Fifty-Two Stories

FEAR

My Friend’s Story

DMITRI PETROVICH SILIN finished his studies at the university and entered government service in Petersburg, but at the age of thirty he abandoned the service and took up farming. His farming went rather well, but it still seemed to me that this was not the right place for him and that he would do well to go back to Petersburg. When, sunburnt, gray with dust, worn out from work, he met me at the gate or by the porch, and then at supper struggled with drowsiness, and his wife led him off to bed like a child, or when, overcoming his drowsiness, he began in his soft, soulful, as if pleading voice to explain his good thoughts, I saw in him not a farmer and not an agronomist, but only a weary man, and it was clear to me that he did not need any farming, but needed only for the day to be over—and thanks be to God.

I liked to visit him and, occasionally, to spend two or three days on his estate. I liked his house, and the park, and the big orchard, and the river, and his philosophizing, a bit languid and flowery, but clear. It must be that I also liked the man himself, though I cannot say so for certain, since to this day I’m unable to sort out my feelings of that time. He was an intelligent, kind, sincere man, and not boring, but I remember very well that when he confided his innermost secrets to me and called our relations friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I felt awkward. In his friendship towards me there was something troubling, burdensome, and I would sooner have preferred ordinary comradely relations with him.

The thing was that I had a great liking for his wife, Maria Sergeevna. I was not in love with her, but I liked her face, her eyes, her voice, her gait, I missed her when I had not seen her for a long time, and then my imagination pictured no one more eagerly than that beautiful and refined young woman. I had no definite intentions regarding her, nor did I dream of any, but for some reason each time she and I were left alone together, I remembered that her husband considered me his friend, and I felt awkward. When she played my favorite pieces on the piano or told me something interesting, I listened with pleasure, and at the same time for some reason thoughts crept into my head that she loved her husband, that he was my friend, and that she herself considered me his friend, and my mood would be spoiled, and I would become listless, awkward, and bored. She would notice this change and usually say:

“You’re bored without your friend. We must send to the fields for him.”

And when Dmitri Petrovich came, she would say:

“Well, your friend has come now. Be glad.”

So it went for a year and a half.

Once on a Sunday in July, Dmitri Petrovich and I, having nothing to do, went to the big village of Klushino to buy some things for supper. While we made the round of the shops, the sun went down and evening came on, an evening I will probably never forget all my life. We bought cheese that resembled soap and petrified sausage that smelled of tar, then went to the inn to ask if they had beer. Our coachman drove to the smithy to have the horses shod, and we told him we would wait for him by the church. We walked, talked, laughed at our purchases, and behind us, silently and with a mysterious look, like a sleuth, followed a man known to us in the district by the rather strange nickname of Forty Martyrs. This Forty Martyrs was none other than Gavrila Severov, or simply Gavryushka, who had worked for a short time as my valet and had been fired for drunkenness. He had also worked for Dmitri Petrovich and had been fired by him for exactly the same sin. He was a hardened drunkard, and in general his whole life was as drunken and wayward as himself. His father had been a priest and his mother a noblewoman, meaning that by birth he had belonged to the privileged class, but however much I studied his wasted, deferential, eternally sweaty face, his red, already graying beard, his pathetic, ragged suit jacket and loose red shirt, I simply could not find even a trace of what is known in our society as privilege. He called himself educated and told of how he had studied at a seminary, where he did not finish his courses because he was expelled for smoking, then sang in a bishop’s choir and lived for two years in a monastery, from which he had also been expelled, not for smoking this time, but for “the weakness.” He had gone on foot all over two provinces, had made some sort of petitions to the consistory and various offices, had been tried four times. Finally, having landed in our district, he had worked as a servant, a forester, a huntsman, a beadle, had married a wanton widow—a scullery maid—and had sunk definitively into a subservient life. He became so accustomed to its squalor and squabbles that he himself spoke of his privileged origins with a certain mistrust, as of some sort of myth. At the time I am describing, he hung around without work, passing himself off as a farrier and a huntsman, and his wife vanished somewhere without a trace.

From the inn we went to the church and sat down on the porch to wait for the coachman. Forty Martyrs stood at a distance and put his hand to his mouth, so that he could cough into it respectfully when necessary. It was already dark; there was a strong smell of evening dampness and the moon was preparing to rise. In the clear, starry sky there were only two clouds just over our heads: one big, the other smaller; solitary, like a mother and child, they ran one after the other in the direction where the evening glow was fading.

“A fine day today,” said Dmitri Petrovich.

“In the extreme…,” Forty Martyrs agreed and coughed respectfully into his hand. “How is it, Dmitri Petrovich, that you kindly thought of coming here?” he began in an ingratiating voice, evidently trying to strike up a conversation.

Dmitri Petrovich did not reply. Forty Martyrs sighed deeply and said in a low voice, not looking at us:

“I suffer solely because of the matter for which I must answer to almighty God. Of course, I’m a lost man and without ability, but believe my conscience: without a crust of bread and worse off than a dog…Forgive me, Dmitri Petrovich!”

Silin was not listening and, propping his head on his fists, was thinking about something. The church stood at the end of the street, on a high bank, and through the grill of the fence we could see the river, the water-meadows on the other side, and the bright, crimson light of a bonfire, with dark people and horses moving around it. And further on from the bonfire more lights: this was a village…They were singing a song there.

On the river and here and there on the water-meadows mist was rising. High, narrow wisps of mist, thick and white as milk, hovered over the river, covering the reflections of the stars and catching at the willows. They changed their look every moment, and it seemed as if some embraced, others bowed, still others raised their arms to the sky in wide, clerical sleeves, as if praying…They probably suggested to Dmitri Petrovich a thought about ghosts and dead people, because he turned his face to me and asked, smiling sadly:

“Tell me, my dear fellow, why is it that when we want to tell something frightening, mysterious, and fantastic, we draw material not from life but inevitably from the world of ghosts and shades from beyond the grave?”

“What’s frightening is what’s incomprehensible.”

“And is life comprehensible to you? Tell me: do you understand life better than the world beyond the grave?”

Dmitri Petrovich moved quite close to me, so close that I could feel his breath on my cheek. In the evening darkness his pale, lean face seemed still more pale, and his dark beard blacker than soot. His eyes were sad, earnest, and a bit afraid, as if he were about to tell me something frightening. He looked me in the eye and went on in his habitual pleading voice.

“Our life and the world beyond the grave are equally incomprehensible and frightening. Whoever is afraid of ghosts should also be afraid of me, and of those fires, and of the sky, because all of it, if you think well, is no less incomprehensible and fantastic than apparitions from the other world. Prince Hamlet did not kill himself, because he feared the visions that might come in that sleep of death.¹ I like his famous soliloquy, but, frankly speaking, it never touched my soul. I’ll confess to you as a friend, in moments of anguish I’ve sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death, my fantasy has invented thousands of the most gloomy visions, and I’ve managed to drive myself to tormenting exaltation, to nightmare, and that, I assure you, did not seem more frightening to me than reality. Needless to say, visions are frightening, but life is frightening, too. I, my dear friend, do not understand and am afraid of life. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sick, demented person. It seems to a normal, healthy person that he understands everything he sees and hears, whereas I’ve lost that ‘it seems,’ and day after day I poison myself with fear. There exists a sickness—the fear of spaces—well, so I’m sick with the fear of life. When I lie in the grass and look for a long time at a bug that was born yesterday and doesn’t understand anything, it seems to me that its whole life consists of nothing but horror, and I see myself in it.”

“What is it that actually frightens you?” I asked.

“Everything frightens me. I’m not a profound man by nature and I have little interest in such questions as life after death, the destiny of mankind, and generally I rarely soar into the heavenly heights. I’m frightened mainly by the commonplace, which none of us can escape from. I’m unable to tell what in my actions is true or false, and they bother me; I’m aware that the conditions of life and my upbringing confined me to a narrow circle of lies, and that my whole life is nothing but a daily worry about deceiving myself and others and not noticing it, and I’m frightened by the thought that till death I won’t get out of this lie. Today I do something, and tomorrow I don’t understand why I did it. I entered the service in Petersburg and got scared, I came here to take up farming and also got scared…I see that we know little and therefore make mistakes every day, we are often unfair, we slander, we prey on other people’s lives, we expend all our strength on nonsense that we don’t need and that hinders our lives, and that frightens me, because I don’t understand who needs it and why. I don’t understand people, my dear friend, and I’m afraid of them. I’m frightened looking at peasants, I don’t know for what higher purposes they suffer and what they live for. If life is pleasure, they are superfluous, unnecessary people; but if the goal and meaning of life is need and unmitigated, hopeless ignorance, I don’t understand who needs this inquisition and why. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this subject here!” said Dmitri Petrovich, pointing to Forty Martyrs. “Set your mind to it!”

Noticing that we were both looking at him, Forty Martyrs coughed respectfully into his fist and said:

“I was always a faithful servant to good masters, but the main reason is alcoholic beverages. If you were to honor me now, an unfortunate man, and give me a post, I would kiss an icon. My word is firm.”

The sexton walked by, looked at us in perplexity, and started pulling the rope. The bell, abruptly breaking the evening silence, slowly and protractedly rang ten.

“Anyhow it’s already ten o’clock,” said Dmitri Petrovich. “Time for us to go. Yes, my dear friend,” he sighed, “if you only knew how afraid I am of my humdrum, everyday thoughts, in which it seems there should be nothing frightening. So as not to think, I divert myself with work and try to wear myself out, so as to sleep soundly at night. Children, wife—for others it’s ordinary, but how hard it is for me, my dear friend!”

He rubbed his face with his hands, grunted, and laughed.

“If I could tell you what a fool I’ve played in my life!” he said. “Everybody says to me: you have a nice wife, lovely children, and you’re an excellent family man. They think I’m very happy, and they envy me. Well, since we’re at it, I’ll tell you in secret: my happy family life is nothing but a sad misunderstanding, and I’m afraid of it.”

A strained smile made his pale face unsightly. He put his arm around my waist and went on in a low voice:

“You’re my true friend, I trust you and I deeply respect you. Friendship is sent to us by heaven so that we can speak ourselves out and be saved from the secrets that oppress us. Allow me to take advantage of your friendly disposition and tell you the whole truth. My family life, which seems so delightful to you, is my main misfortune and my main fear. I married strangely and stupidly. I must tell you that before the wedding I loved Masha madly, and I courted her for two years. I proposed to her five times and she rejected me, because she was totally indifferent to me. The sixth time, when I crawled on my knees before her, stupefied by love, begging for her hand as if for alms, she accepted…This is what she said to me: ‘I don’t love you, but I will be faithful to you…’ I accepted that condition rapturously. I understood then what it meant, but now, I swear to God, I don’t. ‘I don’t love you, but I will be faithful to you’—what does that mean? It’s fog, darkness…I love her now just as deeply as on the first day of our marriage, and she, it seems to me, is as indifferent as before and must be glad when I leave the house. I don’t know for certain whether she loves me or not, I don’t know, I don’t know, but we live under the same roof, we talk intimately, we sleep together, we have children, our property is held in common…What does it mean? What for? Do you understand any of it, my dear friend? A cruel torture! Because I understand nothing in our relationship, I hate now her, now myself, now both of us, everything is mixed up in my head, I torment myself and turn stupid, and she, as if on purpose, gets prettier every day, she becomes astonishing…I think she has wonderful hair, and she smiles like no other woman. I love her and I know that I love her hopelessly. A hopeless love for a woman with whom you already have two children! Can that be understood and not be frightening? Isn’t it more frightening than ghosts?”

He got into such a state that he could have gone on talking for a very long time, but fortunately we heard the coachman’s voice. Our horses came. We got into the carriage, and Forty Martyrs, taking off his hat, helped us both in with such a look as if he had long been waiting for a chance to touch our precious bodies.

“Dmitri Petrovich, allow me to come to you,” he said, blinking hard and tilting his head to the side. “Show me divine mercy! I’m perishing from hunger!”

“Oh, all right,” Silin said. “Come, stay for three days, and then we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir!” Forty Martyrs was overjoyed. “I’ll come today, sir.”

It was four miles to the house. Dmitri Petrovich, pleased that he had finally spoken everything out to a friend, held me by the waist all the way and, now without bitterness and without fright, but cheerfully, said to me that, if everything had been well with him in his family, he would have gone back to Petersburg and taken up science. The trend, he said, which had driven so many gifted young people to the countryside, was a deplorable trend. There was a great deal of rye and wheat in Russia, but there was a dearth of cultivated people. Gifted, healthy youths should take up science, the arts, and politics; to do otherwise was even wasteful. He philosophized with pleasure and expressed regret that he must part from me early the next morning, because he had to go to a woodlot auction.

But I felt awkward and sad, and it seemed to me that I was deceiving the man. And at the same time I was pleased. I looked at the enormous crimson moon, which was rising, and pictured to myself a tall, slender blonde, pale, always smartly dressed, fragrant with some special perfume like musk, and for some reason I was cheered by the thought that she did not love her husband.

We came home and sat down to supper. Maria Sergeevna, laughing, served us our purchases, and I found that she did in fact have wonderful hair and that she smiled like no other woman. I watched her, and I wanted to see in her every movement and glance that she did not love her husband, and it seemed to me that I did see it.

Dmitri Petrovich soon began fighting off drowsiness. After supper he sat with us for some ten minutes, then said:

“Do as you like, my friends, but I have to get up tomorrow at three in the morning. Allow me to leave you.”

He tenderly kissed his wife, shook my hand firmly, with gratitude, and made me promise that I would come next week without fail. So as not to oversleep the next morning, he went to spend the night in the cottage.

Maria Sergeevna stayed up late, Petersburg fashion, and now for some reason I was glad of it.

“And so?” I began, when we were left alone. “And so, you’re going to be kind and play something for me.”

I didn’t want any music, but I didn’t know how to begin the conversation. She sat down at the piano and played, I don’t remember what. I sat near her, looked at her plump white hands, and tried to read something in her cold, indifferent face. But then she smiled for some reason and looked at me.

“You’re bored without your friend,” she said.

I laughed.

“For the sake of friendship, it would be enough to come here once a month, but I come here more than once a week.”

Having said that, I got up and paced the room in agitation. She also got up and went to the fireplace.

“What do you mean to say by that?” she asked, raising her big, clear eyes to me.

I said nothing.

“You weren’t telling the truth,” she went on after reflecting. “You come here only for the sake of Dmitri Petrovich. Well, I’m very glad. In our time one rarely sees such friendship.”

“Aha!” I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: “Would you like to take a stroll in the garden?”

“No.”

I stepped out on the terrace. My scalp was tingling, and I was chilled with excitement. I was already certain that our conversation would be very insignificant and that we would not be able to say anything special to each other, but that during that night what I did not even dare to dream of would certainly take place. Certainly, that night, or never.

“What fine weather!” I said loudly.

“For me it’s decidedly all the same,” came the answer.

I went into the drawing room. Maria Sergeevna was standing by the fireplace as before, her hands behind her back, thinking about something and looking away.

“Why is it decidedly all the same for you?” I asked.

“Because I’m bored. You’re only bored without your friend, but I’m always bored. However…that doesn’t interest you.”

I sat down at the piano and played several chords, waiting for what she would say.

“Please don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, looking at me angrily and as if she were about to weep with vexation. “If you want to go to bed, go. Don’t think that, if you’re Dmitri Petrovich’s friend, you’re obliged to be bored with his wife. I don’t want any sacrifices. Please go.”

I didn’t go, of course. She went out to the terrace, and I stayed in the drawing room and spent some five minutes leafing through the scores. Then I, too, went out. We stood next to each other in the shadow of the curtains, and below us were the steps flooded with moonlight. The black shadows of trees stretched across the flower beds and over the yellow sand of the paths.

“I also have to leave tomorrow,” I said.

“Of course, if my husband isn’t home, you can’t stay here,” she said mockingly. “I can imagine how miserable you’d be if you fell in love with me! Just wait, someday I’ll up and throw myself on your neck…I’ll watch how you flee from me in terror. It will be interesting.”

Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were filled with the most tender, passionate love. I already looked upon this beautiful creature as my property, and now I noticed for the first time that she had golden eyebrows, lovely eyebrows, such as I had never seen before. The thought that I could now draw her to me, caress her, touch her wonderful hair, suddenly seemed so monstrous to me that I laughed and shut my eyes.

“However, it’s already time…Sleep well,” she said.

“I don’t want to sleep well,” I said, following her to the drawing room. “I’ll curse this night if I sleep at all.”

Pressing her hand and walking her to the door, I could see from her face that she understood me and was glad that I also understood her.

I went to my room. On my desk by the books lay Dmitri Petrovich’s cap, and that reminded me of his friendship. I took a walking stick and went out to the garden. Here the mist was already rising, and around the trees and bushes, embracing them, wandered the same high and narrow apparitions I had just seen on the river. What a pity I couldn’t speak with them!

In the extraordinarily transparent air, every little leaf, every drop of dew stood out distinctly—it all smiled to me in silence, half awake, and, passing by the green benches, I recalled words from some play of Shakespeare’s: how sweetly sleeps the moonlight upon this bench!²

There was a small hummock in the garden. I went up it and sat down. An enchanting feeling came over me. I knew for certain that I was about to embrace her luxurious body, to press myself to it, to kiss those golden eyebrows, and I wanted not to believe it, to excite myself, and was sorry that she had tormented me so little and yielded so soon.

But here I suddenly heard heavy footsteps. A man of average height appeared in the path, and I immediately recognized him as Forty Martyrs. He sat down on a bench and sighed deeply, then crossed himself three times and lay down. A minute later he sat up and turned on the other side. Mosquitoes and the night’s dampness kept him from sleeping.

“Ah, life!” he said. “Miserable, bitter life!”

Looking at his scrawny, bent body and hearing deep, hoarse sighs, I remembered the other miserable, bitter life confessed to me that day, and my blissful state became eerie and frightening to me. I left the hummock and headed home.

“Life, in his opinion, is frightening,” I thought, “so don’t stand on ceremony with it, break it, and, before it crushes you, take all you can grab from it.”

Maria Sergeevna was standing on the terrace. I silently embraced her and greedily started kissing her eyebrows, temples, neck…

In my room she told me that she had loved me for a long time, more than a year. She swore her love for me, wept, begged me to take her away with me. I kept bringing her to the window, so as to see her face in the moonlight, and she seemed like a beautiful dream to me, and I hurried to embrace her tightly, so as to believe in its reality. I had not experienced such raptures for a long time…But all the same, far off somewhere in the depths of my soul, I felt a certain awkwardness, and I was out of sorts. There was something troubling and burdensome in her love for me, as there was in Dmitri Petrovich’s friendship. It was a great, serious love, with tears and oaths, while I didn’t want anything serious—no tears, no oaths, no talk about the future. Let this moonlit night flash by in our lives like a bright meteor—and basta.

At exactly three o’clock she left my room, and as I followed her with my gaze, standing in the doorway, Dmitri Petrovich suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor. Running into him, she gave a start and made way for him, and disgust was written all over her. He smiled somehow strangely, coughed, and came into my room.

“I forgot my cap here yesterday,” he said, not looking at me.

He found his cap, put it on with both hands, then looked at my embarrassed face, at my slippers, and said in a strange, husky voice, not quite his own:

“I was probably predestined not to understand anything. If you understand something, then…I congratulate you. It’s all dark in my eyes.”

And he went out with a little cough. Then I saw through the window how he hitched up the horses by the stable. His hands were trembling, he was in a hurry and kept glancing at the house; he was probably frightened. Then he got into the tarantass and with a strange expression, as if fearing pursuit, whipped up the horses.

A little later I myself left. The sun was already rising, and the previous day’s mist timidly pressed itself to the bushes and hummocks. Forty Martyrs, who had already managed to have a drink somewhere, sat on the box and mouthed drunken nonsense.

“I’m a free man!” he cried to the horses. “Hey, you beauties! I’m a hereditary, honorary citizen, if you want to know!”

Dmitri Petrovich’s fear, which was on my mind, communicated itself to me. I thought about what had happened and understood nothing. I looked at the rooks, and found it strange and frightening that they were flying.

“Why did I do it?” I asked myself in bewilderment and despair. “Why did it happen precisely like this, and not some other way? To whom and for what was it necessary that she should love me seriously and that he should come to the room to get his cap? What has the cap got to do with it?”

That same day I left for Petersburg, and since then I have not seen Dmitri Petrovich and his wife even once. People say they’re still living together.

1892