Of all the mass of acquaintances who, in this house twenty-five to
thirty-five years ago, had eaten, drunk, masqueraded, fallen in love,
married, bored us with accounts of their splendid packs of hounds and
horses, the only one still living was Ivan Ivanitch Bragin. At one time
he had been very active, talkative, noisy, and given to falling in love,
and had been famous for his extreme views and for the peculiar charm of
his face, which fascinated men as well as women; now he was an old man,
had grown corpulent, and was living out his days with neither views nor
charm. He came the day after getting my letter, in the evening just
as the samovar was brought into the dining-room and little Marya
Gerasimovna had begun slicing the lemon.
“I am very glad to see you, my dear fellow,” I said gaily, meeting him.
“Why, you are stouter than ever....”
“It isn’t getting stout; it’s swelling,” he answered. “The bees must
have stung me.”
With the familiarity of a man laughing at his own fatness, he put his
arms round my waist and laid on my breast his big soft head, with the
hair combed down on the forehead like a Little Russian’s, and went off
into a thin, aged laugh.
“And you go on getting younger,” he said through his laugh. “I wonder
what dye you use for your hair and beard; you might let me have some of
it.” Sniffing and gasping, he embraced me and kissed me on the cheek.
“You might give me some of it,” he repeated. “Why, you are not forty,
are you?”
“Alas, I am forty-six!” I said, laughing.
Ivan Ivanitch smelt of tallow candles and cooking, and that suited him.
His big, puffy, slow-moving body was swathed in a long frock-coat like a
coachman’s full coat, with a high waist, and with hooks and eyes
instead of buttons, and it would have been strange if he had smelt of
eau-de-Cologne, for instance. In his long, unshaven, bluish double chin,
which looked like a thistle, his goggle eyes, his shortness of breath,
and in the whole of his clumsy, slovenly figure, in his voice, his
laugh, and his words, it was difficult to recognize the graceful,
interesting talker who used in old days to make the husbands of the
district jealous on account of their wives.
“I am in great need of your assistance, my friend,” I said, when we were
sitting in the dining-room, drinking tea. “I want to organize relief for
the starving peasants, and I don’t know how to set about it. So perhaps
you will be so kind as to advise me.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Ivan Ivanitch, sighing. “To be sure, to be sure,
to be sure....”
“I would not have worried you, my dear fellow, but really there is no
one here but you I can appeal to. You know what people are like about
here.”
“To be sure, to be sure, to be sure.... Yes.”
I thought that as we were going to have a serious, business consultation
in which any one might take part, regardless of their position or
personal relations, why should I not invite Natalya Gavrilovna.
“_Tres faciunt collegium_,” I said gaily. “What if we were to ask
Natalya Gavrilovna? What do you think? Fenya,” I said, turning to the
maid, “ask Natalya Gavrilovna to come upstairs to us, if possible at
once. Tell her it’s a very important matter.”
A little later Natalya Gavrilovna came in. I got up to meet her and
said:
“Excuse us for troubling you, Natalie. We are discussing a very
important matter, and we had the happy thought that we might take
advantage of your good advice, which you will not refuse to give us.
Please sit down.”
Ivan Ivanitch kissed her hand while she kissed his forehead; then,
when we all sat down to the table, he, looking at her tearfully and
blissfully, craned forward to her and kissed her hand again. She was
dressed in black, her hair was carefully arranged, and she smelt of
fresh scent. She had evidently dressed to go out or was expecting
somebody. Coming into the dining-room, she held out her hand to me with
simple friendliness, and smiled to me as graciously as she did to Ivan
Ivanitch--that pleased me; but as she talked she moved her fingers,
often and abruptly leaned back in her chair and talked rapidly, and this
jerkiness in her words and movements irritated me and reminded me of her
native town--Odessa, where the society, men and women alike, had wearied
me by its bad taste.
“I want to do something for the famine-stricken peasants,” I began, and
after a brief pause I went on: “Money, of course, is a great thing, but
to confine oneself to subscribing money, and with that to be satisfied,
would be evading the worst of the trouble. Help must take the form of
money, but the most important thing is a proper and sound organization.
Let us think it over, my friends, and do something.”
Natalya Gavrilovna looked at me inquiringly and shrugged her shoulders
as though to say, “What do I know about it?”
“Yes, yes, famine...” muttered Ivan Ivanitch. “Certainly... yes.”
“It’s a serious position,” I said, “and assistance is needed as soon as
possible. I imagine the first point among the principles which we must
work out ought to be promptitude. We must act on the military principles
of judgment, promptitude, and energy.”
“Yes, promptitude...” repeated Ivan Ivanitch in a drowsy and listless
voice, as though he were dropping asleep. “Only one can’t do anything.
The crops have failed, and so what’s the use of all your judgment and
energy?... It’s the elements.... You can’t go against God and fate.”
“Yes, but that’s what man has a head for, to contend against the
elements.”
“Eh? Yes... that’s so, to be sure.... Yes.”
Ivan Ivanitch sneezed into his handkerchief, brightened up, and as
though he had just woken up, looked round at my wife and me.
“My crops have failed, too.” He laughed a thin little laugh and gave
a sly wink as though this were really funny. “No money, no corn, and
a yard full of labourers like Count Sheremetyev’s. I want to kick them
out, but I haven’t the heart to.”
Natalya Gavrilovna laughed, and began questioning him about his private
affairs. Her presence gave me a pleasure such as I had not felt for a
long time, and I was afraid to look at her for fear my eyes would betray
my secret feeling. Our relations were such that that feeling might seem
surprising and ridiculous.
She laughed and talked with Ivan Ivanitch without being in the least
disturbed that she was in my room and that I was not laughing.
“And so, my friends, what are we to do?” I asked after waiting for a
pause. “I suppose before we do anything else we had better immediately
open a subscription-list. We will write to our friends in the capitals
and in Odessa, Natalie, and ask them to subscribe. When we have got
together a little sum we will begin buying corn and fodder for the
cattle; and you, Ivan Ivanitch, will you be so kind as to undertake
distributing the relief? Entirely relying on your characteristic tact
and efficiency, we will only venture to express a desire that before you
give any relief you make acquaintance with the details of the case on
the spot, and also, which is very important, you should be careful that
corn should be distributed only to those who are in genuine need, and
not to the drunken, the idle, or the dishonest.”
“Yes, yes, yes...” muttered Ivan Ivanitch. “To be sure, to be sure.”
“Well, one won’t get much done with that slobbering wreck,” I thought,
and I felt irritated.
“I am sick of these famine-stricken peasants, bother them! It’s nothing
but grievances with them!” Ivan Ivanitch went on, sucking the rind of
the lemon. “The hungry have a grievance against those who have enough,
and those who have enough have a grievance against the hungry. Yes...
hunger stupefies and maddens a man and makes him savage; hunger is not a
potato. When a man is starving he uses bad language, and steals, and may
do worse.... One must realize that.”
Ivan Ivanitch choked over his tea, coughed, and shook all over with a
squeaky, smothered laughter.
“‘There was a battle at Pol... Poltava,’” he brought out,
gesticulating with both hands in protest against the laughter and
coughing which prevented him from speaking. “‘There was a battle at
Poltava!’ When three years after the Emancipation we had famine in two
districts here, Fyodor Fyodoritch came and invited me to go to him.
‘Come along, come along,’ he persisted, and nothing else would satisfy
him. ‘Very well, let us go,’ I said. And, so we set off. It was in the
evening; there was snow falling. Towards night we were getting near his
place, and suddenly from the wood came ‘bang!’ and another time ‘bang!’
‘Oh, damn it all!’... I jumped out of the sledge, and I saw in the
darkness a man running up to me, knee-deep in the snow. I put my arm
round his shoulder, like this, and knocked the gun out of his hand. Then
another one turned up; I fetched him a knock on the back of his head so
that he grunted and flopped with his nose in the snow. I was a sturdy
chap then, my fist was heavy; I disposed of two of them, and when I
turned round Fyodor was sitting astride of a third. We did not let our
three fine fellows go; we tied their hands behind their backs so that
they might not do us or themselves any harm, and took the fools into the
kitchen. We were angry with them and at the same time ashamed to look at
them; they were peasants we knew, and were good fellows; we were sorry
for them. They were quite stupid with terror. One was crying and begging
our pardon, the second looked like a wild beast and kept swearing, the
third knelt down and began to pray. I said to Fedya: ‘Don’t bear them
a grudge; let them go, the rascals!’ He fed them, gave them a bushel of
flour each, and let them go: ‘Get along with you,’ he said. So that’s
what he did.... The Kingdom of Heaven be his and everlasting peace! He
understood and did not bear them a grudge; but there were some who did,
and how many people they ruined! Yes... Why, over the affair at the
Klotchkovs’ tavern eleven men were sent to the disciplinary battalion.
Yes.... And now, look, it’s the same thing. Anisyin, the investigating
magistrate, stayed the night with me last Thursday, and he told me about
some landowner.... Yes.... They took the wall of his barn to pieces at
night and carried off twenty sacks of rye. When the gentleman heard that
such a crime had been committed, he sent a telegram to the Governor
and another to the police captain, another to the investigating
magistrate!... Of course, every one is afraid of a man who is fond of
litigation. The authorities were in a flutter and there was a general
hubbub. Two villages were searched.”
“Excuse me, Ivan Ivanitch,” I said. “Twenty sacks of rye were stolen
from me, and it was I who telegraphed to the Governor. I telegraphed to
Petersburg, too. But it was by no means out of love for litigation, as
you are pleased to express it, and not because I bore them a grudge.
I look at every subject from the point of view of principle. From the
point of view of the law, theft is the same whether a man is hungry or
not.”
“Yes, yes...” muttered Ivan Ivanitch in confusion. “Of course... To be
sure, yes.”
Natalya Gavrilovna blushed.
“There are people...” she said and stopped; she made an effort to seem
indifferent, but she could not keep it up, and looked into my eyes with
the hatred that I know so well. “There are people,” she said, “for whom
famine and human suffering exist simply that they may vent their hateful
and despicable temperaments upon them.”