Fifty-Two Stories

THE PRINCESS

THROUGH THE BIG, so-called “Red” gate of the N——sky Monastery drove a carriage and a foursome of fine, sleek horses. The hieromonks and novices who crowded near the gentry side of the guest house already recognized from afar, by the coachman and the horses, the lady who sat in the carriage as their good acquaintance, Princess Vera Gavrilovna.

An old man in livery jumped down from the box and helped the princess out of the carriage. She raised her dark veil, unhurriedly went up to each of the hieromonks to be blessed, then nodded affectionately to the novices and went into the house.

“What, have you been missing your princess?” she said to the monks who carried her things inside. “It’s a whole month since I was here. Well, so I’ve come, look at your princess. And where is the Father Archimandrite?¹ My God, I’m burning with impatience! A wonderful, wonderful old man! You should be proud to have such an archimandrite.”

When the archimandrite came in, the princess cried out rapturously, crossed her arms on her breast, and went to receive his blessing.

“No, no! Allow me to kiss it!” she said, seizing his hand and greedily kissing it three times. “How glad I am, holy father, to see you finally! You have no doubt forgotten your princess, but mentally I have lived every moment in your dear monastery. How good it is here! In this life for God, far from the vain world, there is some special charm, holy father, that I feel with all my soul, though I cannot convey it in words!”

The princess’s cheeks flushed and tears welled up in her eyes. She talked without a pause, heatedly, while the archimandrite, an old man of about seventy, serious, homely, and shy, was silent, and only said from time to time, abruptly, in military fashion: “Just so, Your Excellency…yes, ma’am…I see, ma’am…”

“How long will you be staying with us?” he asked.

“I’ll spend the night tonight, and tomorrow I’ll go to see Klavdia Nikolaevna—we haven’t seen each other for a long time—and the day after tomorrow I’ll come back and stay for three or four days. I want my soul to rest here, holy father…”

The princess liked visiting the N——sky Monastery. Over the past two years it had been her favorite place, and during the summers she came there almost every month and spent two or three days, sometimes a week. The timid novices, the quiet, the low ceilings, the smell of cypress, the humble meals, the cheap curtains on the windows—it all touched her, moved her, and disposed her to contemplation and good thoughts. Spending half an hour there was enough for her to start feeling that she, too, was timid and humble, that she, too, smelled of cypress; the past became remote, lost its value, and the princess would begin to think that, despite her twenty-nine years, she very much resembled the old archimandrite and that, like him, she had been born not for riches, not for earthly greatness and love, but for a quiet life, hidden from the world, a life of twilight, like her rooms here…

It sometimes happens that a ray of sunlight suddenly peeks into the dark cell of an ascetic immersed in prayer, or a little bird alights in the window of the cell and sings its song; the severe ascetic smiles involuntarily, and in his breast, from under the heavy sorrow of his sins, as from under a stone, a stream of quiet, sinless joy suddenly begins to flow. It seemed to the princess that she had brought with her from outside just such a consolation as the ray of sunlight or the little bird. Her amiable, cheerful smile, meek eyes, voice, jokes, the whole of her in general, small, well-built, wearing simple black dresses, could not help arousing by her appearance a feeling of tenderness and joy in simple, stern people. Each of them, looking at her, could not help thinking: “God has sent us an angel…” And, sensing that each of them involuntarily thought that, she smiled still more amiably and tried to resemble a bird.

Having had her tea and rested, she went out for a stroll. The sun had already set. The princess smelled the fragrant moisture of the just-watered mignonettes coming from the monastery flower garden, and from the church came the quiet singing of male voices, which from a distance seemed very pleasant and sad. The vigil was in progress. In the dark windows where icon lamps meekly flickered, in the shadows, in the figure of the old monk who sat by an icon on the porch holding a cup for alms, there was inscribed so much serene peace that the princess somehow felt like weeping…

Outside the gate, on the footpath between the wall and the birches, where benches stood, it was already evening. The air was darkening very quickly…The princess strolled along the footpath, sat down on a bench, and fell to thinking.

She thought that it would be good to settle for her whole life in this monastery, where life was as quiet and serene as a summer evening; it would be good to forget completely about her ungrateful and libertine prince, about her enormous fortune, about the creditors who bothered her every day, about her misfortunes, about the maid Dasha, who had an insolent expression on her face that morning. It would be good to sit here on the bench for her whole life and look through the trunks of the birches at how wisps of evening mist hover at the foot of the hill; at how, far away over the forest, in a black cloud like a veil, rooks fly to their night roost; at how two novices—one mounted on a piebald horse, the other on foot—drive the horses to their night pasture and, rejoicing in their freedom, frolic like little children, their young voices ringing out in the motionless air so that you can catch every word. It was good to sit and listen to the silence: now the wind blows and stirs the tops of the birches, now a frog rustles in last year’s leaves, now the bell behind the wall strikes the quarter hour…To sit motionless, listen, and think, think, think…

An old woman with a sack went by. The princess thought it would be good to stop this woman and say something tender, soulful, to help her…But the old woman turned the corner without looking at her even once.

A little later a tall man with a gray beard and wearing a straw hat appeared on the footpath. Coming up to the princess, he took off his hat and bowed, and by his big bald spot and sharp, hooked nose the princess recognized him as Doctor Mikhail Ivanovich, who some five years earlier had worked for her in Dubovki. She remembered someone telling her that the doctor’s wife had died a year ago, and she wanted to show him sympathy, to comfort him.

“You probably don’t recognize me, Doctor?” she asked, smiling affably.

“No, Princess, I did recognize you,” the doctor said, taking off his hat again.

“Well, thank you, and here I thought you’d forgotten your princess. People only remember their enemies, not their friends. So you’ve come to pray?”

“I’m here overnight every Saturday, on duty. I treat people.”

“Well, how are you?” the princess asked, sighing. “I heard that your wife passed away! What a misfortune!”

“Yes, Princess, for me it is a great misfortune.”

“What can be done? We should humbly bear our misfortunes. Not a single hair falls from a man’s head without the will of Providence.”

“Yes, Princess.”

To the princess’s meek, affable smile and her sighs, the doctor replied coldly and drily: “Yes, Princess.” And the expression on his face was cold and dry.

“What else should I tell him?” thought the princess.

“It’s so long since we’ve seen each other, though!” she said. “Five years! So much water has flowed under the bridge in that time, so many changes have occurred, it’s even frightening to think of it! You know I got married…from a countess I’ve become a princess. And I’m already separated from my husband.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“God has sent me many trials! You’ve probably also heard that I’m almost ruined. To pay my unfortunate husband’s debts, my estates in Dubovki and Kiryakovo and Sofyino have been sold. I have only Baranovo and Mikhaltsevo left. It’s frightening to look back: so many changes, all sorts of misfortunes, so many mistakes!”

“Yes, Princess, many mistakes.”

The princess was slightly embarrassed. She knew her mistakes; they were all of such an intimate sort that she alone could think and speak of them. She could not help herself and asked:

“What mistakes are you thinking of?”

“You’ve mentioned them, which means you know…,” the doctor replied and smiled wryly. “Why talk about them?”

“No, tell me, Doctor. I’ll be very grateful to you! And please don’t stand on ceremony with me. I love hearing the truth.”

“I’m not your judge, Princess.”

“My judge? If you speak in such a tone, it means you know something. Tell me!”

“If you wish, I will. Only, unfortunately, I’m not a good speaker, and it’s not always possible to understand me.”

The doctor thought a little and began:

“There are many mistakes, but in fact the main one, in my opinion, was the general spirit that…that reigned in all your estates. You see, I’m not good at expressing myself. The main thing was this—a dislike, an aversion to people, which was felt in positively everything. Your whole system of life was built on this aversion. Aversion to the human voice, to faces, the backs of heads, ways of walking…in short, to everything that makes up a human being. In all the doorways and on the stairs stand well-fed, crude and lazy lackeys in livery, to keep improperly dressed people from entering the house; the chairs in the front hall have high backs, so that during balls and receptions the servants won’t soil the wallpaper with their heads; there are thick rugs in all the rooms, so that human footsteps will not be heard; whoever enters is warned to talk little and softly, and to avoid saying anything that might affect the imagination or the nerves. And in your study a visitor does not get a handshake and is not invited to sit down, just as now you did not shake my hand or invite me to sit down…”

“Very well, if you want!” said the princess, holding out her hand and smiling. “To be angry over such a trifle, really…”

“Do I seem angry?” The doctor laughed, but immediately flushed, took off his hat, and, waving it, began to speak heatedly. “Frankly speaking, I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to tell you everything, everything…That is, I want to tell you that you look at all people Napoleonically, as cannon fodder. But Napoleon at least had an idea of some sort, while you have nothing except an aversion to people!”

“So I have an aversion to people!” the princess smiled, shrugging her shoulders in amazement. “Do I!”

“Yes, you do! You need facts? Very well! In your Mikhaltsevo three of your former cooks live by begging. They went blind in your kitchens from the heat of the stoves. On your many thousands of acres, all that there is of healthy, strong, and handsome, all of it has been taken by you and your hangers-on as servants, lackeys, coachmen. All this two-legged livestock is being bred for lackeydom; they overeat, grow crude, lose the image and likeness,² in short…Young doctors, agronomists, teachers, intelligent workers in general, my God, they’re taken from their work, from honest labor, and forced for the sake of a crust of bread to participate in all sorts of puppet comedies that are an embarrassment for any decent person! Before three years go by, a young man in your service turns into a hypocrite, a lickspittle, a squealer…Is that good? Your Polish managers, these lowdown spies, all these Kasimirs and Kaetans, prowl over your thousands of acres from morning to night and try to take three hides off one ox just to please you. Sorry, I’m not putting things very systematically, but never mind! Simple people on your estates don’t count as human beings. And those princes, counts, and bishops who visited you, you considered as décor, not as living people. But the main thing…the main thing, which outrages me most of all—you have a fortune of over a million, and you do nothing for people, nothing!”

The princess sat there astonished, frightened, offended, not knowing what to say or how to behave. No one had ever spoken to her in such a tone. The doctor’s unpleasant, angry voice, his awkward, faltering speech, produced in her ears and head a sharp, rapping noise, and after a while it seemed to her that the gesticulating doctor was hitting her on the head with his hat.

“That’s not true!” she brought out in a soft and pleading voice. “I did a lot of good for people, you know that yourself!”

“Oh, enough!” cried the doctor. “Can you still go on considering your charity work as something serious and useful, and not as a puppet comedy? It was a comedy from beginning to end, it was a performance of loving one’s neighbor, such an obvious performance that even children and stupid peasant women understood it! Take your—what was it?—hospice for homeless old women, where you made me something like the head doctor, and you yourself were an honorary trustee. Oh, Lord God, what a splendid institution! You had a house built, with parquet floors and weathervanes on the roof, then a dozen old women were found in the villages and forced to sleep under flannel blankets, on Dutch linen sheets, and eat fruit drops.”

The doctor snorted maliciously into his hat and went on quickly, stammering:

“That was a performance! The lower-ranking hospice workers put the blankets and sheets under lock and key so that the old women wouldn’t dirty them, and let the old hags sleep on the floor! The old women didn’t dare sit on the beds, or put on bed jackets, or walk on the polished parquet. Everything was kept for display and hidden from the old women, as if from thieves, and the old women secretly went begging for food and clothing, and prayed to God day and night to get out of this jail as soon as possible and to be rid of the sanctimonious admonishments of the well-fed scoundrels you appointed to look after them. And what were the higher ranks up to? That was simply delightful! About twice a week, in the evening, thirty-five thousand messengers came galloping³ to announce that the next day the princess—you, that is—would come to the hospice. That meant that the next day I had to abandon my patients, dress up, and go to the parade. Very well, I arrive. The old women, all fresh and clean, are already lined up and waiting. Around them walks the retired garrison rat—the supervisor, with his sweet, lickspittle smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but they’re afraid to murmur. We wait. The junior manager comes galloping. Half an hour later the senior manager, then the head manager of the accounting office, then someone else, then someone else…no end to the galloping! They all have mysterious, solemn faces. We wait and wait, we shift our feet, we keep glancing at our watches—all this in sepulchral silence, because we all hate each other and are at daggers drawn…An hour goes by, then another, and now, finally, a carriage appears in the distance, and…and…”

The doctor dissolved in high-pitched laughter and in a high little voice squeaked:

“You step out of the carriage, and the old hags, at the command of the garrison rat, start to sing: ‘How glorious is our Lord in Zion, the tongue cannot tell…’⁴ Not bad, eh?”

The doctor guffawed in a bass voice and waved his hand, as if wishing to show that he could not utter a word more from laughter. He laughed painfully, sharply, with tightly clenched teeth, as unkind people laugh, and by his voice, his face, and his gleaming, slightly impudent eyes one could tell that he deeply despised the princess, and the hospice, and the old women. There was nothing funny or merry in anything he told so ineptly and crudely, but he guffawed with pleasure and even with glee.

“And the school?” he went on, breathing heavily from laughter. “Remember how you wanted to teach the peasant children yourself? You must have taught them very well, because soon all the boys ran away, so that they had to be whipped and then given money to come to you. And remember how you wanted to give bottles with your own hands to the nursing babies whose mothers worked in the fields? You went around the village lamenting that these babies were not at your service—the mothers had all taken them to the fields with them. Then the headman ordered the mothers to take turns leaving their babies for you to have fun with. It’s amazing! Everyone fled from your good deeds like mice from a cat! And why? Very simple! Not because our people are ignorant and ungrateful, as you always explained, but because in all your escapades—forgive me the expression—there was not a pennyworth of love and mercy! There was only a wish to amuse yourslf with living dolls and nothing else…Somebody who is unable to distinguish people from lapdogs should not get involved in charitable works. I assure you, there’s a big difference between people and lapdogs!”

The princess’s heart was pounding terribly, there was a throbbing in her ears, and she still felt as if the doctor was hammering her on the head with his hat. The doctor spoke quickly, heatedly, and unpleasantly, stammering and gesticulating excessively; she could only understand that this was a rude, ill-bred, spiteful, ungrateful man talking to her, but what he wanted from her and what he was talking about she did not understand.

“Go away!” she said in a tearful voice, raising her hands to protect her head from the doctor’s hat. “Go away!”

“And how you deal with your employees!” the doctor went on indignantly. “You don’t consider them human beings and treat them like the worst swindlers. For instance, allow me to ask, what did you fire me for? I worked ten years for your father, then for you, honorably, with no holidays, no vacations; I earned the love of everyone for a hundred miles around, and suddenly one fine day it was announced to me that I was no longer employed! What for? I still don’t understand! I, a doctor of medicine, a well-born man, a graduate of Moscow University, the father of a family, am such an insignificant little pipsqueak that I can be chucked out with no explanations! Why stand on ceremony with me? I heard later that my wife, without my knowledge, secretly went to you three times to plead for me, and you didn’t receive her even once. They say she wept in the front hall. And for that I can never forgive the late woman! Never!”

The doctor fell silent and clenched his teeth, straining to think of something else very unpleasant and vengeful to say. He remembered something, and his scowling, cold face suddenly brightened.

“Or take your relation with this monastery!” he began eagerly. “You never spared anybody, and the holier the place, the greater the chance that it will get the full dose of your loving kindness and angelic meekness. Why do you keep coming here? What do you need from the monks here, if I may ask? What is Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba?⁵ Again it’s an amusement, a game, a blasphemy against human beings, and nothing else. You don’t believe in the monks’ God, you have your own God in your heart, whom you arrived at with your own mind at spiritualistic séances; you look condescendingly at church rites, you don’t go to the liturgies or vigils, you sleep till noon…Why do you come here?…You come with your own God to other people’s monastery, and you imagine the monastery considers it a great honor! Oh, yes, of course! Have you ever asked, incidentally, what your visits cost the monks? You were pleased to arrive here tonight, but two days ago a messenger already came here on horseback, sent from your estate to warn them you were coming. Yesterday they spent the whole day preparing rooms for you and waiting. Today the advance guard arrived—an impudent maid, who keeps running around the yard, rustling, pestering with questions, giving orders…I can’t stand it! Today the monks have been on the lookout all day: If you’re not met with ceremony—it’s bad! You’ll complain to the bishop! ‘Your Grace, the monks don’t love me. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. True, I’m a great sinner, but I’m so unhappy!’ One monastery already got a roasting because of you. The archimandrite is a busy, learned man who doesn’t have a free moment, and you keep on summoning him to your rooms. No respect either for his old age or for his cloth. It would be one thing if you donated a lot, it wouldn’t be so bad, but in all this time the monks haven’t received even a hundred roubles from you!”

When the princess was upset, not understood, offended, and when she did not know what to say or do, she usually began to weep. And now she finally covered her face and began to weep in a thin, childish voice. The doctor suddenly fell silent and looked at her. His face darkened and became stern.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he said hollowly. “I yielded to a spiteful feeling and forgot myself. That’s not good.”

And, with an embarrassed cough, forgetting to put his hat on, he quickly walked away from the princess.

Stars were already twinkling in the sky. On the other side of the monastery, the moon was probably rising, because the sky was clear, transparent, and tender. Bats raced noiselessly along the white monastery wall.

The clock slowly struck three-quarters of some hour, probably past eight. The princess stood up and slowly went to the gate. She felt hurt and was weeping, and it seemed to her that the trees, and the stars, and the bats were sorry for her; and the clock struck melodiously only in order to sympathize with her. She was weeping and thinking how good it would be to go into the monastery for the rest of her life. On quiet summer evenings she would stroll in solitude down the footpaths, hurt, insulted, misunderstood, and only God and the starry sky would see the suffering woman’s tears. In the church the vigil was still going on. The princess stopped and listened to the singing; how good this singing sounded in the still, dark air! How sweet it was to weep and suffer to this singing!

Coming to her rooms, she looked at her tear-stained face in the mirror and powdered it, then sat down to supper. The monks knew that she liked pickled sterlet, tiny mushrooms, Malaga, and simple honey-cakes that leave a taste of cypress in the mouth, and each time she came they served her all that. Eating the mushrooms and following them with Malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would be utterly ruined and abandoned, how all these stewards, agents, clerks, and maids, for whom she had done so much, would betray her and start saying rude things; how all the people on earth would attack her, revile her, laugh at her; she would renounce her title of princess, renounce luxury and society, and go into the monastery without a word of reproach; she would pray for her enemies, and then everyone would suddenly understand her, would come to ask her forgiveness, but it would be too late…

After supper she knelt in the corner before an icon and read two chapters from the Gospel. Then the maid prepared her bed and she lay down. Stretching out under the white coverlet, she sighed sweetly and deeply, as one sighs after weeping, closed her eyes, and began to drift off into sleep…

In the morning she woke up and looked at her watch: it was half past nine. On the rug beside the bed stretched a narrow, bright strip of light from a ray that came through the window and just barely lit up the room. Behind the black window curtain flies were buzzing.

“It’s early!” the princess thought and closed her eyes.

Stretching and luxuriating in the bed, she recalled yesterday’s encounter with the doctor and all the thoughts she had fallen asleep with last night; she recalled that she had been unhappy. Then came the memory of her husband, who lived in Petersburg, then of her stewards, doctors, neighbors, official acquaintances…A long line of familiar men’s faces passed by in her imagination. She smiled and thought that, if these people had been able to penetrate her soul and understand her, they would all be at her feet…

At a quarter past eleven she summoned the maid.

“Get me dressed, Dasha,” she said languorously. “But first go and tell them to hitch up the horses. I must go to see Klavdia Nikolaevna.”

Coming out of her rooms to get into the carriage, she squinted from the brightness of the daylight and laughed with pleasure: it was a wonderful day! Looking with her narrowed eyes at the monks who had gathered by the porch to see her off, she nodded affably and said:

“Goodbye, my friends! See you in two days.”

She was pleasantly surprised to see the doctor among the monks by the porch. His face was pale and stern.

“Princess,” he said, taking off his hat and smiling guiltily, “I’ve already been waiting here a long time for you. Forgive me, for God’s sake…I was carried away yesterday by a mean, vengeful feeling, and I said a lot of…stupid things. In short, I ask your forgiveness.”

The princess smiled affably and offered him her hand. He kissed it and blushed.

Trying to resemble a little bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage and nodded her head on all sides. Her heart was cheerful, serene, and warm, and she herself felt that her smile was unusually affectionate and gentle. As the carriage drove to the gate, then down the dusty road past the sheds and gardens, past long trains of Ukrainian carts and pilgrims walking in files to the monastery, she kept squinting and smiling gently. She thought there was no higher delight than to bring warmth, light, and joy everywhere, to forgive offenses, and to smile affably at one’s enemies. The passing peasants bowed to her, the carriage softly whished by, the wheels raised clouds of dust which the wind carried over to the golden rye, and it seemed to the princess that her body was rocking, not on the cushions of the carriage, but on those clouds, and that she herself resembled a light, transparent cloud…

“I’m so happy!” she whispered, closing her eyes. “So happy!”

1889