II

I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the

road that skirted the round lake. It was only possible to go in a

straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a

large round and the distance was almost eight versts farther. All the

way, when looking at the lake, I could see beyond it the opposite

clayey banks, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard

gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the

Count's barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising

still higher the small white belfry of the Count's chapel. At the foot

of the clayey banks was the bathing house with sailcloth nailed on the

sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and

it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the

Count, while in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen

versts.

On the way, I thought of my strange relations to the Count. It was

interesting for me to give myself an account of how we stood and try

to settle it, but, alas! that account was a task beyond my strength.

However much I thought, I could come to no satisfactory decision, and

at last I arrived at the conclusion that I was but a bad judge of

myself and of man in general. The people who knew both the Count and

me explained our mutual connexion. The narrow-browed, who see nothing

beyond the tip of their nose, were fond of asserting that the

illustrious Count found in the “poor and undistinguished” magistrate a

congenial hanger-on and boon companion. To their understanding I, the

writer of these lines, fawned and cringed before the Count for the

sake of the crumbs and scraps that fell from his table. In their

opinion the illustrious millionaire, who was both the bugbear and the

envy of the whole of the S—— district, was very clever and liberal;

otherwise his gracious condescension that went as far as friendship

for an indigent magistrate and the genuine liberalism that made the

Count tolerate my familiarity in addressing him as “thou,” would be

quite incomprehensible. Cleverer people explained our intimacy by our

common “spiritual interests.” The Count and I were of the same age. We

had finished our studies in the same university, we were both jurists,

and we both knew very little: I knew a little, but the Count had

forgotten and drowned in alcohol the little he had ever known. We were

both proud, and by virtue of some reason which was only known to

ourselves, we shunned the world like misanthropes. We were both

indifferent to the opinion of the world—that is of the S—— district—we

were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the

“spiritual interests” that united us. This was all that the people who

knew us could say about our relations.

They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how

weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and

how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they

known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He

was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say

“thou” to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of

kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend.

I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of contempt and

aversion, said to him:

“Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?”

And he accepted this “thou” as an expression of friendship and

submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly

“thou.”

Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka's

head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem'yanych.

Afterwards I often thought: “How much misfortune I would have avoided

bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my

neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if

only my Zorka had gone mad and had carried me far away from that

terribly large lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which

now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have

pressed so heavily on my mind!” But I must not anticipate, all the

more as farther on I shall often have to pause on misfortunes. Now for

gaiety. . . .

My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count's yard. At the very gates

she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.

“An ill omen, sir!” a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of

the Count's long line of stables, called to me.

I believe that a man falling from a horse may break his neck, but I do

not believe in prognostications. Having given the bridle to the

muzhik, I beat the dust off my top-boots with my riding-whip and ran

into the house. Nobody met me. All the doors and windows of the rooms

were wide open, nevertheless the air in the house was heavy, and had a

strange smell. It was a mixture of the odour of ancient, deserted

apartments with the tart narcotic scent of hothouse plants that have

but recently been brought from the conservatories into the

rooms. . . . In the drawing-room, two tumbled cushions were lying on

one of the sofas that was covered with a light blue silk material, and

on a round table before the sofa I saw a glass containing a few drops

of a liquid that exhaled an odour of strong Riga balsam. All this

denoted that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul

in any of the eleven rooms that I traversed. The same desertion that

was round the lake reigned in the house. . . .

A glass door led into the garden from the so-called “mosaic”

drawing-room. I opened it with noise and went down the marble stairs

into the garden. I had gone but a few steps through the avenue when I

met Nastasia, an old woman of ninety, who had formerly been the

Count's nurse. This little wrinkled old creature, forgotten by death,

had a bald head and piercing eyes. When you looked at her face you

involuntarily remembered the nickname “Scops-Owl” that had been given

her in the village. . . . When she saw me she trembled and almost

dropped a glass of milk she was carrying in both hands.

“How do you do, Scops?” I said to her.

She gave me a sidelong glance and silently went on her way. . . . I

seized her by the shoulder.

“Don't be afraid, fool. . . . Where's the Count?”

The old woman pointed to her ear.

“Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?”

Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she

found it useful to calumniate her senses. I shook my finger at her and

let her go.

Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw

people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open

space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias,

stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at

the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass to the open space

and, hiding behind a lilac bush, searched for the Count with my eyes.

My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a folding

cane-bottomed chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same

many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before,

and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated

expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted

with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some

serious thought or anxiety. . . . The Count had not changed at all in

appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same

small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corn-crake. He

had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small

red-haired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks

were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before.

On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or

manliness. . . . All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only

imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody

had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He

believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much

longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he

reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.

Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large

closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me.

His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer

than the Count's, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and

his eyes gazed lazily into the sky. . . . The features of his face

were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. The

type was not Russian. . . . The stout man was without his coat or

waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by

perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.

At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a

stout red neck and sticking out ears was standing. This man was

Urbenin, the Count's bailiff. In honour of the Count's arrival he was

dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The

perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next

to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter.

It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing

at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like

a statue, and waited to be questioned.

“Kusma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,”

the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing

between each word. “Is it possible to execute the master's orders in

such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at

once and to have found out when he could be expected.”

“Yes, yes, yes . . .” the Count exclaimed nervously. “You ought to

have found out everything! He said: ‘I'll come!’ But that's not

enough! I want him at once! Pos‑i‑tively at once! You asked him to

come, but he did not understand!”

“Why do you require him?” the fat man asked the Count.

“I want to see him!”

“Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if

he remained at home to-day. I have no wish for guests.”

I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful,

authoritative “I”?

“But he's not a guest!” my friend said in an imploring tone. “He won't

prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on

ceremonies with him. . . . You'll like him at once, my dear boy, and

you'll soon be friends with him!”

I came out of my hiding place behind the lilac bushes and went up to

the tables. The Count saw and recognized me, and his face brightened

with a pleased smile.

“Here he is! Here he is!” he exclaimed, getting red with pleasure, and

he jumped up from the table. “How good of you to come!”

He ran towards me, seized me in his arms, embraced me and scratched my

cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. These kisses were

followed by lengthy shaking of my hand and long looks into my eyes.

“You, Sergey, have not changed at all! You're still the same! The same

handsome and strong fellow! Thank you for accepting my invitation and

coming at once!”

When released from the Count's embrace, I greeted the bailiff, who was

an old friend of mine, and sat down at the table.

“Oh, Golubchek!”* the Count continued in an excitedly anxious tone.

“If you only knew how delighted I am to see your serious countenance

again. You are not acquainted? Allow me to introduce you—my good

friend, Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky. And this,” he continued,

introducing me to the fat man, “is my good old friend, Sergey

Petrovich Zinov'ev! Our magistrate.”

* Little dove; a much used term of endearment.

The stout, dark-browed man rose slightly from his seat and offered me

his fat, and terribly sweaty hand.

“Very pleased,” he mumbled, examining me from head to foot. “Very

glad!”

Having given vent to his feelings and become calm again, the Count

filled a glass with cold, dark brown tea for me and moved a box of

biscuits towards my hand.

“Eat. . . . When passing through Moscow I bought them at Einem's. I'm

very angry with you, Serezha, so angry that I wanted to quarrel with

you! . . . Not only have you not written me a line during the whole of

the past two years, but you did not even think a single one of my

letters worth answering! That's not friendly!”

“I don't know how to write letters,” I said. “Besides, I have no time

for letter writing. Can you tell me what could I have written to you

about?”

“There must have been many things!”

“Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters:

love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write

to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the

second you don't require; and from the third category we are relieved

as from our birth we have never had any business connexion together.”

“That's about true,” the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with

everything; “but all the same, you might have written, if only a

line. . . . And what's more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two

years you've not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand

versts away or disdained my property. You might have lived here, shot

over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was

away.”

The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about

anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end,

quite regardless of the triviality or insignificance of his subject.

In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem'yanych. I

could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by

his butler, Il'ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained

livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler

of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it

down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.

“So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!” I said.

“No, Serezha, I have not.”

“Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and

shaking your head! It's disgusting!”

“My dear boy, I'm going to drop everything. . . . The doctors have

forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it's unhealthy to drop

habits all at once. . . . It must be done gradually. . . .”

I looked at the Count's unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the

butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the

very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel

and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at

attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over

me. . . . I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having

first opened the Count's eyes to all the unlimited antipathy I felt

for him. . . . There was a moment when I was ready to rise and

depart. . . . But I did not go away. . . . I was prevented (I'm

ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness. . . .

“Give me a glass of vodka, too!” I said to Il'ya.

Long shadows began to be cast on the avenue and on the open space

where we were sitting. . . .

The distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the singing of

orioles greeted the setting of the sun. A gay evening was just

beginning. . . .

“Tell Urbenin to sit down,” I whispered to the Count, “He's standing

before you like a boy.”

“Oh, I never thought of that! Pëtr Egorych,” the Count addressed his

bailiff, “sit down, please! Why are you standing there?”

Urbenin sat down, casting a grateful glance at me. He who was always

healthy and gay appeared to me now to be ill and dull. His face seemed

wrinkled and sleepy, his eyes looked at us lazily and as if

unwillingly.

“Well, Pëtr Egorych, what's new here? Any pretty girls, eh?” Karnéev

asked him. “Isn't there something special . . . something out of the

common?”

“It's always the same, your Excellency. . . .”

“Are there no new . . . nice little girls, Pëtr Egorych?”

Moral Pëtr Egorych blushed.

“I don't know, your Excellency. . . . I don't occupy myself with

that. . . .”

“There are, your Excellency,” broke in the deep bass voice of one-eyed

Kuz'ma, who had been silent all the time. “And quite worth notice,

too.”

“Are they pretty?”

“There are all sorts, your Excellency, for all tastes . . . There are

dark ones and fair ones—all sorts. . . .”

“O, ho! . . . Stop a minute, stop a minute. . . . I remember you

now. . . . My former Leporello, a sort of secretary. . . . Your name's

Kuz'ma, I think?”

“Yes, your Excellency. . . .”

“I remember, I remember. . . . Well, and what have you now in view?

Something new, all peasant girls?”

“Mostly peasants, of course, but there are finer ones, too. . . .”

“Where have you found finer ones . . .” Il'ya asked, winking at

Kuz'ma.

“At Easter the postman's sister-in-law came to stay with him . . .

Nastasia Ivanovna. . . . A girl all on springs. I myself would like to

eat her, but money is wanted. . . . Cheeks like peaches, and all the

rest as good. . . . There's something finer than that, too. It's only

waiting for you, your Excellency. Young, plump, jolly . . . a beauty!

Such a beauty, your Excellency, as you've scarcely found in

Petersburg. . . .”

“Who is it?”

“Olenka, the forester Skvortsov's daughter.”

Urbenin's chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands

on the table, purple in the face, the bailiff rose slowly and turned

towards one-eyed Kuz'ma. The expression on his face of dullness and

fatigue had given place to one of great anger.

“Hold your tongue, serf!” he grumbled. “One-eyed vermin! Say what you

please, but don't dare to touch respectable people!”

“I'm not touching you, Pëtr Egorych,” Kuz'ma said imperturbably.

“I'm not talking about myself, blockhead! Besides. . . . Forgive me,

your Excellency,” the bailiff turned to the Count, “forgive me for

making a scene, but I would beg your Excellency to forbid your

Leporello, as you were pleased to call him, to extend his zeal to

persons who are worthy of all respect!”

“I don't understand . . .” the Count lisped naively. “He has said

nothing very offensive.”

Insulted and excited to a degree, Urbenin went away from the table and

stood with his side towards us. With his arms crossed on his breast

and his eyes blinking, hiding his purple face from us behind the

branches of the bushes, he stood plunged in thought.

Had not this man a presentiment that in the near future his moral

feelings would have to suffer offences a thousand times more bitter?

“I don't understand what has offended him!” the Count whispered in my

ear. “What a caution! There was nothing offensive in what was said.”

After two years of sober life, the glass of vodka acted on me in a

slightly intoxicating manner. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, was

diffused in my brain and through my whole body. Added to this, I began

to feel the coolness of evening, which little by little was

supplanting the sultriness of the day. I proposed to take a stroll.

The Count and his new Polish friend had their coats brought from the

house, and we set off. Urbenin followed us.