ONCE upon a time there lived in Moscow a man called Vladimir
Semyonitch Liadovsky. He took his degree at the university in the
faculty of law and had a post on the board of management of some
railway; but if you had asked him what his work was, he would look
candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his
gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone:
"My work is literature."
After completing his course at the university, Vladimir Semyonitch
had had a paragraph of theatrical criticism accepted by a newspaper.
From this paragraph he passed on to reviewing, and a year later he
had advanced to writing a weekly article on literary matters for
the same paper. But it does not follow from these facts that he was
an amateur, that his literary work was of an ephemeral, haphazard
character. Whenever I saw his neat spare figure, his high forehead
and long mane of hair, when I listened to his speeches, it always
seemed to me that his writing, quite apart from what and how he
wrote, was something organically part of him, like the beating of
his heart, and that his whole literary programme must have been an
integral part of his brain while he was a baby in his mother's womb.
Even in his walk, his gestures, his manner of shaking off the ash
from his cigarette, I could read this whole programme from A to Z,
with all its claptrap, dulness, and honourable sentiments. He was
a literary man all over when with an inspired face he laid a wreath
on the coffin of some celebrity, or with a grave and solemn face
collected signatures for some address; his passion for making the
acquaintance of distinguished literary men, his faculty for finding
talent even where it was absent, his perpetual enthusiasm, his pulse
that went at one hundred and twenty a minute, his ignorance of life,
the genuinely feminine flutter with which he threw himself into
concerts and literary evenings for the benefit of destitute students,
the way in which he gravitated towards the young--all this would
have created for him the reputation of a writer even if he had not
written his articles.
He was one of those writers to whom phrases like, "We are but few,"
or "What would life be without strife? Forward!" were pre-eminently
becoming, though he never strove with any one and never did go
forward. It did not even sound mawkish when he fell to discoursing
of ideals. Every anniversary of the university, on St. Tatiana's
Day, he got drunk, chanted _Gaudeamus_ out of tune, and his beaming
and perspiring countenance seemed to say: "See, I'm drunk; I'm
keeping it up!" But even that suited him.
Vladimir Semyonitch had genuine faith in his literary vocation and
his whole programme. He had no doubts, and was evidently very well
pleased with himself. Only one thing grieved him--the paper for
which he worked had a limited circulation and was not very influential.
But Vladimir Semyonitch believed that sooner or later he would
succeed in getting on to a solid magazine where he would have scope
and could display himself--and what little distress he felt on
this score was pale beside the brilliance of his hopes.
Visiting this charming man, I made the acquaintance of his sister,
Vera Semyonovna, a woman doctor. At first sight, what struck me
about this woman was her look of exhaustion and extreme ill-health.
She was young, with a good figure and regular, rather large features,
but in comparison with her agile, elegant, and talkative brother
she seemed angular, listless, slovenly, and sullen. There was
something strained, cold, apathetic in her movements, smiles, and
words; she was not liked, and was thought proud and not very
intelligent.
In reality, I fancy, she was resting.
"My dear friend," her brother would often say to me, sighing and
flinging back his hair in his picturesque literary way, "one must
never judge by appearances! Look at this book: it has long ago been
read. It is warped, tattered, and lies in the dust uncared for; but
open it, and it will make you weep and turn pale. My sister is like
that book. Lift the cover and peep into her soul, and you will be
horror-stricken. Vera passed in some three months through experiences
that would have been ample for a whole lifetime!"
Vladimir Semyonitch looked round him, took me by the sleeve, and
began to whisper:
"You know, after taking her degree she married, for love, an
architect. It's a complete tragedy! They had hardly been married a
month when--whew--her husband died of typhus. But that was not
all. She caught typhus from him, and when, on her recovery, she
learnt that her Ivan was dead, she took a good dose of morphia. If
it had not been for vigorous measures taken by her friends, my Vera
would have been by now in Paradise. Tell me, isn't it a tragedy?
And is not my sister like an _ingénue_, who has played already all
the five acts of her life? The audience may stay for the farce, but
the _ingénue_ must go home to rest."
After three months of misery Vera Semyonovna had come to live with
her brother. She was not fitted for the practice of medicine, which
exhausted her and did not satisfy her; she did not give one the
impression of knowing her subject, and I never once heard her say
anything referring to her medical studies.
She gave up medicine, and, silent and unoccupied, as though she
were a prisoner, spent the remainder of her youth in colourless
apathy, with bowed head and hanging hands. The only thing to which
she was not completely indifferent, and which brought some brightness
into the twilight of her life, was the presence of her brother,
whom she loved. She loved him himself and his programme, she was
full of reverence for his articles; and when she was asked what her
brother was doing, she would answer in a subdued voice as though
afraid of waking or distracting him: "He is writing. . . ." Usually
when he was at his work she used to sit beside him, her eyes fixed
on his writing hand. She used at such moments to look like a sick
animal warming itself in the sun. . . .
One winter evening Vladimir Semyonitch was sitting at his table
writing a critical article for his newspaper: Vera Semyonovna was
sitting beside him, staring as usual at his writing hand. The critic
wrote rapidly, without erasures or corrections. The pen scratched
and squeaked. On the table near the writing hand there lay open a
freshly-cut volume of a thick magazine, containing a story of peasant
life, signed with two initials. Vladimir Semyonitch was enthusiastic;
he thought the author was admirable in his handling of the subject,
suggested Turgenev in his descriptions of nature, was truthful, and
had an excellent knowledge of the life of the peasantry. The critic
himself knew nothing of peasant life except from books and hearsay,
but his feelings and his inner convictions forced him to believe
the story. He foretold a brilliant future for the author, assured
him he should await the conclusion of the story with great impatience,
and so on.
"Fine story!" he said, flinging himself back in his chair and closing
his eyes with pleasure. "The tone is extremely good."
Vera Semyonovna looked at him, yawned aloud, and suddenly asked an
unexpected question. In the evening she had a habit of yawning
nervously and asking short, abrupt questions, not always relevant.
"Volodya," she asked, "what is the meaning of non-resistance to
evil?"
"Non-resistance to evil!" repeated her brother, opening his eyes.
"Yes. What do you understand by it?"
"You see, my dear, imagine that thieves or brigands attack you, and
you, instead of . . ."
"No, give me a logical definition."
"A logical definition? Um! Well." Vladimir Semyonitch pondered.
"Non-resistance to evil means an attitude of non-interference with
regard to all that in the sphere of mortality is called evil."
Saying this, Vladimir Semyonitch bent over the table and took up a
novel. This novel, written by a woman, dealt with the painfulness
of the irregular position of a society lady who was living under
the same roof with her lover and her illegitimate child. Vladimir
Semyonitch was pleased with the excellent tendency of the story,
the plot and the presentation of it. Making a brief summary of the
novel, he selected the best passages and added to them in his
account: "How true to reality, how living, how picturesque! The
author is not merely an artist; he is also a subtle psychologist
who can see into the hearts of his characters. Take, for example,
this vivid description of the emotions of the heroine on meeting
her husband," and so on.
"Volodya," Vera Semyonovna interrupted his critical effusions, "I've
been haunted by a strange idea since yesterday. I keep wondering
where we should all be if human life were ordered on the basis of
non-resistance to evil?"
"In all probability, nowhere. Non-resistance to evil would give the
full rein to the criminal will, and, to say nothing of civilisation,
this would leave not one stone standing upon another anywhere on
earth."
"What would be left?"
"Bashi-Bazouke and brothels. In my next article I'll talk about
that perhaps. Thank you for reminding me."
And a week later my friend kept his promise. That was just at the
period--in the eighties--when people were beginning to talk and
write of non-resistance, of the right to judge, to punish, to make
war; when some people in our set were beginning to do without
servants, to retire into the country, to work on the land, and to
renounce animal food and carnal love.
After reading her brother's article, Vera Semyonovna pondered and
hardly perceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
"Very nice!" she said. "But still there's a great deal I don't
understand. For instance, in Leskov's story 'Belonging to the
Cathedral' there is a queer gardener who sows for the benefit of
all--for customers, for beggars, and any who care to steal. Did
he behave sensibly?"
From his sister's tone and expression Vladimir Semyonitch saw that
she did not like his article, and, almost for the first time in his
life, his vanity as an author sustained a shock. With a shade of
irritation he answered:
"Theft is immoral. To sow for thieves is to recognise the right of
thieves to existence. What would you think if I were to establish
a newspaper and, dividing it into sections, provide for blackmailing
as well as for liberal ideas? Following the example of that gardener,
I ought, logically, to provide a section for blackmailers, the
intellectual scoundrels? Yes."
Vera Semyonovna made no answer. She got up from the table, moved
languidly to the sofa and lay down.
"I don't know, I know nothing about it," she said musingly. "You
are probably right, but it seems to me, I feel somehow, that there's
something false in our resistance to evil, as though there were
something concealed or unsaid. God knows, perhaps our methods of
resisting evil belong to the category of prejudices which have
become so deeply rooted in us, that we are incapable of parting
with them, and therefore cannot form a correct judgment of them."
"How do you mean?"
"I don't know how to explain to you. Perhaps man is mistaken in
thinking that he is obliged to resist evil and has a right to do
so, just as he is mistaken in thinking, for instance, that the heart
looks like an ace of hearts. It is very possible in resisting evil
we ought not to use force, but to use what is the very opposite of
force--if you, for instance, don't want this picture stolen from
you, you ought to give it away rather than lock it up. . . ."
"That's clever, very clever! If I want to marry a rich, vulgar
woman, she ought to prevent me from such a shabby action by hastening
to make me an offer herself!"
The brother and sister talked till midnight without understanding
each other. If any outsider had overheard them he would hardly have
been able to make out what either of them was driving at.
They usually spent the evening at home. There were no friends'
houses to which they could go, and they felt no need for friends;
they only went to the theatre when there was a new play--such was
the custom in literary circles--they did not go to concerts, for
they did not care for music.
"You may think what you like," Vera Semyonovna began again the next
day, "but for me the question is to a great extent settled. I am
firmly convinced that I have no grounds for resisting evil directed
against me personally. If they want to kill me, let them. My defending
myself will not make the murderer better. All I have now to decide
is the second half of the question: how I ought to behave to evil
directed against my neighbours?"
"Vera, mind you don't become rabid!" said Vladimir Semyonitch,
laughing. "I see non-resistance is becoming your _idée fixe_!"
He wanted to turn off these tedious conversations with a jest, but
somehow it was beyond a jest; his smile was artificial and sour.
His sister gave up sitting beside his table and gazing reverently
at his writing hand, and he felt every evening that behind him on
the sofa lay a person who did not agree with him. And his back grew
stiff and numb, and there was a chill in his soul. An author's
vanity is vindictive, implacable, incapable of forgiveness, and his
sister was the first and only person who had laid bare and disturbed
that uneasy feeling, which is like a big box of crockery, easy to
unpack but impossible to pack up again as it was before.
Weeks and months passed by, and his sister clung to her ideas, and
did not sit down by the table. One spring evening Vladimir Semyonitch
was sitting at his table writing an article. He was reviewing a
novel which described how a village schoolmistress refused the man
whom she loved and who loved her, a man both wealthy and intellectual,
simply because marriage made her work as a schoolmistress impossible.
Vera Semyonovna lay on the sofa and brooded.
"My God, how slow it is!" she said, stretching. "How insipid and
empty life is! I don't know what to do with myself, and you are
wasting your best years in goodness knows what. Like some alchemist,
you are rummaging in old rubbish that nobody wants. My God!"
Vladimir Semyonitch dropped his pen and slowly looked round at his
sister.
"It's depressing to look at you!" said his sister. "Wagner in 'Faust'
dug up worms, but he was looking for a treasure, anyway, and you
are looking for worms for the sake of the worms."
"That's vague!"
"Yes, Volodya; all these days I've been thinking, I've been thinking
painfully for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that
you are hopelessly reactionary and conventional. Come, ask yourself
what is the object of your zealous, conscientious work? Tell me,
what is it? Why, everything has long ago been extracted that can
be extracted from that rubbish in which you are always rummaging.
You may pound water in a mortar and analyse it as long as you like,
you'll make nothing more of it than the chemists have made
already. . . ."
"Indeed!" drawled Vladimir Semyonitch, getting up. "Yes, all this
is old rubbish because these ideas are eternal; but what do you
consider new, then?"
"You undertake to work in the domain of thought; it is for you to
think of something new. It's not for me to teach you."
"Me--an alchemist!" the critic cried in wonder and indignation,
screwing up his eyes ironically. "Art, progress--all that is
alchemy?"
"You see, Volodya, it seems to me that if all you thinking people
had set yourselves to solving great problems, all these little
questions that you fuss about now would solve themselves by the
way. If you go up in a balloon to see a town, you will incidentally,
without any effort, see the fields and the villages and the rivers
as well. When stearine is manufactured, you get glycerine as a
by-product. It seems to me that contemporary thought has settled
on one spot and stuck to it. It is prejudiced, apathetic, timid,
afraid to take a wide titanic flight, just as you and I are afraid
to climb on a high mountain; it is conservative."
Such conversations could not but leave traces. The relations of the
brother and sister grew more and more strained every day. The brother
became unable to work in his sister's presence, and grew irritable
when he knew his sister was lying on the sofa, looking at his back;
while the sister frowned nervously and stretched when, trying to
bring back the past, he attempted to share his enthusiasms with
her. Every evening she complained of being bored, and talked about
independence of mind and those who are in the rut of tradition.
Carried away by her new ideas, Vera Semyonovna proved that the work
that her brother was so engrossed in was conventional, that it was
a vain effort of conservative minds to preserve what had already
served its turn and was vanishing from the scene of action. She
made no end of comparisons. She compared her brother at one time
to an alchemist, then to a musty old Believer who would sooner die
than listen to reason. By degrees there was a perceptible change
in her manner of life, too. She was capable of lying on the sofa
all day long doing nothing but think, while her face wore a cold,
dry expression such as one sees in one-sided people of strong faith.
She began to refuse the attentions of the servants, swept and tidied
her own room, cleaned her own boots and brushed her own clothes.
Her brother could not help looking with irritation and even hatred
at her cold face when she went about her menial work. In that work,
which was always performed with a certain solemnity, he saw something
strained and false, he saw something both pharisaical and affected.
And knowing he could not touch her by persuasion, he carped at her
and teased her like a schoolboy.
"You won't resist evil, but you resist my having servants!" he
taunted her. "If servants are an evil, why do you oppose it? That's
inconsistent!"
He suffered, was indignant and even ashamed. He felt ashamed when
his sister began doing odd things before strangers.
"It's awful, my dear fellow," he said to me in private, waving his
hands in despair. "It seems that our _ingénue_ has remained to play
a part in the farce, too. She's become morbid to the marrow of her
bones! I've washed my hands of her, let her think as she likes; but
why does she talk, why does she excite me? She ought to think what
it means for me to listen to her. What I feel when in my presence
she has the effrontery to support her errors by blasphemously quoting
the teaching of Christ! It chokes me! It makes me hot all over to
hear my sister propounding her doctrines and trying to distort the
Gospel to suit her, when she purposely refrains from mentioning how
the moneychangers were driven out of the Temple. That's, my dear
fellow, what comes of being half educated, undeveloped! That's what
comes of medical studies which provide no general culture!"
One day on coming home from the office, Vladimir Semyonitch found
his sister crying. She was sitting on the sofa with her head bowed,
wringing her hands, and tears were flowing freely down her cheeks.
The critic's good heart throbbed with pain. Tears fell from his
eyes, too, and he longed to pet his sister, to forgive her, to beg
her forgiveness, and to live as they used to before. . . . He knelt
down and kissed her head, her hands, her shoulders. . . . She smiled,
smiled bitterly, unaccountably, while he with a cry of joy jumped
up, seized the magazine from the table and said warmly:
"Hurrah! We'll live as we used to, Verotchka! With God's blessing!
And I've such a surprise for you here! Instead of celebrating the
occasion with champagne, let us read it together! A splendid,
wonderful thing!"
"Oh, no, no!" cried Vera Semyonovna, pushing away the book in alarm.
"I've read it already! I don't want it, I don't want it!"
"When did you read it?"
"A year . . . two years ago. . . I read it long ago, and I know it,
I know it!"
"H'm! . . . You're a fanatic!" her brother said coldly, flinging
the magazine on to the table.
"No, you are a fanatic, not I! You!" And Vera Semyonovna dissolved
into tears again. Her brother stood before her, looked at her
quivering shoulders, and thought. He thought, not of the agonies
of loneliness endured by any one who begins to think in a new way
of their own, not of the inevitable sufferings of a genuine spiritual
revolution, but of the outrage of his programme, the outrage to his
author's vanity.
From this time he treated his sister coldly, with careless irony,
and he endured her presence in the room as one endures the presence
of old women that are dependent on one. For her part, she left off
disputing with him and met all his arguments, jeers, and attacks
with a condescending silence which irritated him more than ever.
One summer morning Vera Semyonovna, dressed for travelling with a
satchel over her shoulder, went in to her brother and coldly kissed
him on the forehead.
"Where are you going?" he asked with surprise.
"To the province of N. to do vaccination work." Her brother went
out into the street with her.
"So that's what you've decided upon, you queer girl," he muttered.
"Don't you want some money?"
"No, thank you. Good-bye."
The sister shook her brother's hand and set off.
"Why don't you have a cab?" cried Vladimir Semyonitch.
She did not answer. Her brother gazed after her, watched her
rusty-looking waterproof, the swaying of her figure as she slouched
along, forced himself to sigh, but did not succeed in rousing a
feeling of regret. His sister had become a stranger to him. And he
was a stranger to her. Anyway, she did not once look round.
Going back to his room, Vladimir Semyonitch at once sat down to the
table and began to work at his article.
I never saw Vera Semyonovna again. Where she is now I do not know.
And Vladimir Semyonitch went on writing his articles, laying wreaths
on coffins, singing _Gaudeamus_, busying himself over the Mutual
Aid Society of Moscow Journalists.
He fell ill with inflammation of the lungs; he was ill in bed for
three months--at first at home, and afterwards in the Golitsyn
Hospital. An abscess developed in his knee. People said he ought
to be sent to the Crimea, and began getting up a collection for
him. But he did not go to the Crimea--he died. We buried him in
the Vagankovsky Cemetery, on the left side, where artists and
literary men are buried.
One day we writers were sitting in the Tatars' restaurant. I mentioned
that I had lately been in the Vagankovsky Cemetery and had seen
Vladimir Semyonitch's grave there. It was utterly neglected and
almost indistinguishable from the rest of the ground, the cross had
fallen; it was necessary to collect a few roubles to put it in
order.
But they listened to what I said unconcernedly, made no answer, and
I could not collect a farthing. No one remembered Vladimir Semyonitch.
He was utterly forgotten.