About Love

1 A man in a Shell

ust at the edge of the village of Mironositskoe, in a shed belonging to Prokofy, the village elder, some hunters who had been kept late were settling themselves for the night. There were just two of them, a veterinarian, Ivan Ivanych, and Burkin, a high school teacher. Ivan Ivanych had a rather strange hyphenated family name – Chimsha-Himalaiski – which didn’t suit him at all, and the whole province called him by his given name and patronymic; he lived close to the city on a farm that raised horses and had come hunting to get a breath of clean air. Burkin, the high school teacher, spent every summer as the guest of Count P. and had been on his own in this region for a while now.

They weren’t asleep. Ivan Ivanych, a tall, lean old man with long whiskers, sat outside by the doorway and smoked a pipe; the moon cast its light on him. Burkin lay inside on the hay; he could not be seen in the darkness.

They were telling all sorts of stories. They got to talking about how the elder’s wife, Mavra, a healthy woman and no fool, had never in her whole life gone beyond her native village, had never seen a city or a railroad, and for the last ten years just sat by the stove and never went out into the street except at night.

“How very strange that is!” Burkin said. “People of a solitary nature, who try to withdraw into a shell, without a bit of light, like a hermit crab or a snail. It could be that this atavistic phenomenon goes back to a time when our ancestors were not yet social creatures and lived alone, each in his own lair, or it could be that this is simply one of the varieties of human character – who knows? I’m not a scientist and it’s not my business to deal with these questions; I just want to say that the occurrence of people like Mavra is not uncommon. Not at all. Not to look far from home, two months ago there was a death among us in the city, a certain Belikov, a teacher of Greek and a friend of mine. You’ve heard all about him, of course. He was conspicuous because he’d always go out, even in fine weather, in galoshes and with an umbrella, and without fail wearing a warmly lined overcoat. And his umbrella was in an umbrella case, and his watch in a watch case of grey chamois, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil, the knife was in a little case, and even his face seemed to be encased because he always concealed it in a high collar. He wore dark glasses, a sweater, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he sat in a cab, he wanted the top up. In a word, the man showed a constant and insuperable yearning to enclose himself inside a shell, to wrap himself up you might say in a way that would isolate him, protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in a state of constant alarm, and it may have been out of his timidity, his aversion to the present, that he always praised the past – and as it never was; the ancient languages he taught were in essence more galoshes and umbrellas in which he hid from the reality of life.

‘Oh how sonorous, how heartfelt is the Greek language,’ he’d say with a sweet expression, and as if in proof of his words he’d screw up his eyes and lifting his finger he’d articulate – ‘Anthropos.’

And Belikov tried to contain and control his very thoughts. For him the only comprehensible items in newspapers and circulars were those that forbid something. When some document circulated forbidding schoolchildren to go out in the street after nine in the evening or some item denounced carnal love, that was intelligible to him, definite; it was forbidden, basta! But any permission or authorization always concealed some dubious element, something shadowy and unspoken. When the city permitted a dramatic society or a reading room or a tea room he would rock his head back and forth and say softly, ‘Of course that’s so, and all very fine, but nothing can come of it.’

Any kind of disruption, evasion, digression from the rules led him into despondency, although it might seem to have nothing to do with him. If one of his comrades was late for a church service or if some schoolboy trick reached his ears, or if he saw a lady teacher with some officers late in the evening, he was very upset and told everyone – whatever might come of it. At the teachers’ councils, he oppressed us with his prudence, his mistrustfulness and his tidy all-encompassing judgments about the young people, the students, boys and girls – Look how they behave badly, making a lot of noise in class – and as if they didn’t understand the rules, oh as if it didn’t matter – and if Petrov was excluded from the second class and Yegorov from the fourth, it would be a very good thing. And then? What with his sighs, his whining, his dark eyes in his pale little face, you know, a little face like a weasel’s, he wore us down, and we gave in, reduced Petrov’s marks for behaviour and Yegorov’s, made them sit apart from the others, and in the end we took Petrov and Yegorov and suspended them both. He had a strange habit of coming into our apartments. He’d arrive at a teacher’s place and sit in silence, as if he was spying out something. He’d sit like that for a while in silence and the next minute he’d leave. He called it ‘encouraging good relations among his colleagues,’ and it was obviously hard for him to come in and sit there, and he came only because he considered it his duty as a colleague. We teachers were afraid of him. Even the principal was frightened. Just imagine our teachers, thoughtful people, profoundly decent, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, and yet this man – going about in galoshes and with an umbrella – held the entire school in his grip for all of fifteen years. Did I say the school? The whole town. Our ladies didn’t arrange performances in their homes on the Sabbath; they were afraid he would hear about it, and in his presence the clergy were ashamed to eat meat and play cards. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten or fifteen years people in our town became afraid of everything. Afraid to speak aloud, to send letters, to visit, to read books, afraid to help the poor, to teach reading and writing . . .”

Ivan Ivanych, searching for something to say, coughed, gave a puff on his pipe, stared at the moon and only then said in a measured voice: “Yes, intellectuals, decent people, they read Shchedrin and Turgenev, and others read H.T. Buckle and so on, but look how they take orders and suffer . . . That’s just how it is.”

“Belikov lived in the same building as I did” – Burkin continued – “on the same floor, one door facing the other, and we often saw each other. I knew about his domestic life. At home it was the same story: dressing gown, nightcap, shutters, bolts, a whole list of all the prohibitions and restrictions – oh, just in case something might happen. Fasting food didn’t agree with him, but with animal flesh forbidden, lest it be said that Belikov didn’t observe the fasts, he ate pike in butter – not the usual fasting food, but you couldn’t say it was meat. He didn’t keep a servant girl out of fear for his reputation, but he kept a cook, Aphanasy, an old man of sixty, drunk and half-demented, who at one time had served as a military orderly, and who knew how to dish up this and that. This Aphanasy usually stood by the door crossing his arms and always muttering the same thing, with deep sighs.

‘A lot of them got it today.’

Belikov’s bedroom was very small, not much more than a box and a cot with curtains. Lying down to sleep he pulled the covers over his head; it was hot, stifling, the wind rattled the closed doors, there was a howling in the stove; deep sighs were heard from the kitchen . . .

And beneath his blanket he was afraid. He was frightened that something might happen to him, that Aphanasy might murder him, that thieves might get in, and late in the night he’d have anxious dreams, and in the morning when we walked to the school together, he was on edge, pale, and it was evident that the bustling school he was going to was frightening and repulsive to his whole being, and that to walk along beside me was distressing to a person of his solitary nature.

‘They’ve been making a lot of noise in our classrooms,’ he said, as if trying to find an explanation for his dark mood. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’

And this teacher of Greek, this man in a shell, can you imagine that he almost got married?”

Ivan Ivanych took a quick look in the shed and said, “You’re joking.”

“Yes, he nearly got married, however strange that may be. We were assigned a new history and geography teacher, a certain Mikhail Savvich Kovalenko, from the Ukraine. He arrived, not on his own, but with his sister Varenka. He was young, tall, swarthy, with enormous hands, and you knew just to look at him that he spoke in a bass voice, and in fact his voice was just like the sound out of a barrel – boom, boom, boom. And she was no longer young, thirty years old, but she was tall, well-proportioned, dark brows, red cheeks – in a word, not some dainty miss but a real jam tart, lively and adept, and she sang all the Little Russian romances and laughed out loud. At the drop of a hat she burst into full-throated laughter – ha-ha-ha. The first thing I remember as we grew familiar with the Kovalenkos took place on the principal’s name day. In the midst of those stern, so-very-boring teachers who dutifully attended the name day, we all of us together observed a new Aphrodite rise up from the foam: she walked about with her hands on her hips, laughed, sang, danced . . . She sang with feeling ‘The Winds Whirl,’ and then another romance and another, and she charmed us all, every one, even Belikov. He sat next to her, and smiling sweetly he said, ‘The Little Russian language – in its delicacy and pleasant sonority – resembles ancient Greek.’

This pleased her, and she began to talk to him seriously and with feeling about how she had a farm in the district of Gadyachsko and on this farm lived her Mum, and there were such pears, such melons, such pubs – in the Ukraine they called the pumpkins pubs, and the pubs pothouses – and they cooked borscht with tomatoes and eggplant, ‘so delicious, so delicious that it was simply . . . scary!’

We listened and we listened, and a thought came to all of us at once.

‘It would be a good thing for them to marry,’ the headmistress said to me quietly.

For some reason, we had all been reminded that our Belikov was unmarried, and at that moment it seemed strange to us that up till now we somehow hadn’t exactly noticed, had entirely lost sight of such an important detail about his life. How did he generally regard women, had he made his own decision about this vital question? Up till now this didn’t interest us at all; it may be that we didn’t even allow ourselves to consider whether this man who went about in galoshes in all weathers and slept behind curtains might fall in love.

‘He’s well past forty now, and she’s thirty . . .’ the headmistress said, explaining what was in her mind. ‘It seems to me she might accept him.’

Just what didn’t occur to us in the provinces out of our boredom? So many redundancies, absurdities. And this one, though it didn’t quite come about, seemed as if it should. But why did the lot of us feel the need to marry off this Belikov, whom we couldn’t even imagine married? The headmistress, the inspector, and all our lady teachers grew animated, even grew better-looking, as if all together they had caught sight of a purpose in life. The headmistress rented a box in the theatre, and we kept an eye out – in the box sat Varenka with oh such a fan – beaming, happy, and beside her sat Belikov, small, doubled-up, as if he’d been dragged out of his house with pincers. I gave an evening party, and the ladies demanded that I invite – and without fail – both Belikov and Varenka. In a word, the machinery set to work. It turned out that Varenka was not unwilling to marry. Her life with her brother was not all that happy; the only thing we knew was that they argued all day long and abused each other. Here’s a scene for you: Kovalenko goes out into the street, a tall, lanky fellow with an embroidered shirt, his hair falling on his forehead out of his folding cap, a parcel of books in one hand, in the other a thick, knotty walking stick. Behind him comes his sister, also with some books.

‘Well, then I say you didn’t read it, Mikhailik,’ she argues loudly. ‘I swear you didn’t read it at all.’

‘And I tell you that I read it,’ Kovalenko cries out, thumping his stick on the sidewalk.

‘Oh my God, Michnik! You get so angry about it, and we’re just having a principled discussion.’

‘I told you I read it,’ Kovalenko cries out even louder.

And at home whenever there was a visitor there was a squabble. Really, a life like that must have left her bored, wishing for a home of her own – yes, and there was age to consider. Living as she did would never work out; you’d want to marry anyone, even that teacher of Greek. All they talked about, the majority of our young ladies, was whether or not she’d marry him. Whether that was to be or not, Varenka showed our Belikov obvious good will.

And Belikov? He visited Kovalenko just as he did the rest of us. He arrived and sat in silence. He was silent and Varenka sang to him ‘The Wind Whirls’ or glanced at him thoughtfully with her dark eyes, or suddenly laughed out loud.

‘Ha-ha-ha.’

In matters of the heart, and especially when it comes to marriage, suggestion plays a large role. Everyone – gentlemen and ladies – assured Belikov that he was ready to marry, that marriage was the one thing left in life for him; we all congratulated him, recited with self-important faces our various commonplaces – that marriage was a serious step, for example – and besides, Varenka was not a bad or uninteresting choice for him; she was the daughter of a Councillor of State and understood farming, and most of all she was the first woman who had taken to him with warmth and affection. His head was turned, and he actually decided he must marry her.”

“And that would be the end of his galoshes and umbrella,” remarked Ivan Ivanych.

“But you know it turned out to be impossible. He had furnished his place with a portrait of Varenka, which sat on a table, and he constantly came to me and spoke about Varenka, about domestic life, and of how marriage was a serious step; often he was at Kovalenko’s, but his way of life didn’t change a bit. Quite the reverse, the decision to marry had a troubling effect on him somehow, he lost weight, grew pale, and it seemed he sank deeper into his shell.

‘I like Varvara Savvishna,’ he said to me with a feeble, wry little smile – ‘and I know everyone must marry, but . . . all this, you know, is happening so suddenly . . . I need to think.’

‘What is there to think about?’ I say to him. ‘Marry and that’s it.’

‘No, marriage – it’s a serious step, it’s necessary first of all to examine one’s future duties, responsibilities, compatibility . . . so that things don’t come out later on. It worries me, so that I’m not sleeping at all. And to tell the truth, I’m frightened: at her place with her brother I think strange thoughts; they argue, don’t you know, so strangely somehow, and their manner is so forward. You get married, and the next thing you know everyone’s talking about you.’

He made no proposal, everything was put off, to the great disappointment of the headmistress and all our ladies; he weighed up all his future duties and responsibilities, and meanwhile almost every day he went for a stroll with Varenka – perhaps he thought it was required in this situation – and he came to my place to discuss his domestic life. In all likelihood he would in the end have made a proposal, and there would have occurred another of those unnecessary, foolish marriages which take place among us in thousands, out of tedium or for no reason at all, if suddenly there hadn’t occurred a kolosalische Scandal. It has to be said that Varenka’s brother, Kovalenko, had conceived a dislike for Belikov from the very first day of meeting him, and by now he couldn’t stand him.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said to us, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t understand how you can stand this informer, this loathsome bug. Oh gentlemen, how can you all live like this? The atmosphere around you is suffocating, foul. Really, are you pedagogues, teachers? You’re servile. Yours is no temple of knowledge, but a worship of authority, and it stinks like a police cell. No, brothers, I’m here with you for a little while, then I’m off to the farm to catch crayfish, back where they laugh at learning. I’m going away, and you can stay here with your Judas, brooding on your sins.’

Or he’d laugh, laugh in a deep bass voice until tears came to his eyes and his voice grew thin and scratchy, and he’d ask me, his hands spread: ‘What’s he sit at my place for? What’s he need? Sitting and staring.’

He even gave Belikov a nickname, ‘the damned little spider.’ Obviously we avoided mentioning to him that his sister Varenka was keeping company with the ‘damned spider.’ When one day the headmistress dropped a hint that it would be a fine thing to settle his sister permanently with a man as sound and widely respected as Belikov, he frowned and muttered: ‘It’s not my business. Let her marry the viper. I don’t choose to interfere in what’s someone else’s affair.’

Now listen to what came next. Some mischief-maker drew a caricature: Belikov was walking in his galoshes with hitched-up trousers and an umbrella, his arm around Varenka; underneath was the inscription: ‘Anthropos in Love.’ His expression captured, you must understand, perfectly. The artist must have worked for days, since all the teachers of the boys’ school and the girls’ school, the teachers at the seminary, the school officials – all received a copy. Belikov received one too. The caricature had a very serious effect on him.

We were leaving our building together – it was on the very first day of May, a Sunday, and all of us, teachers and students, had arranged to meet at the school and afterwards go together on foot to a grove outside town. We were setting out, and he was looking quite green, his expression dark and clouded.

‘How unpleasant they are, angry people,’ he said, and his lips trembled.

He had become pitiable to me now. We’re walking along together, and then, just imagine, Kovalenko rides past on a bicycle, and behind him Varenka, also on a bicycle, red-faced, breathless, but happy and cheerful.

‘We’re on our way,’ she cries out. ‘Such lovely weather, so lovely that it’s simply scary.’

And they both passed out of sight. My Belikov had gone from green to white, as if frozen solid. He stopped and looked at me.

‘If you’ll permit me to ask, just what is all this?’ he said. ‘Or perhaps my eyes deceive me. Is it really decent for a teacher or a woman to go about on a bicycle?’

‘Just what isn’t decent about it?’ I said. ‘Let them ride around to their hearts’ content.’

‘No, how can you?’ he wailed, amazed at my tranquility. ‘What are you saying?’

He was so stricken that he didn’t want to go on any further and returned home.

The next day he couldn’t stop nervously rubbing his hands, and wincing, and one could see on his face that he was unhappy. He left work early for the first time in his life. And he didn’t eat dinner. During the evening he dressed himself very warmly, although outdoors it was still perfect summer weather, and he set out to Kovalenko’s. Varenka wasn’t home. Only her brother was there.

‘I humbly beg you to sit down,’ Kovalenko said coldly, a frown on his brow, his face sleepy. He’d been napping after dinner and was dozy and out of spirits.

Belikov sat in silence for ten minutes and then started to speak.

‘I came to see you in order to relieve my mind. This is very, very hard for me. Some vengeful person drew myself and another person of high rank in a ridiculous manner, and intimately close together – but I consider it my duty to put my trust in you, and I am not here about all that . . . I gave no sort of cause for this ridicule – just the opposite, as I have always conducted myself as an entirely decent man.’

Kovalenko sat quietly sulking. Belikov waited for a little while and continued softly in a mournful voice.

‘I have something else to say to you. I have been in the profession for a long time, but you are only just beginning your service, and I have been considering, as an older colleague, how to put you on your guard. You ride a bicycle, and this amusement is absolutely improper for a teacher of young people.’

‘And just why?’ asked Kovalenko in his deep voice.

‘But really, does this still need an explanation, Mikhail Savvich, isn’t it perfectly clear? If a teacher goes by bicycle, what about the students? The only thing left is to go upside down! Since yours is not a prescribed means of transport, it can’t be accepted. Yesterday I was horrified. When I observed your younger sister my eyes grew clouded. A woman or a girl on a bicycle – it’s terrible.’

‘Just what exactly is it you want?’

‘I would like just one thing – to put you on your guard, Mikhail Savvich. You’re a young man, you have your future in front of you. You must behave yourself very, very carefully, and you are so careless, oh how careless. You go out in an embroidered shirt, always out in the street with your books, and now there’s this bicycle. When the principal learns that you and your younger sister were riding bicycles, and when it reaches the trustee . . . what then?’

‘That I and my sister ride bicycles is nobody’s business,’ Kovalenko said and grew red in the face. ‘And anyone who goes about to interfere in my family and domestic affairs, well, he can go to the bitches of the devil.’

Belikov grew pale but did not move.

‘If you speak to me in such a tone, then I can’t go on,’ he said. ‘And I ask that you never express yourself in that way about your superiors in my presence. You ought to have due regard for authority.’

‘And what if I say that your authority is evil?’ Kovalenko asked, looking at him spitefully. ‘Please leave me in peace. I am an honest man, and I don’t wish to converse with such gentlemen as you. I don’t like tattletales.’

Belikov began to fidget nervously, then quickly began to dress himself, an expression of shock on his face. It was the first time in his life, you see, that he had heard such rude words.

‘You may say whatever you like,’ he said, starting out onto the stair landing. ‘I must only give you notice that it may be someone has heard us, and in order that our conversation not be misunderstood and something come of it, I will feel it necessary to make a report to our gentleman principal of the content of our conversation . . . the ‘devils’ in particular. I am bound to do so.’

‘Make a report? Then go and report.’

Kovalenko seized him by the collar and pushed, and Belikov pitched down the stairs, his galoshes thumping. The stairs were high and steep, but he flew to the bottom unharmed, stopped and touched himself on the nose. Were his glasses safe? And just at that moment, as he was hurtling down the stairs, Varenka had come in and two ladies with her; they stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched – and for Belikov this was the most terrible thing of all. It would have been better, it seemed to him, to break his neck, both legs, than to become a laughingstock. Why now the whole city would know, it would reach the principal, the trustees – oh if only he hadn’t come – someone would draw a new caricature, and all of this would end up with an order for his dismissal . . .

As he straightened himself up, Varenka recognized him, and looking at his comical features, rumpled coat, galoshes, not understanding what was going on and supposing that he had fallen on his own, she couldn’t control herself, and the whole house was filled with her laughter.

‘Ha-ha-ha!’

And with this booming, overflowing ha-ha-ha it all came to an end, both the matchmaking and Belikov’s earthly existence. He no longer heard what Varenka was saying, and he saw nothing. Returning to his own place, he first of all took her portrait off the table, and afterward he lay down and didn’t get up again.

Three days later Aphanasy came to my door and asked if he shouldn’t send for a doctor, since something was wrong with his master. I went to Belikov’s apartment. He was lying behind the bed curtains, covered with a blanket, silent. You asked him a question and got only yes or no – and not another sound. He lay there and Aphanasy wandered about nearby, gloomy, frowning, sighing heavily, smelling of vodka like a tavern.

A month later Belikov died. We all went to his funeral, including all the students and the seminarians. As he lay in his coffin, his expression was gentle, contented, as if he was glad we’d finally laid him in a box from which he’d never again have to arise. Yes, he had reached his ideal! And as if in his honour, at the hour of his funeral the weather grew clouded, rainy; we were all in galoshes and carried umbrellas. Varenka too was in galoshes, and when they lowered the coffin into the grave, she shed a few tears. I have noticed that Ukrainian women only cry or laugh; nothing in-between exists for them.

I must confess that to bury someone like Belikov is a great pleasure. When we returned from the cemetery we all wore a humble, pious expression: no one wished to betray this feeling of pleasure – a feeling like that which we experienced long, long ago, back in childhood when the grown-ups left the house, and we ran to the garden the next second, revelling in our total freedom. Ah, freedom, freedom! Even a hint, even a faint hope of it, its very possibility, gives wings to the soul, isn’t that so?

We came back from the cemetery in a good mood. But that went on no more than a week, and life flowed by just as before, harsh, dull, stupid life, nothing to stop it going round and round, everything unresolved; things didn’t get better. And truly, we had buried Belikov, but how many such men still remained, enclosed in their shells, how many of them there will be, still.”

“Yes, there you have it, the way it is,” Ivan Ivanych said and lit up his pipe.

“How many of them there will be still,” Burkin repeated.

The teacher came out of the shed. He was not a very tall man, stout, quite bald, with a dark beard almost to his belt. With him came the two dogs.

“Oh moon, moon,” he said, looking upward.

It was already midnight. To the right the whole village was visible, the long street stretched into the distance for three miles. It was all immersed in a deep, quiet sleep; neither motion nor sound, it was hard to believe that nature could be so peaceful. When, on a moonlit night, you see a wide village street with its peasant houses, haystacks, sleeping willows, tranquility enters the soul; in this calm, wrapped in the shade of night, free from struggle, anxiety and passion, everything is gentle, wistful, beautiful, and it seems that the stars are watching over it tenderly and with love, and that this is taking place somewhere unearthly, and that all is well. On the left, at the edge of the village, the countryside began; it was visible for a long way, as far as the horizon, and to its full extent this open land was lit by moonlight, and there was neither movement nor sound.

“Yes, there you have it,” repeated Ivan Ivanych. “And you know, the way we live in the city, the closeness, crowded together, how we sign unnecessary documents, play cards, isn’t that really a shell? And the way we lead our whole lives among loafers, people pursuing lawsuits, fools, idle women, talking and listening to all manner of nonsense, isn’t that really a shell? Look, if you like I’ll tell you an interesting story.”

“No, it’s past time to sleep,” Burkin said. “Tell me tomorrow.”

They both went into the shed and lay down in the hay. And soon both covered themselves and dozed off until suddenly they heard a light step, tup, tup . . . Someone was walking not far from the shed, went a few steps, stopped, and in a minute, once again, tup, tup. . . The dogs stirred.

“That’s Mavra walking past,” Burkin said.

The steps died away.

“You watch and listen while they tell lies,” pronounced Ivan Ivanych, turning on his other side, “and they call you a fool because you put up with the lies; you put up with injuries, humiliations, not daring to declare openly that you are on the side of the free, honest people, and you lie to yourself, you smile, and all this for the sake of a loaf of bread and warm coals, for the sake of a propriety that’s not worth a penny – no, it’s impossible to live any longer like this.”

“Well, that’s from another opera, Ivan Ivanych,” the teacher said. “Let’s go to sleep.”

And after ten minutes Burkin was asleep. But Ivan Ivanych kept turning from side to side and sighing, and then he got up, went outside again, and sitting by the door, began to smoke his pipe.