“A fine fellow... a fine fellow...” muttered my uncle, taking his hand
from my lips and stroking me on the head. “So your name is Andrusha?
Yes, yes.... H’m!... upon my soul!... Do you learn lessons?”
My mother, exaggerating and embellishing as all mothers do, began
to describe my achievements in the sciences and the excellence of my
behaviour, and I walked round my uncle and, following the ceremonial
laid down for me, I continued making low bows. Then my mother began
throwing out hints that with my remarkable abilities it would not be
amiss for me to get a government nomination to the cadet school; but at
the point when I was to have burst into tears and begged for my
uncle’s protection, my uncle suddenly stopped and flung up his hands in
amazement.
“My goo-oodness! What’s that?” he asked.
Tatyana Ivanovna, the wife of our bailiff, Fyodor Petrovna, was coming
towards us. She was carrying a starched white petticoat and a long
ironing-board. As she passed us she looked shyly at the visitor through
her eyelashes and flushed crimson.
“Wonders will never cease...” my uncle filtered through his teeth,
looking after her with friendly interest. “You have a fresh surprise at
every step, sister... upon my soul!”
“She’s a beauty...” said mother. “They chose her as a bride for Fyodor,
though she lived over seventy miles from here....”
Not every one would have called Tatyana a beauty. She was a plump little
woman of twenty, with black eyebrows and a graceful figure, always rosy
and attractive-looking, but in her face and in her whole person there
was not one striking feature, not one bold line to catch the eye, as
though nature had lacked inspiration and confidence when creating her.
Tatyana Ivanovna was shy, bashful, and modest in her behaviour; she
moved softly and smoothly, said little, seldom laughed, and her whole
life was as regular as her face and as flat as her smooth, tidy hair. My
uncle screwed up his eyes looking after her, and smiled. Mother looked
intently at his smiling face and grew serious.
“And so, brother, you’ve never married!” she sighed.
“No; I’ve not married.”
“Why not?” asked mother softly.
“How can I tell you? It has happened so. In my youth I was too hard
at work, I had no time to live, and when I longed to live--I looked
round--and there I had fifty years on my back already. I was too late!
However, talking about it... is depressing.”
My mother and my uncle both sighed at once and walked on, and I left
them and flew off to find my tutor, that I might share my impressions
with him. Pobyedimsky was standing in the middle of the yard, looking
majestically at the heavens.
“One can see he is a man of culture!” he said, twisting his head round.
“I hope we shall get on together.”
An hour later mother came to us.
“I am in trouble, my dears!” she began, sighing. “You see brother has
brought a valet with him, and the valet, God bless him, is not one you
can put in the kitchen or in the hall; we must give him a room apart.
I can’t think what I am to do! I tell you what, children, couldn’t you
move out somewhere--to Fyodor’s lodge, for instance--and give your room
to the valet? What do you say?”
We gave our ready consent, for living in the lodge was a great deal more
free than in the house, under mother’s eye.
“It’s a nuisance, and that’s a fact!” said mother. “Brother says he
won’t have dinner in the middle of the day, but between six and seven,
as they do in Petersburg. I am simply distracted with worry! By seven
o’clock the dinner will be done to rags in the oven. Really, men
don’t understand anything about housekeeping, though they have so much
intellect. Oh, dear! we shall have to cook two dinners every day! You
will have dinner at midday as before, children, while your poor old
mother has to wait till seven, for the sake of her brother.”
Then my mother heaved a deep sigh, bade me try and please my uncle,
whose coming was a piece of luck for me for which we must thank God, and
hurried off to the kitchen. Pobyedimsky and I moved into the lodge the
same day. We were installed in a room which formed the passage from the
entry to the bailiff’s bedroom.
Contrary to my expectations, life went on just as before, drearily
and monotonously, in spite of my uncle’s arrival and our move into
new quarters. We were excused lessons “on account of the visitor.”
Pobyedimsky, who never read anything or occupied himself in any way,
spent most of his time sitting on his bed, with his long nose thrust
into the air, thinking. Sometimes he would get up, try on his new suit,
and sit down again to relapse into contemplation and silence. Only
one thing worried him, the flies, which he used mercilessly to squash
between his hands. After dinner he usually “rested,” and his snores were
a cause of annoyance to the whole household. I ran about the garden from
morning to night, or sat in the lodge sticking my kites together. For
the first two or three weeks we did not see my uncle often. For days
together he sat in his own room working, in spite of the flies and the
heat. His extraordinary capacity for sitting as though glued to his
table produced upon us the effect of an inexplicable conjuring trick.
To us idlers, knowing nothing of systematic work, his industry seemed
simply miraculous. Getting up at nine, he sat down to his table, and did
not leave it till dinner-time; after dinner he set to work again, and
went on till late at night. Whenever I peeped through the keyhole I
invariably saw the same thing: my uncle sitting at the table working.
The work consisted in his writing with one hand while he turned over the
leaves of a book with the other, and, strange to say, he kept moving
all over--swinging his leg as though it were a pendulum, whistling, and
nodding his head in time. He had an extremely careless and frivolous
expression all the while, as though he were not working, but playing at
noughts and crosses. I always saw him wearing a smart short jacket and a
jauntily tied cravat, and he always smelt, even through the keyhole, of
delicate feminine perfumery. He only left his room for dinner, but he
ate little.
“I can’t make brother out!” mother complained of him. “Every day we kill
a turkey and pigeons on purpose for him, I make a _compote_ with my own
hands, and he eats a plateful of broth and a bit of meat the size of a
finger and gets up from the table. I begin begging him to eat; he comes
back and drinks a glass of milk. And what is there in that, in a glass
of milk? It’s no better than washing up water! You may die of a diet
like that.... If I try to persuade him, he laughs and makes a joke of
it.... No; he does not care for our fare, poor dear!”
We spent the evenings far more gaily than the days. As a rule, by the
time the sun was setting and long shadows were lying across the yard,
we--that is, Tatyana Ivanovna, Pobyedimsky, and I--were sitting on
the steps of the lodge. We did not talk till it grew quite dusk. And,
indeed, what is one to talk of when every subject has been talked over
already? There was only one thing new, my uncle’s arrival, and even that
subject was soon exhausted. My tutor never took his eyes off Tatyana
Ivanovna ‘s face, and frequently heaved deep sighs.... At the time I
did not understand those sighs, and did not try to fathom their
significance; now they explain a great deal to me.
When the shadows merged into one thick mass of shade, the bailiff Fyodor
would come in from shooting or from the field. This Fyodor gave me the
impression of being a fierce and even a terrible man. The son of a
Russianized gipsy from Izyumskoe, swarthy-faced and curly-headed,
with big black eyes and a matted beard, he was never called among our
Kotchuevko peasants by any name but “The Devil.” And, indeed, there was
a great deal of the gipsy about him apart from his appearance. He could
not, for instance, stay at home, and went off for days together into
the country or into the woods to shoot. He was gloomy, ill-humoured,
taciturn, was afraid of nobody, and refused to recognize any authority.
He was rude to mother, addressed me familiarly, and was contemptuous of
Pobyedimsky’s learning. All this we forgave him, looking upon him as a
hot-tempered and nervous man; mother liked him because, in spite of
his gipsy nature, he was ideally honest and industrious. He loved his
Tatyana Ivanovna passionately, like a gipsy, but this love took in him a
gloomy form, as though it cost him suffering. He was never affectionate
to his wife in our presence, but simply rolled his eyes angrily at her
and twisted his mouth.
When he came in from the fields he would noisily and angrily put down
his gun, would come out to us on the steps, and sit down beside his
wife. After resting a little, he would ask his wife a few questions
about household matters, and then sink into silence.
“Let us sing,” I would suggest.
My tutor would tune his guitar, and in a deep deacon’s bass strike up
“In the midst of the valley.” We would begin singing. My tutor took the
bass, Fyodor sang in a hardly audible tenor, while I sang soprano in
unison with Tatyana Ivanovna.
When the whole sky was covered with stars and the frogs had left off
croaking, they would bring in our supper from the kitchen. We went into
the lodge and sat down to the meal. My tutor and the gipsy ate greedily,
with such a sound that it was hard to tell whether it was the bones
crunching or their jaws, and Tatyana Ivanovna and I scarcely succeeded
in getting our share. After supper the lodge was plunged in deep sleep.
One evening, it was at the end of May, we were sitting on the steps,
waiting for supper. A shadow suddenly fell across us, and Gundasov stood
before us as though he had sprung out of the earth. He looked at us for
a long time, then clasped his hands and laughed gaily.
“An idyll!” he said. “They sing and dream in the moonlight! It’s
charming, upon my soul! May I sit down and dream with you?”
We looked at one another and said nothing. My uncle sat down on
the bottom step, yawned, and looked at the sky. A silence followed.
Pobyedimsky, who had for a long time been wanting to talk to somebody
fresh, was delighted at the opportunity, and was the first to break
the silence. He had only one subject for intellectual conversation, the
epizootic diseases. It sometimes happens that after one has been in an
immense crowd, only some one countenance of the thousands remains long
imprinted on the memory; in the same way, of all that Pobyedimsky had
heard, during his six months at the veterinary institute, he remembered
only one passage:
“The epizootics do immense damage to the stock of the country. It is the
duty of society to work hand in hand with the government in waging war
upon them.”
Before saying this to Gundasov, my tutor cleared his throat three
times, and several times, in his excitement, wrapped himself up in his
Inverness. On hearing about the epizootics, my uncle looked intently at
my tutor and made a sound between a snort and a laugh.
“Upon my soul, that’s charming!” he said, scrutinizing us as though we
were mannequins. “This is actually life.... This is really what
reality is bound to be. Why are you silent, Pelagea Ivanovna?” he said,
addressing Tatyana Ivanovna.
She coughed, overcome with confusion.
“Talk, my friends, sing... play!... Don’t lose time. You know, time, the
rascal, runs away and waits for no man! Upon my soul, before you have
time to look round, old age is upon you.... Then it is too late to
live! That’s how it is, Pelagea Ivanovna.... We mustn’t sit still and be
silent....”
At that point supper was brought out from the kitchen. Uncle went into
the lodge with us, and to keep us company ate five curd fritters and the
wing of a duck. He ate and looked at us. He was touched and delighted by
us all. Whatever silly nonsense my precious tutor talked, and whatever
Tatyana Ivanovna did, he thought charming and delightful. When after
supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down and took up her knitting, he
kept his eyes fixed on her fingers and chatted away without ceasing.
“Make all the haste you can to live, my friends...” he said. “God forbid
you should sacrifice the present for the future! There is youth, health,
fire in the present; the future is smoke and deception! As soon as you
are twenty begin to live.”
Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle. My uncle jumped up, picked
up the needle, and handed it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the
first time in my life I learnt that there were people in the world more
refined than Pobyedimsky.
“Yes...” my uncle went on, “love, marry, do silly things. Foolishness
is a great deal more living and healthy than our straining and striving
after rational life.”
My uncle talked a great deal, so much that he bored us; I sat on a box
listening to him and dropping to sleep. It distressed me that he did
not once all the evening pay attention to me. He left the lodge at two
o’clock, when, overcome with drowsiness, I was sound asleep.
From that time forth my uncle took to coming to the lodge every evening.
He sang with us, had supper with us, and always stayed on till two
o’clock in the morning, chatting incessantly, always about the same
subject. His evening and night work was given up, and by the end of
June, when the privy councillor had learned to eat mother’s turkey and
_compote_, his work by day was abandoned too. My uncle tore himself away
from his table and plunged into “life.” In the daytime he walked up
and down the garden, he whistled to the workmen and hindered them from
working, making them tell him their various histories. When his eye
fell on Tatyana Ivanovna he ran up to her, and, if she were carrying
anything, offered his assistance, which embarrassed her dreadfully.
As the summer advanced my uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile,
and careless. Pobyedimsky was completely disillusioned in regard to him.
“He is too one-sided,” he said. “There is nothing to show that he is in
the very foremost ranks of the service. And he doesn’t even know how to
talk. At every word it’s ‘upon my soul.’ No, I don’t like him!”
From the time that my uncle began visiting the lodge there was a
noticeable change both in Fyodor and my tutor. Fyodor gave up going out
shooting, came home early, sat more taciturn than ever, and stared with
particular ill-humour at his wife. In my uncle’s presence my tutor gave
up talking about epizootics, frowned, and even laughed sarcastically.
“Here comes our little bantam cock!” he growled on one occasion when my
uncle was coming into the lodge.
I put down this change in them both to their being offended with my
uncle. My absent-minded uncle mixed up their names, and to the very day
of his departure failed to distinguish which was my tutor and which was
Tatyana Ivanovna’s husband. Tatyana Ivanovna herself he sometimes
called Nastasya, sometimes Pelagea, and sometimes Yevdokia. Touched and
delighted by us, he laughed and behaved exactly as though in the company
of small children.... All this, of course, might well offend young men.
It was not a case of offended pride, however, but, as I realize now,
subtler feelings.
I remember one evening I was sitting on the box struggling with sleep.
My eyelids felt glued together and my body, tired out by running about
all day, drooped sideways. But I struggled against sleep and tried to
look on. It was about midnight. Tatyana Ivanovna, rosy and unassuming
as always, was sitting at a little table sewing at her husband’s shirt.
Fyodor, sullen and gloomy, was staring at her from one corner, and in
the other sat Pobyedimsky, snorting angrily and retreating into the
high collar of his shirt. My uncle was walking up and down the room
thinking. Silence reigned; nothing was to be heard but the rustling of
the linen in Tatyana Ivanovna’s hands. Suddenly my uncle stood still
before Tatyana Ivanovna, and said:
“You are all so young, so fresh, so nice, you live so peacefully in this
quiet place, that I envy you. I have become attached to your way of
life here; my heart aches when I remember I have to go away.... You may
believe in my sincerity!”
Sleep closed my eyes and I lost myself. When some sound waked me,
my uncle was standing before Tatyana Ivanovna, looking at her with a
softened expression. His cheeks were flushed.
“My life has been wasted,” he said. “I have not lived! Your young face
makes me think of my own lost youth, and I should be ready to sit here
watching you to the day of my death. It would be a pleasure to me to
take you with me to Petersburg.”
“What for?” Fyodor asked in a husky voice.
“I should put her under a glass case on my work-table. I should admire
her and show her to other people. You know, Pelagea Ivanovna, we have no
women like you there. Among us there is wealth, distinction,
sometimes beauty, but we have not this true sort of life, this healthy
serenity....”
My uncle sat down facing Tatyana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
“So you won’t come with me to Petersburg?” he laughed. “In that case
give me your little hand.... A charming little hand!... You won’t give
it? Come, you miser! let me kiss it, anyway....”
At that moment there was the scrape of a chair. Fyodor jumped up, and
with heavy, measured steps went up to his wife. His face was pale, grey,
and quivering. He brought his fist down on the table with a bang, and
said in a hollow voice:
“I won’t allow it!”
At the same moment Pobyedimsky jumped up from his chair. He, too, pale
and angry, went up to Tatyana Ivanovna, and he, too, struck the table
with his fist.
“I... I won’t allow it!” he said.
“What, what’s the matter?” asked my uncle in surprise.
“I won’t allow it!” repeated Fyodor, banging on the table.
My uncle jumped up and blinked nervously. He tried to speak, but in his
amazement and alarm could not utter a word; with an embarrassed smile,
he shuffled out of the lodge with the hurried step of an old man,
leaving his hat behind. When, a little later, my mother ran into the
lodge, Fyodor and Pobyedimsky were still hammering on the table like
blacksmiths and repeating, “I won’t allow it!”
“What has happened here?” asked mother. “Why has my brother been taken
ill? What’s the matter?”
Looking at Tatyana’s pale, frightened face and at her infuriated
husband, mother probably guessed what was the matter. She sighed and
shook her head.
“Come! give over banging on the table!” she said. “Leave off, Fyodor!
And why are you thumping, Yegor Alexyevitch? What have you got to do
with it?”
Pobyedimsky was startled and confused. Fyodor looked intently at him,
then at his wife, and began walking about the room. When mother had
gone out of the lodge, I saw what for long afterwards I looked upon as
a dream. I saw Fyodor seize my tutor, lift him up in the air, and thrust
him out of the door.
When I woke up in the morning my tutor’s bed was empty. To my question
where he was nurse told me in a whisper that he had been taken off early
in the morning to the hospital, as his arm was broken. Distressed at
this intelligence and remembering the scene of the previous evening,
I went out of doors. It was a grey day. The sky was covered with
storm-clouds and there was a wind blowing dust, bits of paper, and
feathers along the ground.... It felt as though rain were coming. There
was a look of boredom in the servants and in the animals. When I went
into the house I was told not to make such a noise with my feet, as
mother was ill and in bed with a migraine. What was I to do? I went
outside the gate, sat down on the little bench there, and fell to trying
to discover the meaning of what I had seen and heard the day before.
From our gate there was a road which, passing the forge and the
pool which never dried up, ran into the main road. I looked at the
telegraph-posts, about which clouds of dust were whirling, and at the
sleepy birds sitting on the wires, and I suddenly felt so dreary that I
began to cry.
A dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople, probably going to visit
the shrine, drove by along the main road. The wagonette was hardly out
of sight when a light chaise with a pair of horses came into view. In it
was Akim Nikititch, the police inspector, standing up and holding on to
the coachman’s belt. To my great surprise, the chaise turned into our
road and flew by me in at the gate. While I was puzzling why the police
inspector had come to see us, I heard a noise, and a carriage with three
horses came into sight on the road. In the carriage stood the police
captain, directing his coachman towards our gate.
“And why is he coming?” I thought, looking at the dusty police captain.
“Most probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to him, and they
have come to take him to prison.”
But the mystery was not so easily solved. The police inspector and the
police captain were only the first instalment, for five minutes had
scarcely passed when a coach drove in at our gate. It dashed by me so
swiftly that I could only get a glimpse of a red beard.
Lost in conjecture and full of misgivings, I ran to the house. In the
passage first of all I saw mother; she was pale and looking with horror
towards the door, from which came the sounds of men’s voices. The
visitors had taken her by surprise in the very throes of migraine.
“Who has come, mother?” I asked.
“Sister,” I heard my uncle’s voice, “will you send in something to eat
for the governor and me?”
“It is easy to say ‘something to eat,’” whispered my mother, numb with
horror. “What have I time to get ready now? I am put to shame in my old
age!”
Mother clutched at her head and ran into the kitchen. The governor’s
sudden visit stirred and overwhelmed the whole household. A ferocious
slaughter followed. A dozen fowls, five turkeys, eight ducks, were
killed, and in the fluster the old gander, the progenitor of our whole
flock of geese and a great favourite of mother’s, was beheaded. The
coachmen and the cook seemed frenzied, and slaughtered birds at random,
without distinction of age or breed. For the sake of some wretched sauce
a pair of valuable pigeons, as dear to me as the gander was to mother,
were sacrificed. It was a long while before I could forgive the governor
their death.
In the evening, when the governor and his suite, after a sumptuous
dinner, had got into their carriages and driven away, I went into
the house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into the
drawing-room from the passage, I saw my uncle and my mother. My uncle,
with his hands behind his back, was walking nervously up and down close
to the wall, shrugging his shoulders. Mother, exhausted and looking much
thinner, was sitting on the sofa and watching his movements with heavy
eyes.
“Excuse me, sister, but this won’t do at all,” my uncle grumbled,
wrinkling up his face. “I introduced the governor to you, and you didn’t
offer to shake hands. You covered him with confusion, poor fellow! No,
that won’t do.... Simplicity is a very good thing, but there must be
limits to it.... Upon my soul! And then that dinner! How can one give
people such things? What was that mess, for instance, that they served
for the fourth course?”
“That was duck with sweet sauce...” mother answered softly.
“Duck! Forgive me, sister, but... but here I’ve got heartburn! I am
ill!”
My uncle made a sour, tearful face, and went on:
“It was the devil sent that governor! As though I wanted his visit!
Pff!... heartburn! I can’t work or sleep... I am completely out of
sorts.... And I can’t understand how you can live here without
anything to do... in this boredom! Here I’ve got a pain coming under my
shoulder-blade!...”
My uncle frowned, and walked about more rapidly than ever.
“Brother,” my mother inquired softly, “what would it cost to go abroad?”
“At least three thousand...” my uncle answered in a tearful voice.
“I would go, but where am I to get it? I haven’t a farthing. Pff!...
heartburn!”
My uncle stopped to look dejectedly at the grey, overcast prospect from
the window, and began pacing to and fro again.
A silence followed.... Mother looked a long while at the ikon, pondering
something, then she began crying, and said:
“I’ll give you the three thousand, brother....”
Three days later the majestic boxes went off to the station, and the
privy councillor drove off after them. As he said good-bye to mother
he shed tears, and it was a long time before he took his lips from her
hands, but when he got into his carriage his face beamed with childlike
pleasure.... Radiant and happy, he settled himself comfortably, kissed
his hand to my mother, who was crying, and all at once his eye was
caught by me. A look of the utmost astonishment came into his face.
“What boy is this?” he asked.
My mother, who had declared my uncle’s coming was a piece of luck for
which I must thank God, was bitterly mortified at this question. I was
in no mood for questions. I looked at my uncle’s happy face, and for
some reason I felt fearfully sorry for him. I could not resist jumping
up to the carriage and hugging that frivolous man, weak as all men are.
Looking into his face and wanting to say something pleasant, I asked:
“Uncle, have you ever been in a battle?”
“Ah, the dear boy...” laughed my uncle, kissing me. “A charming boy,
upon my soul! How natural, how living it all is, upon my soul!...”
The carriage set off.... I looked after him, and long afterwards that
farewell “upon my soul” was ringing in my ears.