saw her out to the hall in trepidation the whole time, for fear she
should break into sobs or fall on her knees.
After her, Kish made his appearance. Then Kostya came in with his
photographic apparatus. Of late he had been attracted by photography and
took photographs of every one in the house several times a day. This new
pursuit caused him many disappointments, and he had actually grown
thinner.
Before evening tea Fyodor arrived. Sitting in a corner in the study, he
opened a book and stared for a long time at a page, obviously not
reading. Then he spent a long time drinking tea; his face turned red. In
his presence Laptev felt a load on his heart; even his silence was
irksome to him.
"Russia may be congratulated on the appearance of a new author," said
Fyodor. "Joking apart, though, brother, I have turned out a little
article--the firstfruits of my pen, so to say--and I've brought it to
show you. Read it, dear boy, and tell me your opinion --but sincerely."
He took a manuscript out of his pocket and gave it to his brother. The
article was called "The Russian Soul"; it was written tediously, in the
colourless style in which people with no talent, but full of secret
vanity, usually write. The leading idea of it was that the intellectual
man has the right to disbelieve in the supernatural, but it is his duty
to conceal his lack of faith, that he may not be a stumbling-block and
shake the faith of others. Without faith there is no idealism, and
idealism is destined to save Europe and guide humanity into the true
path.
"But you don't say what Europe has to be saved from," said Laptev.
"That's intelligible of itself."
"Nothing is intelligible," said Laptev, and he walked about the room in
agitation. "It's not intelligible to me why you wrote it. But that's
your business."
"I want to publish it in pamphlet form."
"That's your affair."
They were silent for a minute. Fyodor sighed and said:
"It's an immense regret to me, dear brother, that we think differently.
Oh, Alyosha, Alyosha, my darling brother! You and I are true Russians,
true believers, men of broad nature; all of these German and Jewish
crochets are not for us. You and I are not wretched upstarts, you know,
but representatives of a distinguished merchant family."
"What do you mean by a distinguished family?" said Laptev, restraining
his irritation. "A distinguished family! The landowners beat our
grandfather and every low little government clerk punched him in the
face. Our grandfather thrashed our father, and our father thrashed us.
What has your distinguished family done for us? What sort of nerves,
what sort of blood, have we inherited? For nearly three years you've
been arguing like an ignorant deacon, and talking all sorts of nonsense,
and now you've written--this slavish drivel here! While I, while I! Look
at me. . . . No elasticity, no boldness, no strength of will; I tremble
over every step I take as though I should be flogged for it. I am timid
before nonentities, idiots, brutes, who are immeasurably my inferiors
mentally and morally; I am afraid of porters, doorkeepers, policemen,
gendarmes. I am afraid of every one, because I was born of a mother who
was terrified, and because from a child I was beaten and frightened! . .
. You and I will do well to have no children. Oh, God, grant that this
distinguished merchant family may die with us!"
Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat down at the table.
"Are you arguing about something here?" she asked. "Am I interrupting?"
"No, little sister," answered Fyodor. "Our discussion was of principles.
Here, you are abusing the family," he added, turning to his brother.
"That family has created a business worth a million, though. That stands
for something, anyway!"
"A great distinction--a business worth a million! A man with no
particular brains, without abilities, by chance becomes a trader, and
then when he has grown rich he goes on trading from day to day, with no
sort of system, with no aim, without having any particular greed for
money. He trades mechanically, and money comes to him of itself, without
his going to meet it. He sits all his life at his work, likes it only
because he can domineer over his clerks and get the better of his
customers. He's a churchwarden because he can domineer over the
choristers and keep them under his thumb; he's the patron of a school
because he likes to feel the teacher is his subordinate and enjoys
lording it over him. The merchant does not love trading, he loves
dominating, and your warehouse is not so much a commercial establishment
as a torture chamber! And for a business like yours, you want clerks who
have been deprived of individual character and personal life--and you
make them such by forcing them in childhood to lick the dust for a crust
of bread, and you've trained them from childhood to believe that you are
their benefactors. No fear of your taking a university man into your
warehouse!"
"University men are not suitable for our business."
"That's not true," cried Laptev. "It's a lie!"
"Excuse me, it seems to me you spit into the well from which you drink
yourself," said Fyodor, and he got up. "Our business is hateful to you,
yet you make use of the income from it."
"Aha! We've spoken our minds," said Laptev, and he laughed, looking
angrily at his brother. "Yes, if I didn't belong to your distinguished
family--if I had an ounce of will and courage, I should long ago have
flung away that income, and have gone to work for my living. But in your
warehouse you've destroyed all character in me from a child! I'm your
product."
Fyodor looked at the clock and began hurriedly saying good-bye. He
kissed Yulia's hand and went out, but instead of going into the hall,
walked into the drawing-room, then into the bedroom.
"I've forgotten how the rooms go," he said in extreme confusion. "It's a
strange house. Isn't it a strange house!"
He seemed utterly overcome as he put on his coat, and there was a look
of pain on his face. Laptev felt no more anger; he was frightened, and
at the same time felt sorry for Fyodor, and the warm, true love for his
brother, which seemed to have died down in his heart during those three
years, awoke, and he felt an intense desire to express that love.
"Come to dinner with us to-morrow, Fyodor," he said, and stroked him on
the shoulder. "Will you come?"
"Yes, yes; but give me some water."
Laptev ran himself to the dining-room to take the first thing he could
get from the sideboard. This was a tall beer-jug. He poured water into
it and brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking, but bit a piece
out of the jug; they heard a crunch, and then sobs. The water ran over
his fur coat and his jacket, and Laptev, who had never seen men cry,
stood in confusion and dismay, not knowing what to do. He looked on
helplessly while Yulia and the servant took off Fyodor's coat and helped
him back again into the room, and went with him, feeling guilty.
Yulia made Fyodor lie down on the sofa and knelt beside him.
"It's nothing," she said, trying to comfort him. "It's your nerves. . .
."
"I'm so miserable, my dear!" he said. "I am so unhappy, unhappy . . .
but all the time I've been hiding it, I've been hiding it!"
He put his arm round her neck and whispered in her ear:
"Every night I see my sister Nina. She comes and sits in the chair near
my bed. . . ."
When, an hour later, he put on his fur coat in the hall, he was smiling
again and ashamed to face the servant. Laptev went with him to
Pyatnitsky Street.
"Come and have dinner with us to-morrow," he said on the way, holding
him by the arm, "and at Easter we'll go abroad together. You absolutely
must have a change, or you'll be getting quite morbid."
When he got home Laptev found his wife in a state of great nervous
agitation. The scene with Fyodor had upset her, and she could not
recover her composure. She wasn't crying but kept tossing on the bed,
clutching with cold fingers at the quilt, at the pillows, at her
husband's hands. Her eyes looked big and frightened.
"Don't go away from me, don't go away," she said to her husband. "Tell
me, Alyosha, why have I left off saying my prayers? What has become of
my faith? Oh, why did you talk of religion before me? You've shaken my
faith, you and your friends. I never pray now."
He put compresses on her forehead, chafed her hands, gave her tea to
drink, while she huddled up to him in terror. . . .
Towards morning she was worn out and fell asleep, while Laptev sat
beside her and held her hand. So that he could get no sleep. The whole
day afterwards he felt shattered and dull, and wandered listlessly about
the rooms without a thought in his head.
XVI
The doctor said that Fyodor's mind was affected. Laptev did not know
what to do in his father's house, while the dark warehouse in which
neither his father nor Fyodor ever appeared now seemed to him like a
sepulchre. When his wife told him that he absolutely must go every day
to the warehouse and also to his father's, he either said nothing, or
began talking irritably of his childhood, saying that it was beyond his
power to forgive his father for his past, that the warehouse and the
house in Pyatnitsky Street were hateful to him, and so on.
One Sunday morning Yulia went herself to Pyatnitsky Street. She found
old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which the
service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers, and
without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair, blinking
with his sightless eyes.
"It's I--your daughter-in-law," she said, going up to him. "I've come to
see how you are."
He began breathing heavily with excitement.
Touched by his affliction and his loneliness, she kissed his hand; and
he passed his hand over her face and head, and having satisfied himself
that it was she, made the sign of the cross over her.
"Thank you, thank you," he said. "You know I've lost my eyes and can see
nothing. . . . I can dimly see the window and the fire, but people and
things I cannot see at all. Yes, I'm going blind, and Fyodor has fallen
ill, and without the master's eye things are in a bad way now. If there
is any irregularity there's no one to look into it; and folks soon get
spoiled. And why is it Fyodor has fallen ill? Did he catch cold? Here I
have never ailed in my life and never taken medicine. I never saw
anything of doctors."
And, as he always did, the old man began boasting. Meanwhile the
servants hurriedly laid the table and brought in lunch and bottles of
wine.
Ten bottles were put on the table; one of them was in the shape of the
Eiffel Tower. There was a whole dish of hot pies smelling of jam, rice,
and fish.
"I beg my dear guest to have lunch," said the old man.
She took him by the arm, led him to the table, and poured him out a
glass of vodka.
"I will come to you again to-morrow," she said, "and I'll bring your
grandchildren, Sasha and Lida. They will be sorry for you, and fondle
you."
"There's no need. Don't bring them. They are illegitimate."
"Why are they illegitimate? Why, their father and mother were married."
"Without my permission. I do not bless them, and I don't want to know
them. Let them be."
"You speak strangely, Fyodor Stepanovitch," said Yulia, with a sigh.
"It is written in the Gospel: children must fear and honour their
parents."
"Nothing of the sort. The Gospel tells us that we must forgive even our
enemies."
"One can't forgive in our business. If you were to forgive every one,
you would come to ruin in three years."
"But to forgive, to say a kind, friendly word to any one, even a sinner,
is something far above business, far above wealth."
Yulia longed to soften the old man, to awaken a feeling of compassion in
him, to move him to repentance; but he only listened condescendingly to
all she said, as a grown-up person listens to a child.
"Fyodor Stepanovitch," said Yulia resolutely, "you are an old man, and
God soon will call you to Himself. He won't ask you how you managed your
business, and whether you were successful in it, but whether you were
gracious to people; or whether you were harsh to those who were weaker
than you, such as your servants, your clerks."
"I was always the benefactor of those that served me; they ought to
remember me in their prayers forever," said the old man, with
conviction, but touched by Yulia's tone of sincerity, and anxious to
give her pleasure, he said: "Very well; bring my grandchildren to-
morrow. I will tell them to buy me some little presents for them."
The old man was slovenly in his dress, and there was cigar ash on his
breast and on his knees; apparently no one cleaned his boots, or brushed
his clothes. The rice in the pies was half cooked, the tablecloth smelt
of soap, the servants tramped noisily about the room. And the old man
and the whole house had a neglected look, and Yulia, who felt this, was
ashamed of herself and of her husband.
"I will be sure to come and see you to-morrow," she said.
She walked through the rooms, and gave orders for the old man's bedroom
to be set to rights, and the lamp to be lighted under the ikons in it.
Fyodor, sitting in his own room, was looking at an open book without
reading it. Yulia talked to him and told the servants to tidy his room,
too; then she went downstairs to the clerks. In the middle of the room
where the clerks used to dine, there was an unpainted wooden post to
support the ceiling and to prevent its coming down. The ceilings in the
basement were low, the walls covered with cheap paper, and there was a
smell of charcoal fumes and cooking. As it was a holiday, all the clerks
were at home, sitting on their bedsteads waiting for dinner. When Yulia
went in they jumped up, and answered her questions timidly, looking up
at her from under their brows like convicts.
"Good heavens! What a horrid room you have!" she said, throwing up her
hands. "Aren't you crowded here?"
"Crowded, but not aggrieved," said Makeitchev. "We are greatly indebted
to you, and will offer up our prayers for you to our Heavenly Father."
"The congruity of life with the conceit of the personality," said
Potchatkin.
And noticing that Yulia did not understand Potchatkin, Makeitchev
hastened to explain:
"We are humble people and must live according to our position."
She inspected the boys' quarters, and then the kitchen, made
acquaintance with the housekeeper, and was thoroughly dissatisfied.
When she got home she said to her husband:
"We ought to move into your father's house and settle there for good as
soon as possible. And you will go every day to the warehouse."
Then they both sat side by side in the study without speaking. His heart
was heavy, and he did not want to move into Pyatnitsky Street or to go
into the warehouse; but he guessed what his wife was thinking, and could
not oppose her. He stroked her cheek and said:
"I feel as though our life is already over, and that a grey half-life is
beginning for us. When I knew that my brother Fyodor was hopelessly ill,
I shed tears; we spent our childhood and youth together, when I loved
him with my whole soul. And now this catastrophe has come, and it seems,
too, as though, losing him, I am finally cut away from my past. And when
you said just now that we must move into the house in Pyatnitsky Street,
to that prison, it began to seem to me that there was no future for me
either."
He got up and walked to the window.
"However that may be, one has to give up all thoughts of happiness," he
said, looking out into the street. "There is none. I never have had any,
and I suppose it doesn't exist at all. I was happy once in my life,
though, when I sat at night under your parasol. Do you remember how you
left your parasol at Nina's?" he asked, turning to his wife. "I was in
love with you then, and I remember I spent all night sitting under your
parasol, and was perfectly blissful."
Near the book-case in the study stood a mahogany chest with bronze
fittings where Laptev kept various useless things, including the
parasol. He took it out and handed it to his wife.
"Here it is."
Yulia looked for a minute at the parasol, recognised it, and smiled
mournfully.
"I remember," she said. "When you proposed to me you held it in your
hand." And seeing that he was preparing to go out, she said: "Please
come back early if you can. I am dull without you."
And then she went into her own room, and gazed for a long time at the
parasol.
XVII
In spite of the complexity of the business and the immense turnover,
there were no bookkeepers in the warehouse, and it was impossible to
make anything out of the books kept by the cashier in the office. Every
day the warehouse was visited by agents, German and English, with whom
the clerks talked politics and religion. A man of noble birth, ruined by
drink, an ailing, pitiable creature, used to come to translate the
foreign correspondence in the office; the clerks used to call him a
midge, and put salt in his tea. And altogether the whole concern struck
Laptev as a very queer business.
He went to the warehouse every day and tried to establish a new order of
things; he forbade them to thrash the boys and to jeer at the buyers,
and was violently angry when the clerks gleefully despatched to the
provinces worthless shop-soiled goods as though they were new and
fashionable. Now he was the chief person in the warehouse, but still, as
before, he did not know how large his fortune was, whether his business
was doing well, how much the senior clerks were paid, and so on.
Potchatkin and Makeitchev looked upon him as young and inexperienced,
concealed a great deal from him, and whispered mysteriously every
evening with his blind old father.
It somehow happened at the beginning of June that Laptev went into the
Bubnovsky restaurant with Potchatkin to talk business with him over
lunch. Potchatkin had been with the Laptevs a long while, and had
entered their service at eight years old. He seemed to belong to them--
they trusted him fully; and when on leaving the warehouse he gathered up
all the takings from the till and thrust them into his pocket, it never
aroused the slightest suspicion. He was the head man in the business and
in the house, and also in the church, where he performed the duties of
churchwarden in place of his old master. He was nicknamed Malyuta
Skuratov on account of his cruel treatment of the boys and clerks under
him.
When they went into the restaurant he nodded to a waiter and said:
"Bring us, my lad, half a bodkin and twenty-four unsavouries."
After a brief pause the waiter brought on a tray half a bottle of vodka
and some plates of various kinds of savouries.
"Look here, my good fellow," said Potchatkin. "Give us a plateful of the
source of all slander and evil-speaking, with mashed potatoes."
The waiter did not understand; he was puzzled, and would have said
something, but Potchatkin looked at him sternly and said:
"Except."
The waiter thought intently, then went to consult with his colleagues,
and in the end guessing what was meant, brought a plateful of tongue.
When they had drunk a couple of glasses and had had lunch, Laptev asked:
"Tell me, Ivan Vassilitch, is it true that our business has been
dropping off for the last year?"
"Not a bit of it."
"Tell me frankly and honestly what income we have been making and are
making, and what our profits are. We can't go on in the dark. We had a
balancing of the accounts at the warehouse lately, but, excuse me, I
don't believe in it; you think fit to conceal something from me and only
tell the truth to my father. You have been used to being diplomatic from
your childhood, and now you can't get on without it. And what's the use
of it? So I beg you to be open. What is our position?"
"It all depends upon the fluctuation of credit," Potchatkin answered
after a moment's pause.
"What do you understand by the fluctuation of credit?"
Potchatkin began explaining, but Laptev could make nothing of it, and
sent for Makeitchev. The latter promptly made his appearance, had some
lunch after saying grace, and in his sedate, mellow baritone began
saying first of all that the clerks were in duty bound to pray night and
day for their benefactors.
"By all means, only allow me not to consider myself your benefactor,"
said Laptev.
"Every man ought to remember what he is, and to be conscious of his
station. By the grace of God you are a father and benefactor to us, and
we are your slaves."
"I am sick of all that!" said Laptev, getting angry. "Please be a
benefactor to me now. Please explain the position of our business. Give
up looking upon me as a boy, or to-morrow I shall close the business. My
father is blind, my brother is in the asylum, my nieces are only
children. I hate the business; I should be glad to go away, but there's
no one to take my place, as you know. For goodness' sake, drop your
diplomacy!"
They went to the warehouse to go into the accounts; then they went on
with them at home in the evening, the old father himself assisting.
Initiating his son into his commercial secrets, the old man spoke as
though he were engaged, not in trade, but in sorcery. It appeared that
the profits of the business were increasing approximately ten per cent.
per annum, and that the Laptevs' fortune, reckoning only money and paper
securities, amounted to six million roubles.
When at one o'clock at night, after balancing the accounts, Laptev went
out into the open air, he was still under the spell of those figures. It
was a still, sultry, moonlight night. The white walls of the houses
beyond the river, the heavy barred gates, the stillness and the black
shadows, combined to give the impression of a fortress, and nothing was
wanting to complete the picture but a sentinel with a gun. Laptev went
into the garden and sat down on a seat near the fence, which divided
them from the neighbour's yard, where there was a garden, too. The bird-
cherry was in bloom. Laptev remembered that the tree had been just as
gnarled and just as big when he was a child, and had not changed at all
since then. Every corner of the garden and of the yard recalled the far-
away past. And in his childhood, too, just as now, the whole yard bathed
in moonlight could be seen through the sparse trees, the shadows had
been mysterious and forbidding, a black dog had lain in the middle of
the yard, and the clerks' windows had stood wide open. And all these
were cheerless memories.
The other side of the fence, in the neighbour's yard, there was a sound
of light steps.
"My sweet, my precious . . ." said a man's voice so near the fence that
Laptev could hear the man's breathing.
Now they were kissing. Laptev was convinced that the millions and the
business which was so distasteful to him were ruining his life, and
would make him a complete slave. He imagined how, little by little, he
would grow accustomed to his position; would, little by little, enter
into the part of the head of a great firm; would begin to grow dull and
old, die in the end, as the average man usually does die, in a decrepit,
soured old age, making every one about him miserable and depressed. But
what hindered him from giving up those millions and that business, and
leaving that yard and garden which had been hateful to him from his
childhood?
The whispering and kisses the other side of the fence disturbed him. He
moved into the middle of the yard, and, unbuttoning his shirt over his
chest, looked at the moon, and it seemed to him that he would order the
gate to be unlocked, and would go out and never come back again. His
heart ached sweetly with the foretaste of freedom; he laughed joyously,
and pictured how exquisite, poetical, and even holy, life might be. . .
.
But he still stood and did not go away, and kept asking himself: "What
keeps me here?" And he felt angry with himself and with the black dog,
which still lay stretched on the stone yard, instead of running off to
the open country, to the woods, where it would have been free and happy.
It was clear that that dog and he were prevented from leaving the yard
by the same thing; the habit of bondage, of servitude. . . .