Black-eyed Tina's letter, her large sprawling handwriting, reminded me
of the mosaic room and aroused in me desires such as a drunkard has
for more drink; but I overcame them, and by the strength of my will I
forced myself to work. At first I found it unspeakably dull to
decipher the bold handwriting of the various commissaries, but
gradually my attention became fixed on a burglary, and I began to work
with delight. All day long I sat working at my table, and Polycarp
passed behind me from time to time and looked suspiciously at my work.
He had no confidence in my sobriety, and at any moment he expected to
see me rise from the table and order Zorka to be saddled; but towards
evening, seeing my persistence, he began to give credence to my good
intentions, and the expression of moroseness on his face gave place to
one of satisfaction. . . . He began to walk about on tiptoe and to
speak in whispers. . . . When some young fellows passed my house,
playing on the accordion, he went into the street and shouted:
“What do you young devils mean by making such a row here? Can't you go
another way? Don't you know, you Mahommedans, that the master is
working?”
In the evening when he served the samovar in the dining-room, he
quietly opened my door and called me graciously to come to tea.
“Will you please come to tea?” he said, sighing gently and smiling
respectfully.
And while I was drinking my tea he came up behind me and kissed me on
the shoulder.
“Now that's better, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “Why don't you let
that white-eyebrowed devil be hanged, may he be. . . . Is it possible
with your high understanding and your education to occupy yourself
with pusillanimousness? Your work is noble. . . . Everybody must
glorify you, be afraid of you; but if you break people's heads with
that devil and bathe in the lake in all your clothes, everyone will
say: ‘He has no sense! He's an empty-headed fellow!’ And so that
reputation will be noised about the whole world! Foolhardiness is
suitable for merchants, but not for noblemen. . . . Noblemen require
science and office. . . .”
“All right! Enough, enough. . . .”
“Sergey Petrovich, don't keep company with that Count. If you want to
have a friend, who could be better than Doctor Pavel Ivanovich? He
goes about shabbily dressed, but how clever he is!”
I was melted by Polycarp's sincerity. . . . I wanted to say an
affectionate word to him. . . .
“What novel are you reading now?” I asked.
“‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ That's a Count for you! That's a real
Count! Not like your smut-Count!”
After tea I again sat down to work and worked until my eyelids began
to droop and close my tired eyes. . . . When I went to bed I ordered
Polycarp to wake me at five o'clock.
The next morning, before six o'clock, whistling gaily and knocking off
the heads of the field flowers, I was walking towards Tenevo, where
the fête of the church to which my friend “Screw” had invited me to
come was being celebrated that day. It was a glorious morning.
Happiness itself appeared to be hanging above the earth, and reflected
in every dewdrop, enticed the soul of the passer-by to itself. The
woods enwrapped in morning light, were quiet and motionless as if
listening to my footsteps, and the chirping brotherhood of birds met
me with expressions of mistrust and alarm. . . . The air, impregnated
with the evaporations of the fresh green, caressed my healthy lungs
with its softness. I breathed it in, and casting my enraptured eyes
over the whole distant prospect, I felt the spring and youth, and it
seemed to me that the young birches, the grass at the roadside, and
the ceaselessly humming cockchafers shared these feelings with me.
“Why is it that there in the world men crowd together in their
miserable hovels, in their narrow and limited ideas,” I thought,
“while they have here so much space for life and thought? Why do they
not come here?”
And my poetic imagination refused to be disturbed by thoughts of
winter and of bread, those two sorrows that drive poets into cold,
prosaic Petersburg and uncleanly Moscow, where fees are paid for
verse, but no inspiration can be found.
Peasants' carts and landowners' britzkas hurrying to the liturgy or to
market passed me constantly as I trudged along. All the time I had to
take off my cap in answer to the courteous bows of the muzhiks and the
landowners of my acquaintance. They all offered to give me a lift, but
to walk was pleasanter than to drive, and I refused all their offers.
Among others the Count's gardener, Franz, in a blue jacket and a
jockey cap, passed me on a racing droshky. . . . He looked lazily at
me with his sleepy, sour eyes and touched his cap in a still more lazy
fashion. Behind him a twelve-gallon barrel with iron hoops, evidently
for vodka, was tied to the droshky. . . . Franz's disagreeable phiz
and his barrel somewhat disturbed my poetical mood, but very soon
poetry triumphed again when I heard the sound of wheels behind me, and
looking round I saw a heavy wagonette drawn by a pair of bays, and in
the heavy wagonette, on a leathern cushion on a sort of box seat, was
my new acquaintance, “the girl in red,” who two days before had spoken
to me about the “electricity that had killed her mother.” Olenka's
pretty, freshly washed and somewhat sleepy face beamed and blushed
slightly when she saw me striding along the footpath that separated
the wood from the road. She nodded merrily to me and smiled in the
affable manner of an old acquaintance.
“Good morning!” I shouted to her.
She kissed her hand to me and disappeared from my sight, together with
her heavy wagonette, without giving me enough time to admire her
fresh, pretty face. This day she was not dressed in red. She wore a
sort of dark green costume with large buttons and a broad-brimmed
straw hat, but even in this garb she pleased me no less than she had
done before. I would have talked to her with pleasure, and I would
gladly have heard her voice. I wanted to gaze into her deep eyes in
the brilliancy of the sun, as I had gazed into them that night by the
flashes of lightning. I wanted to take her down from the ugly
wagonette and propose that she should walk beside me for the rest of
the way, and I certainly would have done so if it had not been for the
“rules of society.” For some reason it appeared to me that she would
have gladly agreed to this proposal. It was not without some cause
that she had twice looked back at me as the wagonette disappeared
behind some old alders! . . .
It was about six versts from the place of my abode to Tenevo—nothing
of a distance for a young man on a fine morning. Shortly after six I
was already making my way between loaded carts and the booths of the
fair towards the Tenevo church. Notwithstanding the early hour and the
fact that the liturgy in the church was not over as yet, the noise of
trade was already in the air. The squeaking of cart wheels, the
neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, and the sounds of toy
trumpets were intermixed with the cries of gipsy horse-dealers and the
songs of muzhiks, who had already found time to get drunk. What
numbers of gay, idle faces! What types! What beauty there was in the
movements of these masses, bright with brilliant coloured dresses, on
which the morning sun poured its light! All this many-thousand-headed
crowd swarmed, moved, made a noise in order to finish the business
they had to do in a few hours, and to disperse by the evening, leaving
after them, on the market place as a sort of remembrance, refuse of
hay, oats spilt here and there, and nutshells. . . . The people, in
dense crowds, were going to and coming from the church.
The cross that surmounts the church emitted golden rays, bright as
those of the sun. It glittered and seemed to be aflame with golden
fire. Beneath it the cupola of the church was burning with the same
fire, and the freshly painted green dome shone in the sun, and beyond
the sparkling cross the clear blue sky stretched out in the far
distance. I passed through the crowds in the churchyard and entered
the church. The liturgy had only just begun and the Gospel was being
read. The silence of the church was only broken by the voice of the
reader and the footsteps of the incensing deacon. The people stood
silent and immovable, gazing with reverence through the wide-open holy
gates of the altar and listening to the drawling voice of the reader.
Village decorum, or, to speak more correctly, village propriety,
strictly represses every inclination to violate the reverend quiet of
the church. I always felt ashamed when in a church anything caused me
to smile or speak. Unfortunately it is but seldom that I do not meet
some of my acquaintances who, I regret to say, are only too numerous,
and it generally happens that I have hardly entered the church before
I am accosted by one of the “intelligentsia” who, after a long
introduction about the weather, begins a conversation on his own
trivial affairs. I answer “yes” and “no,” but I am too considerate to
refuse to give him any attention. My consideration often costs me
dear. While I talk I glance bashfully at my neighbours who are
praying, fearing that my idle chatter may wound them.
This time, as usual, I did not escape from acquaintances. When I
entered the church I saw my heroine standing close to the door—that
same “girl in red” whom I had met on the way to Tenevo.
Poor little thing! There she stood, red as a crawfish, and perspiring
in the midst of the crowd, casting imploring glances on all those
faces in the search for a deliverer. She had stuck fast in the densest
crowd and, unable to move either forward or backward, looked like a
bird who was being tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she
smiled bitterly and began nodding her pretty chin.
“For God's sake, escort me to the front!” she said, seizing hold of my
sleeve. “It is terribly stuffy here—and so crowded. . . . I beg you!”
“In front it will be as crowded,” I replied.
“But there, all the people are well dressed and respectable. . . .
Here are only common people. A place is reserved for us in
front. . . . You, too, ought to be there. . . .”
Consequently she was red not because it was stuffy and crowded in the
church. Her little head was troubled by the question of precedence. I
granted the vain girl's prayer, and by carefully pressing aside the
people I was able to conduct her to the very dais near the altar on
which the flower of our district _beau-monde_ was collected. Having
placed Olenka in a position that was in accordance with her
aristocratic desires, I took up a post at the back of the _beau-monde_
and began an inspection.
As usual, the men and women were whispering and giggling. The Justice
of the Peace, Kalinin, gesticulating with his hands and shaking his
head, was telling the landowner, Deryaev, in an undertone all about
his ailments. Deryaev was abusing the doctors almost aloud and
advising the justice of the peace to be treated by a certain Evstrat
Ivanych. The ladies, perceiving Olenka, pounced upon her as a good
subject for their criticism and began whispering. There was only one
girl who evidently was praying.
She was kneeling, with her black eyes fixed in front of her; she was
moving her lips. She did not notice a curl of hair that had got loose
under her hat and was hanging in disorder over her temple. . . . She
did not notice that Olenka and I had stopped beside her.
She was Nadezhda Nikolaevna, Justice Kalinin's daughter. When I spoke
above of the woman, who, like a black cat, had run between the doctor
and me, I was speaking of her. . . . The doctor loved her as only such
noble natures as my dear “Screw's” are able to love. Now he was
standing beside her, as stiff as a pikestaff, with his hands at his
sides and his neck stretched out. From time to time his loving eyes
glanced inquiringly at her concentrated face. He seemed to be watching
her prayer and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate
longing to be the object of her prayers. But, to his grief, he knew
for whom she was praying. . . . It was not for him. . . .
I made a sign to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round at me, and we
both left the church.
“Let's stroll about the market,” I proposed.
We lighted our cigarettes and went towards the booths.