us for a walk
before dinner, we go into Apfel's sweet-shop and Father's waiting for
us. He always sits in a separate room, you know, where there's a
splendid marble table and an ash-tray shaped like a goose without a
back...."
"And what do you do there?"
"Nothing!--First, we welcome one another, then we sit down at a little
table and Father begins to treat us to coffee and cakes. You know, Sonya
eats meat-pies, and I can't bear pies with meat in them! I like them
made of cabbage and eggs. We eat so much that afterwards at dinner we
try to eat as much as we possibly can so that Mother shan't notice."
"What do you talk about there?"
"To Father? About anything. He kisses us and cuddles us, tells us all
kinds of funny stories. You know, he says that he will take us to live
with him when we are grown up. Sonya doesn't want to go, but I say
'Yes.' Of course, it'll be lonely without Mother; but I'll write letters
to her. How funny: we could go to her for our holidays then--couldn't we?
Besides, Father says that he'll buy me a horse. He's a splendid man. I
can't understand why Mother doesn't invite him to live with her or why
she says we mustn't meet him. He loves Mother very much indeed. He's
always asking us how she is and what she's doing. When she was ill, he
took hold of his head like this ... and ran, ran, all the time. He is
always telling us to obey and respect her. Tell me, is it true that
we're unlucky?"
"H'm ... how?"
"Father says so. He says: 'You are unlucky children.' It's quite strange
to listen to him. He says: 'You are unhappy, I'm unhappy, and Mother's
unhappy.' He says: 'Pray to God for yourselves and for her.'" Alyosha's
eyes rested upon the stuffed bird and he mused.
"Exactly...." snorted Byelyaev. "This is what you do. You arrange
conferences in sweet-shops. And your mother doesn't know?" "N--no.... How
could she know? Pelagueia won't tell for anything. The day before
yesterday Father stood us pears. Sweet, like jam. I had two."
"H'm ... well, now ... tell me, doesn't your father speak about me?"
"About you? How shall I put it?" Alyosha gave a searching glance to
Byelyaev's face and shrugged his shoulders.
"He doesn't say anything in particular."
"What does he say, for instance?"
"You won't be offended?"
"What next? Why, does he abuse me?"
"He doesn't abuse you, but you know ... he is cross with you. He says
that it's through you that Mother's unhappy and that you ... ruined
Mother. But he is so queer! I explain to him that you are good and never
shout at Mother, but he only shakes his head."
"Does he say those very words: that I ruined her?"
"Yes. Don't be offended, Nicolai Ilyich!"
Byelyaev got up, stood still a moment, and then began to walk about the
drawing-room.