“To turn over virgin soil it is necessary to use a deep plough
going well into the earth, not a surface plough gliding lightly
over the top.”—From a Farmer’s Notebook.
I
At one o’clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a
young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling
up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in
St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly
swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top
flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He
did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into a
small, dark passage.
“Is Nejdanov at home?” he called out in a deep, loud voice.
“No, he’s not. I’m here. Come in,” an equally coarse woman’s voice
responded from the adjoining room.
“Is that Mashurina?” asked the new-comer.
“Yes, it is I. Are you Ostrodumov?”
“Pemien Ostrodumov,” he replied, carefully removing his goloshes, and
hanging his shabby coat on a nail, he went into the room from whence
issued the woman’s voice.
It was a narrow, untidy room, with dull green coloured walls, badly
lighted by two dusty windows. The furnishings consisted of an iron
bedstead standing in a corner, a table in the middle, several chairs,
and a bookcase piled up with books. At the table sat a woman of about
thirty. She was bareheaded, clad in a black stuff dress, and was smoking
a cigarette. On catching sight of Ostrodumov she extended her broad, red
hand without a word. He shook it, also without saying anything, dropped
into a chair and pulled a half-broken cigar out of a side pocket.
Mashurina gave him a light, and without exchanging a single word, or so
much as looking at one another, they began sending out long, blue puffs
into the stuffy room, already filled with smoke.
There was something similar about these two smokers, although their
features were not a bit alike. In these two slovenly figures, with their
coarse lips, teeth, and noses (Ostrodumov was even pock-marked), there
was something honest and firm and persevering.
“Have you seen Nejdanov?” Ostrodumov asked.
“Yes. He will be back directly. He has gone to the library with some
books.”
Ostrodumov spat to one side.
“Why is he always rushing about nowadays? One can never get hold of
him.”
Mashurina took out another cigarette.
“He’s bored,” she remarked, lighting it carefully.
“Bored!” Ostrodumov repeated reproachfully. “What self-indulgence! One
would think we had no work to do. Heaven knows how we shall get through
with it, and he complains of being bored!”
“Have you heard from Moscow?” Mashurina asked after a pause.
“Yes. A letter came three days ago.”
“Have you read it?”
Ostrodumov nodded his head.
“Well? What news?”
“Some of us must go there soon.”
Mashurina took the cigarette out of her mouth.
“But why?” she asked. “They say everything is going on well there.”
“Yes, that is so, but one man has turned out unreliable and must be
got rid of. Besides that, there are other things. They want you to come
too.”
“Do they say so in the letter?”
“Yes.”
Mashurina shook back her heavy hair, which was twisted into a small
plait at the back, and fell over her eyebrows in front.
“Well,” she remarked; “if the thing is settled, then there is nothing
more to be said.”
“Of course not. Only one can’t do anything without money, and where are
we to get it from?”
Mashurina became thoughtful.
“Nejdanov must get the money,” she said softly, as if to herself.
“That is precisely what I have come about,” Ostrodumov observed.
“Have you got the letter?” Mashurina asked suddenly.
“Yes. Would you like to see it?”
“I should rather. But never mind, we can read it together presently.”
“You need not doubt what I say. I am speaking the truth,” Ostrodumov
grumbled.
“I do not doubt it in the least.” They both ceased speaking and, as
before, clouds of smoke rose silently from their mouths and curled
feebly above their shaggy heads.
A sound of goloshes was heard from the passage.
“There he is,” Mashurina whispered.
The door opened slightly and a head was thrust in, but it was not the
head of Nejdanov.
It was a round head with rough black hair, a broad wrinkled forehead,
bright brown eyes under thick eyebrows, a snub nose and a humorously-set
mouth. The head looked round, nodded, smiled, showing a set of tiny
white teeth, and came into the room with its feeble body, short arms,
and bandy legs, which were a little lame. As soon as Mashurina and
Ostrodumov caught sight of this head, an expression of contempt mixed
with condescension came over their faces, as if each was thinking
inwardly, “What a nuisance!” but neither moved nor uttered a single
word. The newly arrived guest was not in the least taken aback by this
reception, however; on the contrary it seemed to amuse him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked in a squeaky voice. “A duet? Why
not a trio? And where’s the chief tenor?”
“Do you mean Nejdanov, Mr. Paklin?” Ostrodumov asked solemnly.
“Yes, Mr. Ostrodumov.”
“He will be back directly, Mr. Paklin.”
“I am glad to hear that, Mr. Ostrodumov.”
The little cripple turned to Mashurina. She frowned, and continued
leisurely puffing her cigarette.
“How are you, my dear... my dear... I am so sorry. I always forget your
Christian name and your father’s name.”
Mashurina shrugged her shoulders.
“There is no need for you to know it. I think you know my surname. What
more do you want? And why do you always keep on asking how I am? You see
that I am still in the land of the living!”
“Of course!” Paklin exclaimed, his face twitching nervously. “If you had
been elsewhere, your humble servant would not have had the pleasure of
seeing you here, and of talking to you! My curiosity is due to a bad,
old-fashioned habit. But with regard to your name, it is awkward,
somehow, simply to say Mashurina. I know that even in letters you only
sign yourself Bonaparte! I beg pardon, Mashurina, but in conversation,
however—”
“And who asks you to talk to me, pray?”
Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.
“Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don’t be cross. I know
you mean well, and so do I.... Well?”
Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and extended
her own.
“If you really want to know my name,” she said with the same expression
of severity on her face, “I am called Fiekla.”
“And I, Pemien,” Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.
“How very instructive! Then tell me, Oh Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien! why
you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when I—”
“Mashurina thinks,” Ostrodumov interrupted him, “and not only Mashurina,
that you are not to be depended upon, because you always laugh at
everything.”
Paklin turned round on his heels.
“That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien! In the
first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were, that is no
reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I have been flattered
with your confidence on more than one occasion before now, a convincing
proof of my trustworthiness. I am an honest man, my dear Pemien.”
Ostrodumov muttered something between his teeth, but Paklin continued
without the slightest trace of a smile on his face.
“No, I am not always laughing! I am not at all a cheerful person. You
have only to look at me!”
Ostrodumov looked at him. And really, when Paklin was not laughing, when
he was silent, his face assumed a dejected, almost scared expression;
it became funny and rather sarcastic only when he opened his lips.
Ostrodumov did not say anything, however, and Paklin turned to Mashurina
again.
“Well? And how are your studies getting on? Have you made any
progress in your truly philanthropical art? Is it very hard to help an
inexperienced citizen on his first appearance in this world?”
“It is not at all hard if he happens to be no bigger than you are!”
Mashurina retorted with a self-satisfied smile. (She had quite recently
passed her examination as a midwife. Coming from a poor aristocratic
family, she had left her home in the south of Russia about two years
before, and with about twelve shillings in her pocket had arrived in
Moscow, where she had entered a lying-in institution and had worked
very hard to gain the necessary certificate. She was unmarried and
very chaste.) “No wonder!” some sceptics may say (bearing in mind the
description of her personal appearance; but we will permit ourselves to
say that it was wonderful and rare).
Paklin laughed at her retort.
“Well done, my dear! I feel quite crushed! But it serves me right for
being such a dwarf! I wonder where our host has got to?”
Paklin purposely changed the subject of conversation, which was rather a
sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor
indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the
more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given
anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful
appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and
unenviable position in society. His father, a member of the lower middle
class, had, through all sorts of dishonest means, attained the rank of
titular councillor. He had been fairly successful as an intermediary
in legal matters, and managed estates and house property. He had made a
moderate fortune, but had taken to drink towards the end of his life and
had left nothing after his death.
Young Paklin, he was called Sila—Sila Samsonitch, [Meaning strength,
son of Samson] and always regarded this name as a joke against himself,
was educated in a commercial school, where he had acquired a good
knowledge of German. After a great many difficulties he had entered
an office, where he received a salary of five hundred roubles a year,
out of which he had to keep himself, an invalid aunt, and a humpbacked
sister. At the time of our story Paklin was twenty-eight years old.
He had a great many acquaintances among students and young people,
who liked him for his cynical wit, his harmless, though biting,
self-confident speeches, his one-sided, unpedantic, though genuine,
learning, but occasionally they sat on him severely. Once, on arriving
late at a political meeting, he hastily began excusing himself. “Paklin
was afraid!” some one sang out from a corner of the room, and everyone
laughed. Paklin laughed with them, although it was like a stab in his
heart. “He is right, the blackguard!” he thought to himself. Nejdanov
he had come across in a little Greek restaurant, where he was in the
habit of taking his dinner, and where he sat airing his rather free
and audacious views. He assured everyone that the main cause of his
democratic turn of mind was the bad Greek cooking, which upset his
liver.
“I wonder where our host has got to?” he repeated. “He has been out of
sorts lately. Heaven forbid that he should be in love!”
Mashurina scowled.
“He has gone to the library for books. As for falling in love, he has
neither the time nor the opportunity.”
“Why not with you?” almost escaped Paklin’s lips.
“I should like to see him, because I have an important matter to talk
over with him,” he said aloud.
“What about?” Ostrodumov asked. “Our affairs?”
“Perhaps yours; that is, our common affairs.”
Ostrodumov hummed. He did not believe him. “Who knows? He’s such a busy
body,” he thought.
“There he is at last!” Mashurina exclaimed suddenly, and her small
unattractive eyes, fixed on the door, brightened, as if lit up by an
inner ray, making them soft and warm and tender.
The door opened, and this time a young man of twenty-three, with a cap
on his head and a bundle of books under his arm, entered the room. It
was Nejdanov himself.