Summer comes on and life is changed.
One fine morning Liza comes in to me and says in a jesting tone:
“Come, your Excellency! We are ready.”
My Excellency is conducted into the street, and seated in a cab. As I go
along, having nothing to do, I read the signboards from right to left.
The word “Traktir” reads “Ritkart”; that would just suit some baron’s
family: Baroness Ritkart. Farther on I drive through fields, by the
graveyard, which makes absolutely no impression on me, though I shall
soon lie in it; then I drive by forests and again by fields. There
is nothing of interest. After two hours of driving, my Excellency is
conducted into the lower storey of a summer villa and installed in a
small, very cheerful little room with light blue hangings.
At night there is sleeplessness as before, but in the morning I do not
put a good face upon it and listen to my wife, but lie in bed. I do not
sleep, but lie in the drowsy, half-conscious condition in which you know
you are not asleep, but dreaming. At midday I get up and from habit
sit down at my table, but I do not work now; I amuse myself with French
books in yellow covers, sent me by Katya. Of course, it would be more
patriotic to read Russian authors, but I must confess I cherish no
particular liking for them. With the exception of two or three of the
older writers, all our literature of today strikes me as not being
literature, but a special sort of home industry, which exists simply
in order to be encouraged, though people do not readily make use of
its products. The very best of these home products cannot be called
remarkable and cannot be sincerely praised without qualification. I must
say the same of all the literary novelties I have read during the last
ten or fifteen years; not one of them is remarkable, and not one of them
can be praised without a “but.” Cleverness, a good tone, but no talent;
talent, a good tone, but no cleverness; or talent, cleverness, but not a
good tone.
I don’t say the French books have talent, cleverness, and a good tone.
They don’t satisfy me, either. But they are not so tedious as the
Russian, and it is not unusual to find in them the chief element of
artistic creation--the feeling of personal freedom which is lacking in
the Russian authors. I don’t remember one new book in which the author
does not try from the first page to entangle himself in all sorts of
conditions and contracts with his conscience. One is afraid to speak of
the naked body; another ties himself up hand and foot in psychological
analysis; a third must have a “warm attitude to man”; a fourth purposely
scrawls whole descriptions of nature that he may not be suspected of
writing with a purpose.... One is bent upon being middle-class in his
work, another must be a nobleman, and so on. There is intentionalness,
circumspection, and self-will, but they have neither the independence
nor the manliness to write as they like, and therefore there is no
creativeness.
All this applies to what is called belles-lettres.
As for serious treatises in Russian on sociology, for instance, on art,
and so on, I do not read them simply from timidity. In my childhood and
early youth I had for some reason a terror of doorkeepers and attendants
at the theatre, and that terror has remained with me to this day. I am
afraid of them even now. It is said that we are only afraid of what we
do not understand. And, indeed, it is very difficult to understand
why doorkeepers and theatre attendants are so dignified, haughty, and
majestically rude. I feel exactly the same terror when I read serious
articles. Their extraordinary dignity, their bantering lordly tone,
their familiar manner to foreign authors, their ability to split straws
with dignity--all that is beyond my understanding; it is intimidating
and utterly unlike the quiet, gentlemanly tone to which I am accustomed
when I read the works of our medical and scientific writers. It
oppresses me to read not only the articles written by serious Russians,
but even works translated or edited by them. The pretentious, edifying
tone of the preface; the redundancy of remarks made by the translator,
which prevent me from concentrating my attention; the question marks
and “sic” in parenthesis scattered all over the book or article by the
liberal translator, are to my mind an outrage on the author and on my
independence as a reader.
Once I was summoned as an expert to a circuit court; in an interval one
of my fellow-experts drew my attention to the rudeness of the public
prosecutor to the defendants, among whom there were two ladies of good
education. I believe I did not exaggerate at all when I told him that
the prosecutor’s manner was no ruder than that of the authors of serious
articles to one another. Their manners are, indeed, so rude that I
cannot speak of them without distaste. They treat one another and the
writers they criticize either with superfluous respect, at the sacrifice
of their own dignity, or, on the contrary, with far more ruthlessness
than I have shown in my notes and my thoughts in regard to my future
son-in-law Gnekker. Accusations of irrationality, of evil intentions,
and, indeed, of every sort of crime, form an habitual ornament of
serious articles. And that, as young medical men are fond of saying in
their monographs, is the _ultima ratio!_ Such ways must infallibly have
an effect on the morals of the younger generation of writers, and so I
am not at all surprised that in the new works with which our literature
has been enriched during the last ten or fifteen years the heroes drink
too much vodka and the heroines are not over-chaste.
I read French books, and I look out of the window which is open; I
can see the spikes of my garden-fence, two or three scraggy trees, and
beyond the fence the road, the fields, and beyond them a broad stretch
of pine-wood. Often I admire a boy and girl, both flaxen-headed and
ragged, who clamber on the fence and laugh at my baldness. In their
shining little eyes I read, “Go up, go up, thou baldhead!” They are
almost the only people who care nothing for my celebrity or my rank.
Visitors do not come to me every day now. I will only mention the
visits of Nikolay and Pyotr Ignatyevitch. Nikolay usually comes to me
on holidays, with some pretext of business, though really to see me. He
arrives very much exhilarated, a thing which never occurs to him in the
winter.
“What have you to tell me?” I ask, going out to him in the hall.
“Your Excellency!” he says, pressing his hand to his heart and looking
at me with the ecstasy of a lover--“your Excellency! God be my witness!
Strike me dead on the spot! _Gaudeamus egitur juventus!_”
And he greedily kisses me on the shoulder, on the sleeve, and on the
buttons.
“Is everything going well?” I ask him.
“Your Excellency! So help me God!...”
He persists in grovelling before me for no sort of reason, and soon
bores me, so I send him away to the kitchen, where they give him dinner.
Pyotr Ignatyevitch comes to see me on holidays, too, with the special
object of seeing me and sharing his thoughts with me. He usually sits
down near my table, modest, neat, and reasonable, and does not venture
to cross his legs or put his elbows on the table. All the time, in
a soft, even, little voice, in rounded bookish phrases, he tells me
various, to his mind, very interesting and piquant items of news which
he has read in the magazines and journals. They are all alike and may be
reduced to this type: “A Frenchman has made a discovery; some one else,
a German, has denounced him, proving that the discovery was made in 1870
by some American; while a third person, also a German, trumps them both
by proving they both had made fools of themselves, mistaking bubbles of
air for dark pigment under the microscope.” Even when he wants to
amuse me, Pyotr Ignatyevitch tells me things in the same lengthy,
circumstantial manner as though he were defending a thesis, enumerating
in detail the literary sources from which he is deriving his narrative,
doing his utmost to be accurate as to the date and number of the
journals and the name of every one concerned, invariably mentioning it
in full--Jean Jacques Petit, never simply Petit. Sometimes he stays
to dinner with us, and then during the whole of dinner-time he goes on
telling me the same sort of piquant anecdotes, reducing every one at
table to a state of dejected boredom. If Gnekker and Liza begin talking
before him of fugues and counterpoint, Brahms and Bach, he drops his
eyes modestly, and is overcome with embarrassment; he is ashamed that
such trivial subjects should be discussed before such serious people as
him and me.
In my present state of mind five minutes of him is enough to sicken me
as though I had been seeing and hearing him for an eternity. I hate the
poor fellow. His soft, smooth voice and bookish language exhaust me, and
his stories stupefy me.... He cherishes the best of feelings for me,
and talks to me simply in order to give me pleasure, and I repay him by
looking at him as though I wanted to hypnotize him, and think, “Go, go,
go!...” But he is not amenable to thought-suggestion, and sits on and on
and on....
While he is with me I can never shake off the thought, “It’s possible
when I die he will be appointed to succeed me,” and my poor lecture-hall
presents itself to me as an oasis in which the spring is died up; and I
am ungracious, silent, and surly with Pyotr Ignatyevitch, as though he
were to blame for such thoughts, and not I myself. When he begins, as
usual, praising up the German savants, instead of making fun of him
good-humouredly, as I used to do, I mutter sullenly:
“Asses, your Germans!...”
That is like the late Professor Nikita Krylov, who once, when he was
bathing with Pirogov at Revel and vexed at the water’s being very cold,
burst out with, “Scoundrels, these Germans!” I behave badly with Pyotr
Ignatyevitch, and only when he is going away, and from the window I
catch a glimpse of his grey hat behind the garden-fence, I want to call
out and say, “Forgive me, my dear fellow!”
Dinner is even drearier than in the winter. Gnekker, whom now I hate and
despise, dines with us almost every day. I used to endure his presence
in silence, now I aim biting remarks at him which make my wife and
daughter blush. Carried away by evil feeling, I often say things that
are simply stupid, and I don’t know why I say them. So on one occasion
it happened that I stared a long time at Gnekker, and, _a propos_ of
nothing, I fired off:
“An eagle may perchance swoop down below a cock,
But never will the fowl soar upwards to the clouds...”
And the most vexatious thing is that the fowl Gnekker shows himself much
cleverer than the eagle professor. Knowing that my wife and daughter are
on his side, he takes up the line of meeting my gibes with condescending
silence, as though to say:
“The old chap is in his dotage; what’s the use of talking to him?”
Or he makes fun of me good-naturedly. It is wonderful how petty a man
may become! I am capable of dreaming all dinner-time of how Gnekker
will turn out to be an adventurer, how my wife and Liza will come to see
their mistake, and how I will taunt them--and such absurd thoughts at
the time when I am standing with one foot in the grave!
There are now, too, misunderstandings of which in the old days I had no
idea except from hearsay. Though I am ashamed of it, I will describe one
that occurred the other day after dinner.
I was sitting in my room smoking a pipe; my wife came in as usual, sat
down, and began saying what a good thing it would be for me to go to
Harkov now while it is warm and I have free time, and there find out
what sort of person our Gnekker is.
“Very good; I will go,” I assented.
My wife, pleased with me, got up and was going to the door, but turned
back and said:
“By the way, I have another favour to ask of you. I know you will be
angry, but it is my duty to warn you.... Forgive my saying it, Nikolay
Stepanovitch, but all our neighbours and acquaintances have begun
talking about your being so often at Katya’s. She is clever and
well-educated; I don’t deny that her company may be agreeable; but at
your age and with your social position it seems strange that you should
find pleasure in her society.... Besides, she has such a reputation
that...”
All the blood suddenly rushed to my brain, my eyes flashed fire, I
leaped up and, clutching at my head and stamping my feet, shouted in a
voice unlike my own:
“Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!”
Probably my face was terrible, my voice was strange, for my wife
suddenly turned pale and began shrieking aloud in a despairing voice
that was utterly unlike her own. Liza, Gnekker, then Yegor, came running
in at our shouts....
“Let me alone!” I cried; “let me alone! Go away!”
My legs turned numb as though they had ceased to exist; I felt myself
falling into someone’s arms; for a little while I still heard weeping,
then sank into a swoon which lasted two or three hours.
Now about Katya; she comes to see me every day towards evening, and of
course neither the neighbours nor our acquaintances can avoid noticing
it. She comes in for a minute and carries me off for a drive with her.
She has her own horse and a new chaise bought this summer. Altogether
she lives in an expensive style; she has taken a big detached villa with
a large garden, and has taken all her town retinue with her--two maids,
a coachman... I often ask her:
“Katya, what will you live on when you have spent your father’s money?”
“Then we shall see,” she answers.
“That money, my dear, deserves to be treated more seriously. It was
earned by a good man, by honest labour.”
“You have told me that already. I know it.”
At first we drive through the open country, then through the pine-wood
which is visible from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as it
always has been, though some evil spirit whispers to me that these pines
and fir trees, birds, and white clouds on the sky, will not notice my
absence when in three or four months I am dead. Katya loves driving, and
she is pleased that it is fine weather and that I am sitting beside her.
She is in good spirits and does not say harsh things.
“You are a very good man, Nikolay Stepanovitch,” she says. “You are a
rare specimen, and there isn’t an actor who would understand how to play
you. Me or Mihail Fyodorovitch, for instance, any poor actor could do,
but not you. And I envy you, I envy you horribly! Do you know what I
stand for? What?”
She ponders for a minute, and then asks me:
“Nikolay Stepanovitch, I am a negative phenomenon! Yes?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“H’m! what am I to do?”
What answer was I to make her? It is easy to say “work,” or “give your
possessions to the poor,” or “know yourself,” and because it is so easy
to say that, I don’t know what to answer.
My colleagues when they teach therapeutics advise “the individual study
of each separate case.” One has but to obey this advice to gain the
conviction that the methods recommended in the textbooks as the best and
as providing a safe basis for treatment turn out to be quite unsuitable
in individual cases. It is just the same in moral ailments.
But I must make some answer, and I say:
“You have too much free time, my dear; you absolutely must take up some
occupation. After all, why shouldn’t you be an actress again if it is
your vocation?”
“I cannot!”
“Your tone and manner suggest that you are a victim. I don’t like that,
my dear; it is your own fault. Remember, you began with falling out with
people and methods, but you have done nothing to make either better. You
did not struggle with evil, but were cast down by it, and you are not
the victim of the struggle, but of your own impotence. Well, of course
you were young and inexperienced then; now it may all be different. Yes,
really, go on the stage. You will work, you will serve a sacred art.”
“Don’t pretend, Nikolay Stepanovitch,” Katya interrupts me. “Let us
make a compact once for all; we will talk about actors, actresses, and
authors, but we will let art alone. You are a splendid and rare person,
but you don’t know enough about art sincerely to think it sacred. You
have no instinct or feeling for art. You have been hard at work all your
life, and have not had time to acquire that feeling. Altogether... I
don’t like talk about art,” she goes on nervously. “I don’t like it!
And, my goodness, how they have vulgarized it!”
“Who has vulgarized it?”
“They have vulgarized it by drunkenness, the newspapers by their
familiar attitude, clever people by philosophy.”
“Philosophy has nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, it has. If any one philosophizes about it, it shows he does not
understand it.”
To avoid bitterness I hasten to change the subject, and then sit a
long time silent. Only when we are driving out of the wood and turning
towards Katya’s villa I go back to my former question, and say:
“You have still not answered me, why you don’t want to go on the stage.”
“Nikolay Stepanovitch, this is cruel!” she cries, and suddenly flushes
all over. “You want me to tell you the truth aloud? Very well, if...
if you like it! I have no talent! No talent and... and a great deal of
vanity! So there!”
After making this confession she turns her face away from me, and to
hide the trembling of her hands tugs violently at the reins.
As we are driving towards her villa we see Mihail Fyodorovitch walking
near the gate, impatiently awaiting us.
“That Mihail Fyodorovitch again!” says Katya with vexation. “Do rid me
of him, please! I am sick and tired of him... bother him!”
Mihail Fyodorovitch ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he puts off
going from week to week. Of late there have been certain changes in
him. He looks, as it were, sunken, has taken to drinking until he is
tipsy, a thing which never used to happen to him, and his black eyebrows
are beginning to turn grey. When our chaise stops at the gate he does
not conceal his joy and his impatience. He fussily helps me and Katya
out, hurriedly asks questions, laughs, rubs his hands, and that gentle,
imploring, pure expression, which I used to notice only in his eyes, is
now suffused all over his face. He is glad and at the same time he is
ashamed of his gladness, ashamed of his habit of spending every evening
with Katya. And he thinks it necessary to explain his visit by some
obvious absurdity such as: “I was driving by, and I thought I would just
look in for a minute.”
We all three go indoors; first we drink tea, then the familiar packs
of cards, the big piece of cheese, the fruit, and the bottle of Crimean
champagne are put upon the table. The subjects of our conversation are
not new; they are just the same as in the winter. We fall foul of the
University, the students, and literature and the theatre; the air grows
thick and stifling with evil speaking, and poisoned by the breath,
not of two toads as in the winter, but of three. Besides the velvety
baritone laugh and the giggle like the gasp of a concertina, the maid
who waits upon us hears an unpleasant cracked “He, he!” like the chuckle
of a general in a vaudeville.
V
There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, such
as are called among the people “sparrow nights.” There has been one such
night in my personal life.
I woke up after midnight and leaped suddenly out of bed. It seemed to
me for some reason that I was just immediately going to die. Why did
it seem so? I had no sensation in my body that suggested my immediate
death, but my soul was oppressed with terror, as though I had suddenly
seen a vast menacing glow of fire.
I rapidly struck a light, drank some water straight out of the decanter,
then hurried to the open window. The weather outside was magnificent.
There was a smell of hay and some other very sweet scent. I could see
the spikes of the fence, the gaunt, drowsy trees by the window, the
road, the dark streak of woodland, there was a serene, very bright
moon in the sky and not a single cloud, perfect stillness, not one leaf
stirring. I felt that everything was looking at me and waiting for me to
die....
It was uncanny. I closed the window and ran to my bed. I felt for my
pulse, and not finding it in my wrist, tried to find it in my temple,
then in my chin, and again in my wrist, and everything I touched was
cold and clammy with sweat. My breathing came more and more rapidly, my
body was shivering, all my inside was in commotion; I had a sensation
on my face and on my bald head as though they were covered with spiders’
webs.
What should I do? Call my family? No; it would be no use. I could not
imagine what my wife and Liza would do when they came in to me.
I hid my head under the pillow, closed my eyes, and waited and
waited.... My spine was cold; it seemed to be drawn inwards, and I felt
as though death were coming upon me stealthily from behind.
“Kee-vee! kee-vee!” I heard a sudden shriek in the night’s stillness,
and did not know where it was--in my breast or in the street--“Kee-vee!
kee-vee!”
“My God, how terrible!” I would have drunk some more water, but by then
it was fearful to open my eyes and I was afraid to raise my head. I was
possessed by unaccountable animal terror, and I cannot understand why
I was so frightened: was it that I wanted to live, or that some new
unknown pain was in store for me?
Upstairs, overhead, some one moaned or laughed. I listened. Soon
afterwards there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Some one came
hurriedly down, then went up again. A minute later there was a sound of
steps downstairs again; some one stopped near my door and listened.
“Who is there?” I cried.
The door opened. I boldly opened my eyes, and saw my wife. Her face was
pale and her eyes were tear-stained.
“You are not asleep, Nikolay Stepanovitch?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“For God’s sake, go up and have a look at Liza; there is something the
matter with her....”
“Very good, with pleasure,” I muttered, greatly relieved at not being
alone. “Very good, this minute....”
I followed my wife, heard what she said to me, and was too agitated to
understand a word. Patches of light from her candle danced about the
stairs, our long shadows trembled. My feet caught in the skirts of my
dressing-gown; I gasped for breath, and felt as though something were
pursuing me and trying to catch me from behind.
“I shall die on the spot, here on the staircase,” I thought. “On the
spot....” But we passed the staircase, the dark corridor with the
Italian windows, and went into Liza’s room. She was sitting on the bed
in her nightdress, with her bare feet hanging down, and she was moaning.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” she was muttering, screwing up her eyes at our
candle. “I can’t bear it.”
“Liza, my child,” I said, “what is it?”
Seeing me, she began crying out, and flung herself on my neck.
“My kind papa!...” she sobbed--“my dear, good papa... my darling, my
pet, I don’t know what is the matter with me.... I am miserable!”
She hugged me, kissed me, and babbled fond words I used to hear from her
when she was a child.
“Calm yourself, my child. God be with you,” I said. “There is no need to
cry. I am miserable, too.”
I tried to tuck her in; my wife gave her water, and we awkwardly
stumbled by her bedside; my shoulder jostled against her shoulder, and
meanwhile I was thinking how we used to give our children their bath
together.
“Help her! help her!” my wife implored me. “Do something!”
What could I do? I could do nothing. There was some load on the girl’s
heart; but I did not understand, I knew nothing about it, and could only
mutter:
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing; it will pass. Sleep, sleep!”
To make things worse, there was a sudden sound of dogs howling, at first
subdued and uncertain, then loud, two dogs howling together. I had
never attached significance to such omens as the howling of dogs or the
shrieking of owls, but on that occasion it sent a pang to my heart, and
I hastened to explain the howl to myself.
“It’s nonsense,” I thought, “the influence of one organism on another.
The intensely strained condition of my nerves has infected my wife,
Liza, the dog--that is all.... Such infection explains presentiments,
forebodings....”
When a little later I went back to my room to write a prescription for
Liza, I no longer thought I should die at once, but only had such a
weight, such a feeling of oppression in my soul that I felt actually
sorry that I had not died on the spot. For a long time I stood
motionless in the middle of the room, pondering what to prescribe for
Liza. But the moans overhead ceased, and I decided to prescribe nothing,
and yet I went on standing there....
There was a deathlike stillness, such a stillness, as some author has
expressed it, “it rang in one’s ears.” Time passed slowly; the streaks
of moonlight on the window-sill did not shift their position, but seemed
as though frozen.... It was still some time before dawn.
But the gate in the fence creaked, some one stole in and, breaking a
twig from one of those scraggy trees, cautiously tapped on the window
with it.
“Nikolay Stepanovitch,” I heard a whisper. “Nikolay Stepanovitch.”
I opened the window, and fancied I was dreaming: under the window,
huddled against the wall, stood a woman in a black dress, with the
moonlight bright upon her, looking at me with great eyes. Her face was
pale, stern, and weird-looking in the moonlight, like marble, her chin
was quivering.
“It is I,” she said--“I... Katya.”
In the moonlight all women’s eyes look big and black, all people look
taller and paler, and that was probably why I had not recognized her for
the first minute.
“What is it?”
“Forgive me!” she said. “I suddenly felt unbearably miserable... I
couldn’t stand it, so came here. There was a light in your window and...
and I ventured to knock.... I beg your pardon. Ah! if you knew how
miserable I am! What are you doing just now?”
“Nothing.... I can’t sleep.”
“I had a feeling that there was something wrong, but that is nonsense.”
Her brows were lifted, her eyes shone with tears, and her whole face was
lighted up with the familiar look of trustfulness which I had not seen
for so long.
“Nikolay Stepanovitch,” she said imploringly, stretching out both hands
to me, “my precious friend, I beg you, I implore you.... If you don’t
despise my affection and respect for you, consent to what I ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“Take my money from me!”
“Come! what an idea! What do I want with your money?”
“You’ll go away somewhere for your health.... You ought to go for your
health. Will you take it? Yes? Nikolay Stepanovitch darling, yes?”
She looked greedily into my face and repeated: “Yes, you will take it?”
“No, my dear, I won’t take it,” I said. “Thank you.”
She turned her back upon me and bowed her head. Probably I refused her
in a tone which made further conversation about money impossible.
“Go home to bed,” I said. “We will see each other tomorrow.”
“So you don’t consider me your friend?” she asked dejectedly.
“I don’t say that. But your money would be no use to me now.”
“I beg your pardon...” she said, dropping her voice a whole octave.
“I understand you... to be indebted to a person like me... a retired
actress.... But, good-bye....”
And she went away so quickly that I had not time even to say good-bye.