and did not in my pictures portray the privations of the peasants, and
that, as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she put such faith in. I
remember when I was travelling on the banks of Lake Baikal, I met a
Buriat girl on horseback, wearing a shirt and trousers of blue Chinese
canvas; I asked her if she would sell me her pipe. While we talked she
looked contemptuously at my European face and hat, and in a moment she
was bored with talking to me; she shouted to her horse and galloped on.
And in just the same way Lida despised me as an alien. She never
outwardly expressed her dislike for me, but I felt it, and sitting on
the lower step of the terrace, I felt irritated, and said that doctoring
peasants when one was not a doctor was deceiving them, and that it was
easy to be benevolent when one had six thousand acres.
Meanwhile her sister Misuce had no cares, and spent her life in complete
idleness just as I did. When she got up in the morning she immediately
took up a book and sat down to read on the terrace in a deep arm-chair,
with her feet hardly touching the ground, or hid herself with her book
in the lime avenue, or walked out into the fields. She spent the whole
day reading, poring greedily over her book, and only from the tired,
dazed look in her eyes and the extreme paleness of her face one could
divine how this continual reading exhausted her brain. When I arrived
she would flush a little, leave her book, and looking into my face with
her big eyes, would tell me eagerly of anything that had happened--for
instance, that the chimney had been on fire in the servants' hall, or
that one of the men had caught a huge fish in the pond. On ordinary days
she usually went about in a light blouse and a dark blue skirt. We went
for walks together, picked cherries for making jam, went out in the
boat. When she jumped up to reach a cherry or sculled in the boat, her
thin, weak arms showed through her transparent sleeves. Or I painted a
sketch, and she stood beside me watching rapturously.
One Sunday at the end of July I came to the Voltchaninovs about nine o
clock in the morning. I walked about the park, keeping a good distance
from the house, looking for white mushrooms, of which there was a great
number that summer, and noting their position so as to come and pick
them afterwards with Genya. There was a warm breeze. I saw Genya and her
mother both in light holiday dresses coming home from church, Genya
holding her hat in the wind. Afterwards I heard them having tea on the
terrace.
For a careless person like me, trying to find justification for my
perpetual idleness, these holiday mornings in our country-houses in the
summer have always had a particular charm. When the green garden, still
wet with dew, is all sparkling in the sun and looks radiant with
happiness, when there is a scent of mignonette and oleander near the
house, when the young people have just come back from church and are
having breakfast in the garden, all so charmingly dressed and gay, and
one knows that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people are going to
do nothing the whole long day, one wishes that all life were like that.
Now, too, I had the same thought, and walked about the garden prepared
to walk about like that, aimless and unoccupied, the whole day, the
whole summer.
Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in her face as though she
knew she would find me in the garden, or had a presentiment of it. We
gathered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked a question she walked
a little ahead so as to see my face.
"A miracle happened in the village yesterday," she said. "The lame woman
Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines did her any
good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered something over her,
and her illness passed away."
"That's nothing much," I said. "You mustn't look for miracles only among
sick people and old women. Isn't health a miracle? And life itself?
Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle."
"And aren't you afraid of what is beyond understanding?"
"No. Phenomena I don't understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed
by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognise himself as superior to
lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even what seems
miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he is not a man, but
a mouse afraid of everything."
Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could
guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate her
into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful--into that higher world
in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And she talked to me of
God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who could never
admit that my self and my imagination would be lost forever after death,
answered: "Yes, men are immortal"; "Yes, there is eternal life in store
for us." And she listened, believed, and did not ask for proofs.
As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:
"Our Lida is a remarkable person--isn't she? I love her very dearly, and
would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But tell me"--Genya
touched my sleeve with her finger--"tell me, why do you always argue
with her? Why are you irritated?"
"Because she is wrong."
Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.
"How incomprehensible that is!" she said. At that minute Lida had just
returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand, a slim,
beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was giving some
orders to one of the men. Talking loudly, she hurriedly received two or
three sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious face she walked about
the rooms, opening one cupboard after another, and went upstairs. It was
a long time before they could find her and call her to dinner, and she
came in when we had finished our soup. All these tiny details I remember
with tenderness, and that whole day I remember vividly, though nothing
special happened. After dinner Genya lay in a long arm-chair reading,
while I sat upon the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The
whole sky was overcast with clouds, and it began to spot with fine rain.
It was hot; the wind had dropped, and it seemed as though the day would
never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on the terrace, looking drowsy
and carrying a fan.
"Oh, mother," said Genya, kissing her hand, "it's not good for you to
sleep in the day."
They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other would
stand on the terrace, and, looking towards the trees, call "Aa--oo,
Genya!" or "Mother, where are you?" They always said their prayers
together, and had the same faith; and they understood each other
perfectly even when they did not speak. And their attitude to people was
the same. Ekaterina Pavlovna, too, grew quickly used to me and fond of
me, and when I did not come for two or three days, sent to ask if I were
well. She, too, gazed at my sketches with enthusiasm, and with the same
openness and readiness to chatter as Misuce, she told me what had
happened, and confided to me her domestic secrets.
She had a perfect reverence for her elder daughter. Lida did not care
for endearments, she talked only of serious matters; she lived her life
apart, and to her mother and sister was as sacred and enigmatic a person
as the admiral, always sitting in his cabin, is to the sailors.
"Our Lida is a remarkable person," the mother would often say. "Isn't
she?"
Now, too, while it was drizzling with rain, we talked of Lida.
"She is a remarkable girl," said her mother, and added in an undertone,
like a conspirator, looking about her timidly: "You wouldn't easily find
another like her; only, do you know, I am beginning to be a little
uneasy. The school, the dispensary, books --all that's very good, but
why go to extremes? She is three-and-twenty, you know; it's time for her
to think seriously of herself. With her books and her dispensary she
will find life has slipped by without having noticed it. . . . She must
be married."
Genya, pale from reading, with her hair disarranged, raised her head and
said as it were to herself, looking at her mother:
"Mother, everything is in God's hands."
And again she buried herself in her book.
Byelokurov came in his tunic and embroidered shirt. We played croquet
and tennis, then when it got dark, sat a long time over supper and
talked again about schools, and about Balagin, who had the whole
district under his thumb. As I went away from the Voltchaninovs that
evening, I carried away the impression of a long, long idle day, with a
melancholy consciousness that everything ends in this world, however
long it may be.
Genya saw us out to the gate, and perhaps because she had been with me
all day, from morning till night, I felt dull without her, and that all
that charming family were near and dear to me, and for the first time
that summer I had a yearning to paint.
"Tell me, why do you lead such a dreary, colourless life?" I asked
Byelokurov as I went home. "My life is dreary, difficult, and monotonous
because I am an artist, a strange person. From my earliest days I've
been wrung by envy, self-dissatisfaction, distrust in my work. I'm
always poor, I'm a wanderer, but you--you're a healthy, normal man, a
landowner, and a gentleman. Why do you live in such an uninteresting
way? Why do you get so little out of life? Why haven't you, for
instance, fallen in love with Lida or Genya?"
"You forget that I love another woman," answered Byelokurov.
He was referring to Liubov Ivanovna, the lady who shared the lodge with
him. Every day I saw this lady, very plump, rotund, and dignified, not
unlike a fat goose, walking about the garden, in the Russian national
dress and beads, always carrying a parasol; and the servant was
continually calling her in to dinner or to tea. Three years before she
had taken one of the lodges for a summer holiday, and had settled down
at Byelokurov's apparently forever. She was ten years older than he was,
and kept a sharp hand over him, so much so that he had to ask her
permission when he went out of the house. She often sobbed in a deep
masculine note, and then I used to send word to her that if she did not
leave off, I should give up my rooms there; and she left off.
When we got home Byelokurov sat down on the sofa and frowned
thoughtfully, and I began walking up and down the room, conscious of a
soft emotion as though I were in love. I wanted to talk about the
Voltchaninovs.
"Lida could only fall in love with a member of the Zemstvo, as devoted
to schools and hospitals as she is," I said. "Oh, for the sake of a girl
like that one might not only go into the Zemstvo, but even wear out iron
shoes, like the girl in the fairy tale. And Misuce? What a sweet
creature she is, that Misuce!"
Byelokurov, drawling out "Er--er," began a long-winded disquisition on
the malady of the age--pessimism. He talked confidently, in a tone that
suggested that I was opposing him. Hundreds of miles of desolate,
monotonous, burnt-up steppe cannot induce such deep depression as one
man when he sits and talks, and one does not know when he will go.
"It's not a question of pessimism or optimism," I said irritably; "its
simply that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have no sense."
Byelokurov took this as aimed at himself, was offended, and went away.
III
"The prince is staying at Malozyomovo, and he asks to be remembered to
you," said Lida to her mother. She had just come in, and was taking off
her gloves. "He gave me a great deal of interesting news . . . . He
promised to raise the question of a medical relief centre at Malozyomovo
again at the provincial assembly, but he says there is very little hope
of it." And turning to me, she said: "Excuse me, I always forget that
this cannot be interesting to you."
I felt irritated.
"Why not interesting to me?" I said, shrugging my shoulders. "You do not
care to know my opinion, but I assure you the question has great
interest for me."
"Yes?"
"Yes. In my opinion a medical relief centre at Malozyomovo is quite
unnecessary."
My irritation infected her; she looked at me, screwing up her eyes, and
asked:
"What is necessary? Landscapes?"
"Landscapes are not, either. Nothing is."
She finished taking off her gloves, and opened the newspaper, which had
just been brought from the post. A minute later she said quietly,
evidently restraining herself:
"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if there had been a medical
relief centre near, she would have lived. And I think even landscape-
painters ought to have some opinions on the subject."
"I have a very definite opinion on that subject, I assure you," I
answered; and she screened herself with the newspaper, as though
unwilling to listen to me. "To my mind, all these schools, dispensaries,
libraries, medical relief centres, under present conditions, only serve
to aggravate the bondage of the people. The peasants are fettered by a
great chain, and you do not break the chain, but only add fresh links to
it--that's my view of it."
She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, and I went on trying to
formulate my leading idea.
"What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all these
Annas, Mavras, Pelageas, toil from early morning till dark, fall ill
from working beyond their strength, all their lives tremble for their
sick and hungry children, all their lives are being doctored, and in
dread of death and disease, fade and grow old early, and die in filth
and stench. Their children begin the same story over again as soon as
they grow up, and so it goes on for hundreds of years and milliards of
men live worse than beasts-- in continual terror, for a mere crust of
bread. The whole horror of their position lies in their never having
time to think of their souls, of their image and semblance. Cold,
hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block
for them every way to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes
man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth
living. You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't
free them from their fetters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in
closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the number
of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got to pay the
Zemstvo for drugs and books, and so toil harder than ever."
"I am not going to argue with you," said Lida, putting down the paper.
"I've heard all that before. I will only say one thing: one cannot sit
with one's hands in one's lap. It's true that we are not saving
humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we do what we
can, and we are right. The highest and holiest task for a civilised
being is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve them as best we
can. You don't like it, but one can't please every one."
"That's true, Lida," said her mother--"that's true."
In Lida's presence she was always a little timid, and looked at her
nervously as she talked, afraid of saying something superfluous or
inopportune. And she never contradicted her, but always assented:
"That's true, Lida--that's true."
"Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts and
rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either ignorance or
the death-rate, just as the light from your windows cannot light up this
huge garden," said I. "You give nothing. By meddling in these people's
lives you only create new wants in them, and new demands on their
labour."
"Ach! Good heavens! But one must do something!" said Lida with vexation,
and from her tone one could see that she thought my arguments worthless
and despised them.
"The people must be freed from hard physical labour," said I. "We must
lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, that they may not
spend all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and in the fields,
but may also have time to think of their souls, of God--may have time to
develop their spiritual capacities. The highest vocation of man is
spiritual activity--the perpetual search for truth and the meaning of
life. Make coarse animal labour unnecessary for them, let them feel
themselves free, and then you will see what a mockery these dispensaries
and books are. Once a man recognises his true vocation, he can only be
satisfied by religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles."
"Free them from labour?" laughed Lida. "But is that possible?"
"Yes. Take upon yourself a share of their labour. If all of us,
townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree to
divide between us the labour which mankind spends on the satisfaction of
their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need to work only for two
or three hours a day. Imagine that we all, rich and poor, work only for
three hours a day, and the rest of our time is free. Imagine further
that in order to depend even less upon our bodies and to labour less, we
invent machines to replace our work, we try to cut down our needs to the
minimum. We would harden ourselves and our children that they should not
be afraid of hunger and cold, and that we shouldn't be continually
trembling for their health like Anna, Mavra, and Pelagea. Imagine that
we don't doctor ourselves, don't keep dispensaries, tobacco factories,
distilleries--what a lot of free time would be left us after all! All of
us together would devote our leisure to science and art. Just as the
peasants sometimes work, the whole community together mending the roads,
so all of us, as a community, would search for truth and the meaning of
life, and I am convinced that the truth would be discovered very
quickly; man would escape from this continual, agonising, oppressive
dread of death, and even from death itself."
"You contradict yourself, though," said Lida. "You talk about science,
and are yourself opposed to elementary education."
"Elementary education when a man has nothing to read but the signs on
public houses and sometimes books which he cannot understand-- such
education has existed among us since the times of Rurik; Gogol's
Petrushka has been reading for ever so long, yet as the village was in
the days of Rurik so it has remained. What is needed is not elementary
education, but freedom for a wide development of spiritual capacities.
What are wanted are not schools, but universities."
"You are opposed to medicine, too."
"Yes. It would be necessary only for the study of diseases as natural
phenomena, and not for the cure of them. If one must cure, it should not
be diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the principal cause --
physical labour, and then there will be no disease. I don't believe in a
science that cures disease," I went on excitedly. "When science and art
are real, they aim not at temporary private ends, but at eternal and
universal--they seek for truth and the meaning of life, they seek for
God, for the soul, and when they are tied down to the needs and evils of
the day, to dispensaries and libraries, they only complicate and hamper
life. We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can
read and write, but we are quite without biologists, mathematicians,
philosophers, poets. The whole of our intelligence, the whole of our
spiritual energy, is spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs.
Scientific men, writers, artists, are hard at work; thanks to them, the
conveniences of life are multiplied from day to day. Our physical
demands increase, yet truth is still a long way off, and man still
remains the most rapacious and dirty animal; everything is tending to
the degeneration of the majority of mankind, and the loss forever of all
fitness for life. In such conditions an artist's work has no meaning,
and the more talented he is, the stranger and the more unintelligible is
his position, as when one looks into it, it is evident that he is
working for the amusement of a rapacious and unclean animal, and is
supporting the existing order. And I don't care to work and I won't
work. . . . Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition!"
"Misuce, go out of the room!" said Lida to her sister, apparently
thinking my words pernicious to the young girl.
Genya looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and went out of the
room.
"These are the charming things people say when they want to justify
their indifference," said Lida. "It is easier to disapprove of schools
and hospitals, than to teach or heal."
"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented.
"You threaten to give up working," said Lida. "You evidently set a high
value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never agree, since
I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which you have just
spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any landscape." And
turning at once to her mother, she began speaking in quite a different
tone: "The prince is very much changed, and much thinner than when he
was with us last. He is being sent to Vichy."
She told her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to me.
Her face glowed, and to hide her feeling she bent low over the table as
though she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading the newspaper.
My presence was disagreeable to her. I said good-bye and went home.
IV
It was quite still out of doors; the village on the further side of the
pond was already asleep; there was not a light to be seen, and only the
stars were faintly reflected in the pond. At the gate with the lions on
it Genya was standing motionless, waiting to escort me.
"Every one is asleep in the village," I said to her, trying to make out
her face in the darkness, and I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed upon
me. "The publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we, well-bred
people, argue and irritate each other."
It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because there was already a
feeling of autumn; the moon was rising behind a purple cloud, and it
shed a faint light upon the road and on the dark fields of winter corn
by the sides. From time to time a star fell. Genya walked beside me
along the road, and tried not to look at the sky, that she might not see
the falling stars, which for some reason frightened her.
"I believe you are right," she said, shivering with the damp night air.
"If people, all together, could devote themselves to spiritual ends,
they would soon know everything."
"Of course. We are higher beings, and if we were really to recognise the
whole force of human genius and lived only for higher ends, we should in
the end become like gods. But that will never be--mankind will
degenerate till no traces of genius remain."
When the gates were out of sight, Genya stopped and shook hands with me.
"Good-night," she said, shivering; she had nothing but her blouse over
her shoulders and was shrinking with cold. "Come to-morrow."
I felt wretched at the thought of being left alone, irritated and
dissatisfied with myself and other people; and I, too, tried not to look
at the falling stars. "Stay another minute," I said to her, "I entreat
you."
I loved Genya. I must have loved her because she met me when I came and
saw me off when I went away; because she looked at me tenderly and
enthusiastically. How touchingly beautiful were her pale face, slender
neck, slender arms, her weakness, her idleness, her reading. And
intelligence? I suspected in her intelligence above the average. I was
fascinated by the breadth of her views, perhaps because they were
different from those of the stern, handsome Lida, who disliked me. Genya
liked me, because I was an artist. I had conquered her heart by my
talent, and had a passionate desire to paint for her sake alone; and I
dreamed of her as of my little queen who with me would possess those
trees, those fields, the mists, the dawn, the exquisite and beautiful
scenery in the midst of which I had felt myself hopelessly solitary and
useless.
"Stay another minute," I begged her. "I beseech you."
I took off my overcoat and put it over her chilly shoulders; afraid of
looking ugly and absurd in a man's overcoat, she laughed, threw it off,
and at that instant I put my arms round her and covered her face,
shoulders, and hands with kisses.
"Till to-morrow," she whispered, and softly, as though afraid of
breaking upon the silence of the night, she embraced me. "We have no
secrets from one another. I must tell my mother and my sister at once. .
. . It's so dreadful! Mother is all right; mother likes you--but Lida!"
She ran to the gates.
"Good-bye!" she called.