Selected Stories

Three Years

I

IT WAS STILL TWILIGHT, but here and there lights had already been lit in the houses, and from behind the barracks at the end of the street a pale moon was rising. Laptev sat on a bench by the gate waiting for the end of the vesper service at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. He was counting on Yulia Sergeyevna passing by on her way home from vespers, and he would speak to her, perhaps even spend the entire evening with her.

He had been sitting there for an hour and a half, and all that time he was picturing to himself his Moscow apartment, his Moscow friends, his footman Pyotr, and his writing table. He gazed in perplexity at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed strange to him that he was living, not in his dacha at Sokolniki, but in this provincial town, in a house past which a large herd of cattle was driven every morning and evening, accompanied by dreadful clouds of dust and the blowing of a horn. He remembered recent conversations in Moscow in which he himself had taken part—long discussions in which it was affirmed that one could live without love, that passionate love is a psychosis, that there is no such love, but merely a physical attraction between the sexes—and all that sort of thing. Recalling these conversations he ruefully thought that if anyone were to ask him now what love was, he would be at a loss for an answer.

The vesper service was over and people were beginning to appear. With strained attention Laptev scrutinized the dark figures. The bishop had already been driven by in his carriage, the bells had ceased ringing, and one by one the red and green lights in the belfry—illuminations on the occasion of dedication day—had been extinguished; but people continued to come out, sauntering, talking together, and loitering beneath the windows. At last he heard the familiar voice, and his heart began to throb; then, when he saw that Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone, but with two ladies, he was seized with despair.

“This is awful, awful!” he whispered, suddenly jealous of her. “It is awful!”

At the corner, before turning into the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to her companions, and her glance fell on Laptev.

“I was just on my way to your house,” he said. “I’m coming to have a little talk with your father. Is he at home?”

“Very likely,” she replied. “It’s still too early for him to go to the club.”

There were gardens all along the lane, and by the fences lime trees grew, casting broad shadows in the moonlight, engulfing the fences and the gate on one side in complete darkness, out of which rose a whisper of women’s voices, smothered laughter, and the sound of someone softly playing on a balalaika. The scent of lime trees and hay was in the air. This fragrance, and the whisper of unseen women, was tantalizing to Laptev. He had a sudden, passionate desire to embrace his companion, to cover her face, her hands, her shoulders, with kisses, to sob, to fall at her feet, to tell her how long he had been waiting for her. A faint, elusive odor of incense emanated from her, reminding him of a time when he too believed in God and attended vespers, a time when he used to dream of a pure, poetic love. And it seemed to him that because this girl did not love him, all possibility of the happiness he then had dreamed of was now lost to him forever.

She began to speak with concern about the health of his sister, Nina Fyodorovna. Two months ago she had undergone an operation for cancer, and now everyone was expecting a recurrence of the disease.

“I went to see her this morning,” said Yulia Sergeyevna, “and it seemed to me that in the past week she has not so much grown thin as withered.”

“Yes, yes,” Laptev agreed. “There has been no relapse, but every day I notice she grows weaker and weaker; she’s wasting away before my eyes. I don’t understand what’s the matter with her.”

“Heavens, when I think how healthy, plump, and rosy-cheeked she was!” exclaimed Yulia Sergeyevna after a moment’s silence. “Everyone here called her the Muscovite. And how she laughed! On holidays she used to dress up like a simple peasant girl, and it suited her so well.”

Dr. Sergei Borisych was at home; he was a stout, florid man wearing a long frock coat that hung below his knees and made him look short-legged. He was pacing from one end of his study to the other, his hands thrust into his pockets, humming to himself, “Ru-ru-ru-ru. …” His gray whiskers were straggly, his hair uncombed, and he looked as though he had just got out of bed. And his study, with heaps of old papers piled in the corners, pillows strewn across the sofas, and a dirty, sick-looking poodle lying under the table, produced a similar unkempt, shaggy impression.

“Monsieur Laptev wants to see you,” said his daughter, going into the study.

“Ru-ru-ru-ru.” The humming grew louder as he wheeled into the drawing room, gave Laptev his hand, and asked, “What’s the good news?”

It was dark in the drawing room. Laptev did not sit down, but stood, hat in hand, apologizing for having disturbed him. He asked what could be done to enable his sister to sleep at night, and why she was growing so terribly thin; immediately he was disconcerted by the thought that he had asked the doctor these same questions earlier in the day, at the time of his morning visit.

’Tell me,” he continued, “wouldn’t it be well to send to Moscow for a specialist in internal diseases? What do you think?”

The doctor sighed, shrugged, and made a vague gesture with his hands. He was obviously offended. This was a suspicious man, quick to take offense and to whom it always seemed that he was mistrusted or insufficiently respected, taken advantage of by his patients, and a victim of his colleagues’ animosity. He was forever ridiculing himself, saying that such fools as he were created for one purpose only—so that the public might walk all over them.

Yulia Sergeyevna lit the lamp. It was apparent from her pale, weary face and listless walk that she had exhausted herself in church and wanted to rest. She sat down on the sofa with her hands in her lap and sank into a deep reverie.

Laptev knew he was homely, but now he seemed to experience a physical sensation of his own ugliness. He was short and thin, with ruddy cheeks, and hair that had grown so sparse his head felt the cold. He lacked that refined simplicity of expression which makes even a coarse, plain face appealing. In the company of women he was awkward, garrulous, and affected. At the present moment he almost despised himself for it. He felt impelled to talk, for fear that Yulia Sergeyevna might be bored in his company. But what about? His sister’s illness again?

He began talking about medicine, saying only what is generally said. He commended hygiene, and observed that he himself had long wished to found a workers’ hostel in Moscow, and had even made an estimate of the cost. According to his plan, a workman, for five or six kopecks a night, could be given a bowl of hot cabbage soup with bread, a warm, dry bed, a blanket, and a place to dry his clothes and boots.

Yulia Sergeyevna usually remained silent in his presence, but by some mysterious means, perhaps a lover’s intuition, he was able to divine her thoughts and intentions. And now he inferred from the fact that she had not gone to her room to change her clothes and drink tea after vespers, that she was going out to pay a visit.

“But I’m in no hurry with my hostel.” Chagrined and irritated, he now addressed the doctor, who was staring at him dully, apparently puzzled, unable to comprehend what had impelled him to raise the question of hygiene and medicine. “It may be some time before I utilize our estimate. I am afraid the hostel might fall into the hands of our Moscow Pharisees and lady philanthropists, who always ruin any enterprise.”

Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand to Laptev. “Excuse me,” she said, “it is time for me to go. Please give my regards to your sister.”

“Ru-ru-ru-ru. … “ hummed the doctor. “Ru-ru-ru-ru. …”

Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and soon afterwards Laptev said good-bye to the doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied with himself and unhappy, what banality is conveyed to him by lime trees, shadows, clouds—all those complacent and impassive beauties of nature! The moon stood high in the heavens, beneath it sped the clouds. “But what an artless, provincial moon; what ragged, flimsy clouds!” thought Laptev. He was ashamed of what he had said about medicine and the night shelter; and he was appalled to think that again tomorrow he would be unable to resist trying to see and talk to her—only to be convinced that he was a stranger to her. And the day after, again the same. For what? When and how would it all end?

On reaching home he went in to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked strong and gave the appearance of being a well-built, vigorous woman, but her striking pallor made her look like a corpse, especially when, as now, she was lying on her back with closed eyes. Her elder daughter, Sasha, a girl of ten, sat by her side reading aloud from a school reader.

“Alyosha has come,” the invalid said softly to herself.

Between Sasha and her uncle there had long been an unspoken agreement to take turns at the patient’s bedside. Now Sasha closed her reader, and, without a word, quietly left the room. Laptev took an historical novel from the top of the chest of drawers, found his place in it, then sat down and began to read aloud.

Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow. She and her two brothers had spent their childhood and youth at home in Pyatnitsky Street, within the domestic circle of a merchant’s family. It was a long and tedious childhood; her father treated her harshly—he had even flogged her on two or three occasions—and her mother, after a long illness, had died. The servants were dirty, coarse, and hypocritical, the house was frequented by priests and monks, and they, too, were coarse and hypocritical; they ate and drank their fill, crudely flattering her father, whom they disliked. The boys had the good fortune to be sent to school, but Nina was left uneducated; all her life she wrote a scrawling hand and read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, she met her present husband, a landowner named Panaurov, at a dacha in Khimki. She fell in love with him, and secretly married him, against her father’s will. Panaurov, a handsome, somewhat insolent man, who was given to whistling and lighting his cigarette from the ikon lamp, struck Nina’s father as utterly worthless. Later, when the son-in-law began making demands for a dowry, the old man wrote his daughter that he was sending her furs, silver, various articles left by her mother, and thirty thousand rubles; but he withheld his parental blessings. Subsequently, he sent an additional twenty thousand. Panaurov ran through the dowry and the money, the estate was sold, and he moved with his family to town, where he entered a branch of the government service. There he acquired a second family, which became the cause of much talk, as this illicit family lived quite openly.

Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical novel, she was thinking of how much she had gone through, how much she had always suffered, and that if someone were to describe her life it would make a most pitiful story. As the tumor was in her breast, she was convinced that her illness had been caused by love and the life she led with her husband, and that she had been brought to bed by jealousy and tears.

Alexei Fyodorych closed the book and said, “The end, God be praised! Tomorrow we’ll begin a new one.”

Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but of late her brother had begun to notice that at times her mind seemed weakened by illness, and she would laugh at the least trifle, or even without cause.

“While you were out, before dinner, Yulia came,” she remarked. “I gather she has very little faith in her papa. ‘Let him go on treating you,’ she said, ‘but write in secret to the holy man and ask him to pray for you.’ There is some sort of holy man living here. … Yulia forgot her parasol, you must take it to her tomorrow.” Then, after a brief silence, she added, “No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor holy men can be of help.”

“Nina, why don’t you sleep at night?” Laptev asked, in an effort to change the subject.

“Because I don’t, that’s all. I lie in bed and think.”

“What do you think about, dear?”

“About the children, you … about my life. You know, Alyosha, I’ve gone through a great deal. Once you begin remembering, you begin— Oh, my God!” she laughed again. “It’s no joke to have borne five children and to have buried three of them. … Sometimes, just when I was about to be confined, my Grigory Nikolaich would be at that very moment with another woman, and there would be no one to send for the doctor or the midwife. And when I went into the entrance hall or the kitchen looking for the maid, I found Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders, all waiting for him to come home. It made my head spin. … He didn’t love me, though he never said it in so many words. However, I have grown more calm, and it’s a relief; but when I was young, it hurt me—hurt me, my dear… it hurt me terribly. Once—it was when we were still living in the country—I found him in the garden with a woman, and I walked away … I walked—I don’t know where. Later I found myself in the church portico. I fell on my knees, ‘Queen of heaven!’ I prayed. … And it was night. The moon was shining. …”

She had spent herself and was gasping for breath; after resting a little she took her brother’s hand and, in a weak, stifled tone, said, “How kind you are, Alyosha!… How clever! What a fine man you turned out to be!”

At midnight Laptev said good night to her; as he went out he took with him Yulia Sergeyevna’s forgotten parasol. In spite of the late hour, both the men and women servants were in the dining room drinking tea. Such disorder! The children, too, were sitting there instead of sleeping in their beds. They were talking in low voices, and no one appeared to notice that the lamp was smoking and about to go out. All of them, the children as well as the servants, were troubled by a succession of inauspicious omens, and the atmosphere was oppressive. The mirror in the entrance hall had been broken; the samovar had been droning every day, and, as though purposely, was doing so even now; it was said that a mouse had jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna’s shoe while she was dressing. The awful significance of each of these signs was well known to the children; the elder girl, Sasha, a thin little brunette, sat at the table, inert with fear and misery, while Lida, a plump, fair child of seven, stood at her side, sullenly staring at the lamp.

Laptev went downstairs to his own apartment, where the low-ceilinged rooms were always close and smelled of geraniums. His brother-in-law, Panaurov, was in his sitting room reading a newspaper. Laptev nodded and sat down opposite him. Neither of them spoke. They sometimes spent entire evenings in silence, with no feeling of constraint.

The little girls came down to say good night. Without a word, Panaurov slowly made the sign of the cross over them several times, then gave them his hand to kiss. They curtsied and turned to their uncle, who also was obliged to make the sign of the cross and give them his hand to kiss. This ceremony of kissing and curtsying was repeated every evening.

When the children had gone Panaurov put aside his newspaper and said, “It’s dull in this God-fearing town of ours! But, I must confess, my friend,” he added with a sigh, “I’m very happy to see that you, at last, have found yourself a little diversion.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Recently I have seen you coming out of Dr. Byelavin’s house. I presume you are not going there for the sake of the papa.”

“Of course not,” said Laptev.

“Well, of course not. And, by the way, you wouldn’t find another such vulture as that papa if you searched high and low. You cannot imagine what a slovenly, incompetent, clumsy brute he is! You people there in the capital are interested in the provinces solely from a poetic viewpoint, that is to say, the picturesque, or Hapless Anton point of view; but I assure you, my friend, there is nothing in the least poetic here—there is barbarism, vulgarity, and meanness, nothing more. Take the local high priests of science, the so-called intelligentsia. Can you imagine, there are twenty-eight doctors in this town, every one of them has made a fortune and is living in his own home; meanwhile, the inhabitants remain in as hopeless a condition as ever. Here Nina had to have an operation—nothing of any consequence, actually—and we were obliged to send to Moscow for a surgeon! There was not a single man here that would undertake it. You cannot imagine! They know nothing, they understand nothing, they are interested in nothing. Just ask them, for example, what cancer is—what it is, what causes it.”

And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was an expert in every field of knowledge, and scientifically explained anything that happened to come up in conversation—but always in his own way. He had his own theory of chemistry, of astronomy, and of the circulation of the blood. He spoke deliberately, softly, convincingly, and he articulated the phrase “you cannot imagine” in an imploring tone, screwing up his eyes, languidly sighing and smiling, gracious as a king. It was obvious that he was very much pleased with himself, and that he never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty years old.

“I feel like eating something,” Laptev remarked. “I could eat something salty.”

“Well, why not? That can be arranged immediately.”

A few minutes later Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting upstairs in the dining room having supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka and then began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He never drank and he never played cards, yet he managed to squander his own and his wife’s property, and had acquired a great many debts. In order to spend so much in so short a time, one must have, not a passion, but special talent. Panaurov liked good food, elegant table service, music with his dinner, speeches, bowing footmen to whom he would casually toss a ten- or even twenty-five-ruble tip. He always took part in subscriptions and lotteries, never failed to send a bouquet on a friend’s name day, bought cups, glass-holders, shirt buttons, neckties, walking sticks, scent, cigarette holders, pipes, puppies, parrots, Japanese knickknacks and antiques; his nightshirts were of silk, his bed was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and his dressing gown genuine Bokhara. And for all this there was a daily expenditure of what he himself called “a pile of money.”

During supper he continued to sigh and shake his head. “Yes, everything in this world comes to an end.” He spoke softly, screwing up his dark eyes. “You fall in love and you suffer; you fall out of love, or you are deceived—and the woman doesn’t exist who wouldn’t deceive you—and you suffer; and you are brought to such a state of despair that you yourself will be unfaithful. But then, the time will come when all this will be merely a memory, and you will reason coolly, and consider the whole thing absolutely trivial.”

Laptev was tired and slightly drunk; looking at the dark, handsome head, the clipped black beard, he thought he understood why women fell in love with this pampered, self-assured, and physically fascinating man.

After supper Panaurov did not stay at home, but went to his other family. Laptev accompanied him on his way. Panaurov was the only man in the entire town who wore a top hat, and every time he walked by the pitiful little three-windowed houses with their gray fences and nettle bushes, his elegant, foppish figure, his top hat and orange-colored gloves, created a strange and melancholy impression.

After parting from him Laptev unhurriedly returned home. The moon shone so brightly one could distinguish every straw on the ground. Laptev felt as though the moonlight were caressing his bare head, as though someone were passing a feather over his hair.

“I love …” he said aloud; and suddenly he had a desire to run, to overtake Panaurov, to embrace him, forgive him, bestow a large sum of money on him, and then to run off into a field, a grove, and go on running without looking back.

At home he saw Yulia Sergeyevna’s parasol lying on a chair; he snatched it up and kissed it avidly. The parasol was silk, no longer new, and fastened with an old elastic band; the handle was a cheap one, made of ordinary white bone. Laptev opened it and held it over his head, and it seemed to him that the fragrance of happiness was all about him.

He sat down, made himself comfortable without relinquishing the parasol, and began writing a letter to one of his friends in Moscow.

My very dear friend, Kostya,

Here is news for you: I am in love again! I say again because six years ago I fell in love with a Moscow actress whom I never even managed to meet, and for the past year and a half I have lived with “a certain person” who is known to you—a woman neither young nor beautiful. Ah, my friend, how unlucky I have been in love! I never have had any success with women. And if I say again it is only because I find it somehow sad and shameful to admit, even to myself, that my youth has passed entirely without love, and that in a real sense I am in love for the first time only now, at the age of thirty-four. So let it be again!

If you only knew the sort of girl she is! She could not be called beautiful—she is very thin, and her face is broad, but with such a wonderful expression of goodness when she smiles! And her voice—it sings and vibrates when she speaks. She never enters into conversation with me, so I do not know her; but when I am near her I sense in her a rare, exceptional being, a penetrating mind, and high aspirations. She is religious, and you cannot imagine how this touches me and elevates her in my eyes. On this point I am prepared to argue with you till doomsday. You are right, let it be as you say; all the same, I love it when she goes to church to pray. She is a provincial, but she studied in Moscow, loves our Moscow, and dresses in the Moscow style, and I love her for that, love her, love her. … I can see you scowling and rising to read me a long lecture on the subject of what love is, what sort of woman one can love, and what sort one cannot, and so forth. But, dear Kostya, before I fell in love, I, too, knew quite well what love was.

My sister thanks you for your greetings. She often recalls the time she took Kostya Kochevoi to the preparatory class, and to this day she continues to speak of you as “poor Kostya,” still thinking of you as a little orphan boy. And so, poor orphan, I am in love. So long as it is a secret, do not say anything to a “certain person” there. Things will settle themselves, or, as one of Tolstoy’s footmen says, “shape up.”

When he had finished the letter, Laptev went to bed. He was so tired he could not keep his eyes open, but for some reason he was unable to sleep; the street noises seemed to prevent him. The cattle were driven by, the horn was blown, and soon afterwards the bells began to ring for early mass. At one moment he heard the creaking of a cart, at another the shrill voice of a peasant woman on her way to market. And the sparrows were chirping the whole time.

II

It was a gay, holiday morning. At ten o’clock Nina Fyodorovna, wearing a brown dress and with her hair neatly combed, was led into the drawing room, supported on either side; she walked a little, and briefly stood before an open window. Seeing her thus, with her broad, innocent smile, brought to mind the local artist, a drunkard, who said she had the face of a saint, and wanted her to sit for his painting of the Russian Shrovetide. Everyone—the children, the servants, her brother, and even she herself—all at once felt certain she would regain her health. The little girls were running about, chasing their uncle, and each time they succeeded in catching him the house resounded with their shrill laughter.

People came to inquire about her health; they brought communion bread and told her that in most of the churches prayers were being offered up for her that day. She was known throughout the town for her charity, and people loved her. She gave money with the greatest ease, like her brother, Alexei, who never stopped to consider whether it was necessary to give or not. She paid the school fees for poor students, distributed sugar, tea, and jam to old women, dressed impoverished brides for their weddings, and, if she happened to pick up a newspaper, she first looked to see if there was an appeal or notice of any sort concerning someone in distress.

At the present moment she held in her hand a bundle of notes authorizing certain of her poor petitioners to obtain goods at a grocer’s shop; the previous evening they had been sent back to her by the shopkeeper, with a request for payment of eighty-two rubles.

“Now, see how much they’ve taken, the shameless creatures!” she exclaimed, scarcely able to decipher her own handwriting. “This is no joke! Eighty-two rubles! I shall simple refuse to pay it!”

“I’ll pay it today.”

“Why should you—why?” she asked, in agitation. “Isn’t it enough that you and brother give me two hundred and fifty rubles a month? God bless you both,” she added softly, in order that the servants might not hear.

“Well, I spend five hundred thousand in a couple of months,” he replied. “I tell you again, dear, you have just as much right as Fyodor and I to spend the money. Understand this once and for all. We three are all father’s children, and of every three kopecks, one belongs to you.”

But Nina Fyodorovna did not understand it, and the expression on her face suggested that she was making a mental effort to solve a difficult problem. This lack of comprehension where money was concerned never failed to trouble and embarrass Laptev; moreover, he suspected that she had personal debts she was ashamed to mention to him, and which were causing her to suffer.

The sound of footsteps and heavy breathing was heard; the doctor was coming up the stairs, disheveled and unkempt as usual.

“Ru-ru-ru-ru …” he hummed, “ru-ru-ru-ru. …”

Laptev went into the dining room to avoid meeting him, then downstairs to his own rooms. It was clearly impossible to be friendly with the doctor, or to drop in at his house informally; even to encounter this “vulture,” as Panaurov called him, was disagreeable. That is why he so rarely saw Yulia Sergeyevna. But if he were to take her parasol to her now, he thought, while her father was not at home, he would probably find her alone. His heart throbbed with joy. Quickly, quickly! In a state of extreme excitement, he took up the parasol, and flew on the wings of love.

It was hot in the street. At the doctor’s house, in the enormous courtyard overgrown with nettles and tall grass, some twenty boys were playing ball. They were the children of the tenants, workmen living in the three unsightly old lodges, which every year the doctor planned to renovate. The clear young voices resounded through the yard. Far to one side, near her own porch, Yulia Sergeyevna stood, her hands clasped behind her, watching the game.

“Good morning!” Laptev called.

She looked around. Ordinarily when he saw her she appeared indifferent, cold, or, as yesterday, tired; now, however, her expression was animated and playful, like the boys at their game of ball.

“See, in Moscow the children never play so merrily,” she said, coming to meet him. “Of course, there are not such big yards there, they have no place to run. But Papa just went to your house,” she added, looking back at the children.

“I know, but I didn’t come to see him, I came to see you,” Laptev said, admiring her youthfulness, which he had never before observed, and which only now was revealed to him; he felt that he was seeing for the first time that delicate white neck encircled by a gold chain. “I came to see you,” he repeated. “My sister sent you your parasol; you forgot it yesterday.”

She put out her hand to take it, but he clasped it to his breast, and yielding to the same sweet rapture that had possessed him the night before when he sat under the parasol, he spoke passionately, without restraint.

“I entreat you, give it to me. I shall keep it as a souvenir of our acquaintance. Oh, how wonderful!”

“Take it,” she said, blushing. “But there is nothing wonderful about it.”

He continued to gaze at her in silent ecstasy, not knowing what to say.

“But why do I keep you standing here in this heat?” she said, after a brief silence. “Let us go indoors.”

“I am not disturbing you?”

They went into the entrance hall and Yulia Sergeyevna ran up the stairs. Her white dress covered with little pale blue flowers made a rustling sound as she moved.

“It is impossible to disturb me,” she replied, pausing on the staircase. “You see, I never do anything, Every day is a holiday for me, from morning to evening.”

“What you are saying is inconceivable to me,” he said, going up to her. “I grew up in an environment where people worked every day—everyone, without exception, men and women alike.”

“But if there is nothing to do?” she asked.

“One must arrange one’s life in such a way that work is necessary. There can be no pure and joyous life without work.”

Again he pressed the parasol to his breast, and, to his own amazement, not even recognizing his own voice, he softly said, “If you would consent to be my wife, I would give everything. I would give everything—there is no price I would not pay—no sacrifice I would not make!”

She started, then stared at him in astonishment and dismay.

“What are you saying—what are you saying?” she exclaimed, growing pale. “It is impossible, I assure you! Excuse me.” And with the same rustling of her dress, she ran to the top of the stairs and disappeared behind the doors.

Laptev understood what this meant, and his mood underwent an immediate and radical change; it was as though a light had suddenly been extinguished in his soul. Feeling the shame and humiliation of a man who has been scorned, who is disliked, offensive, or perhaps disgusting, and from whom people flee, he left the house.

“I would give everything!” he mocked himself, recalling the details of his proposal as he walked home in the heat. “I would give everything—exactly like a tradesman! Who needs your everything?”

Each word he had just spoken now seemed stupid to the point of being abhorrent. Why had he lied, saying he had grown up in an atmosphere where everyone without exception worked? Why had he spoken in that edifying tone about the pure and joyous life? It was neither interesting nor clever, but mere cant—typical Moscow cant!

Gradually he was overcome by that mood of indifference into which a criminal falls after receiving a severe sentence. He thanked God that it was all over, that the terrible uncertainty had come to an end, that he no longer had to spend whole days in expectation, exhausting himself, thinking only of one thing. Now everything was clear: he had to relinquish the prospect of personal happiness, live without desires, without hopes, never dreaming nor anticipating, and, in order to relieve the boredom he was so sick of nursing, he could occupy himself with the affairs of others, the happiness of others; thus, imperceptibly old age would come upon him, and life draw to an end—nothing more would be required. It was all the same to him now, he wanted nothing, and was able to reason coolly; but in his face, especially under the eyes, there was a certain heaviness; his forehead felt taut, stretched like an elastic band, and the tears were about to spurt from his eyes. Feeling a sensation of weakness in his whole body, he lay down on the bed, and within five minutes he was fast asleep.

III

Laptev’s unexpected proposal had thrown Yulia Sergeyevna into a state of despondency. She had made his acquaintance by chance and knew very little about him; only that he was rich, a representative of the well-known Moscow firm of Fyodor Laptev and Sons, that he was always very serious, apparently clever, and anxious about his sister’s illness. It had seemed to her that he never paid the least attention to her, and she was completely indifferent to him—and suddenly that declaration on the staircase, and his pitiful, enraptured face.

The proposal embarrassed her by its suddenness, by the fact that the word wife had been spoken, and by the necessity of refusing it. She could not even remember what she had said to Laptev, but she continued to feel traces of the violent, disagreeable emotion with which she had rejected him. She did not like him; outwardly he seemed like a salesman, and he was uninteresting. She could not have answered him otherwise; nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable, as though she had acted badly.

“My God, without even waiting to get into the room, but right there on the stairs!” she said miserably, addressing the little ikon that hung over her bed. “And never having courted me, it was somehow queer, extraordinary. …”

Her anxiety increased with every hour of solitude; it was beyond her strength to cope with it alone. She needed someone to talk to, someone to tell her that what she had done was right. But there was no one. She had lost her mother long ago; she considered her father a strange person, and was unable to talk to him seriously. She felt constrained by his quirks, his excessive readiness to take offense, his incongruous gestures. One had only to begin a conversation with him for him to start talking about himself.

She was not completely candid when she prayed, because she did not know exactly what she should ask God for.

The samovar was brought into the dining room. Yulia Sergeyevna, very pale, tired, and with a forlorn look, went in to make the tea—it was one of her duties—and poured out a glass for her father. Sergei Borisych, wearing the long frock coat that hung below his knees, red-faced and uncombed, his hands thrust into his pockets, was pacing the room in his customary manner, not from one end to the other, but back and forth like a wild animal in a cage. He would stop at the table, sip his tea with relish, and continue pacing, deep in thought.

“Laptev asked me to marry him today,” Yulia Sergeyevna said, and she blushed.

“Laptev? … Panaurova’s brother?”

He was fond of his daughter; he knew that sooner or later she would marry and leave him, but he tried not to think about it. Solitude frightened him, and for some reason he believed that if he were left alone in that big house, he would have an apoplectic stroke, but he did not like to speak of this openly.

“Well, I’m very happy,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I congratulate you with all my heart. This presents you with an excellent opportunity to leave me—to your great satisfaction. I fully understand you. To live with a father who is an old man, a sick man, half crazy, must be very painful at your age. I understand you perfectly. And if I should kick off a little sooner, and go to hell, then everyone would be happy. I congratulate you with all my heart.”

“I refused him.”

The doctor was relieved at heart, but he was unable to stop himself and went on, “I am amazed—I have long been amazed—why is it that I have not yet been put into a madhouse? Why am I now in this coat, instead of a strait jacket? I still believe in truth, in goodness, I am a fool of an idealist—do you think that in our day this is not madness? And what do I get in return for my honesty, my fair play? They all but throw stones at me; they walk all over me. And I even get it in the neck from my nearest kin. The devil may as well take me, an old blockhead——”

“It’s impossible to talk to you like a human being!” said Yulia.

Impetuously she got up from the table and went to her room. In her extreme anger she remembered how often her father had been unjust to her, but in a very short time she felt sorry for him, and when he left to go to his club she accompanied him downstairs and closed the door after him. Outside the weather was blustery; it was a disquieting night. The door shuddered from the force of the wind, in the passages there were drafts from every direction, and the candle was almost blown out. Upstairs Yulia Sergeyevna went from room to room making the sign of the cross over all the doors and windows. The wind howled, and it sounded as though someone were walking on the roof. Never before had it been so dismal, never had she felt so alone.

She asked herself if she had been right to refuse a man solely because his outward appearance was not to her liking. It was true, she did not love him, and to marry him would mean to relinquish forever her dreams, her notions of happiness and married life; but would she ever meet the man she dreamed of? And if she did, would he love her? She was already twenty-one. There were no marriageable men in the town. She thought of all the men she was acquainted with—government clerks, schoolteachers, officers; some of them were already married, and their domestic lives were thoroughly empty and dull. The others were uninteresting, insipid, silly, or immoral. Laptev was, after all, from Moscow, had a university degree, and spoke French. He lived in the capital where there were many clever, noble, distinguished people, where there was noise and bustle, beautiful theaters, musical evenings, superlative dressmakers, confectioners. … In the Scriptures it is written that the wife must love her husband, and in the novels love is given vast importance; but was there not a degree of exaggeration in all this? Was it really impossible to marry without love? After all, one often hears that love soon vanishes and only habit remains, that the whole purpose of marriage is not in love or happiness, but in duties, such as the rearing of children and domestic cares. … But perhaps what was meant in the Scriptures was that the wife ought to love her husband as her neighbor, respect him, and be merciful.

That night Yulia Sergeyevna diligently said her evening prayers, then knelt down, and, gazing at the ikon lamp, clasped her hands to her bosom and with deep feeling said, “Grant me understanding, Holy Mother, our Defender! Grant me understanding, oh Lord!”

She had often had occasion in the course of her life to meet elderly spinsters, poor, insignificant women, who were bitterly and openly remorseful because of once having rejected a suitor. Would the same thing happen to her? Ought she to go into a convent or become a Sister of Mercy?

After crossing herself and making the sign of the cross in the air around her, she undressed and went to bed. Suddenly the bell rang sharply and plaintively in the corridor.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, feeling a painful irritation all through her body at the sound. She lay there thinking how meager, monotonous, and, at the same time, how vexing, was everything that happened in this provincial life! One was continually made to wince, to feel apprehensive, angry, guilty, and at last one became so nervous as to be afraid to peep out of the bedclothes.

Half an hour later there was the same sharp ring of the bell. Probably the maid was asleep and had not heard it. Yulia Sergeyevna lit the candle; shivering and annoyed with the servant, she began to dress. When she went out into the corridor the maid was closing the door downstairs.

“I thought it was the master, but it was someone from a patient,” she said.

Yulia Sergeyevna returned to her room. She took a pack of cards out of the chest of drawers and resolved that if, after shuffling the cards well and cutting them, the bottom card was red, it would mean yes, she would accept Laptev’s proposal; and if it was black, no. The card she turned up was the ten of spades.

This calmed her and she went to sleep, but in the morning, again she was wavering between yes and no. The thought that now she could, if she chose, change her life, weighed upon her, exhausting her to the point of making her feel ill; nevertheless, shortly after eleven o’clock, she dressed and went to call on Nina Fyodorovna. She wanted to see Laptev: perhaps now he would seem more attractive to her; perhaps she had been mistaken about him. …

She found it difficult to walk against the wind; holding her hat with both hands, and barely able to see anything for the dust, she made slow progress.

IV

When he entered his sister’s room and unexpectedly saw Yulia Sergeyevna, Laptev again felt himself in the humiliating state of a man who is repulsive. He concluded that if she found it so easy to visit his sister and meet him after what had happened yesterday, it could only mean that he was beneath her notice, that she considered him utterly insignificant. But when he greeted her, and saw her pale face, the dust beneath her eyes, her sad and guilty expression when she looked at him, he understood that she, too, was suffering.

She did not feel well and stayed no more than ten minutes, then got up to go. As she was leaving she said to Laptev, “Will you see me home, Alexei Fyodorych?”

They walked along the street in silence, both holding onto their hats, he behind her, trying to shield her from the wind. In the lane it was less windy and they walked side by side.

“If I was unkind yesterday, please forgive me,” she began, and her voice trembled as though she were about to burst into tears. “I have been in such torment—I didn’t sleep all night!”

“And I slept soundly the whole night,” he said, not looking at her, “but that doesn’t mean that I’m well. My life is broken, I am deeply unhappy, and since your refusal yesterday, I walk around like someone who has been poisoned. Yesterday the most difficult part was said; today I no longer feel constrained and can speak freely. I love you more than my sister, more than my departed mother. … I can and have lived without my sister and my mother, but to live without you—for me this is meaningless, I cannot——”

And now, as always, he divined her intention. It was clear to him that she wanted to resume where they had left off yesterday, and for this reason had asked him to accompany her and was now taking him to her home. But what could she add to her refusal? What more could she have thought of? From everything, her smile, her glances, even the way she held her head and shoulders as she walked beside him, he could see that nothing had changed: she did not love him; he was a stranger to her. What, then, could she have to say to him?

Dr. Sergei Borisych was at home.

“Welcome, delighted to see you, Fyodor Alexeyich,” he said, interchanging his Christian name with his patronymic. “Delighted, delighted!”

Never before had the doctor been so affable, and Laptev concluded that he already knew of the proposal; this displeased him. He was sitting in the drawing room, a room that produced a strange impression with its poor, commonplace furnishings and bad pictures, and which, although it contained armchairs and an enormous lamp with a shade, nevertheless looked uninhabited, like a vast barn. Obviously, only a man such as the doctor could feel at home in this room. The next room, almost twice its size, was called the reception room, and contained nothing but chairs arranged as for a dancing class. As he sat in the drawing room talking to the doctor about his sister, Laptev began to be tormented by a certain suspicion: had not Yulia Sergeyevna come to his sister’s and then brought him here to tell him that she had decided to accept his proposal? Oh, how awful! But the most awful part of all was that his soul was open to such suspicions. He visualized the father and daughter spending the preceding evening and the night in long deliberation, perhaps even in a protracted quarrel, before reaching the conclusion that Yulia Sergeyevna had acted rashly in refusing a rich man. He could hear the words used by parents on such occasions: “It may be true that you do not love him, but on the other hand, think how much good you will be able to do!”

The doctor was going out to visit patients. Laptev was about to leave with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said, “Please, don’t go.”

She was worn out and depressed; she had convinced herself that to refuse a decent, good, and loving man, simply because he did not appeal to her—especially when this marriage offered the possibility of changing her dismal, monotonous, idle life, and when her youth was passing and the future looked no brighter—in such circumstances to refuse him would be madness, folly, caprice, for which God might even punish her.

The father went out. When the sound of his footsteps could no longer be heard, she stopped abruptly before Laptev, and all the color drained from her face as she resolutely said, “I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexei Fyodorych, I accept your offer.”

He bent down and kissed her hand; awkwardly she kissed him on the head with cold lips.

He felt that in this betrothal scene the principal element—her love—was missing, and that there was a great deal in it that ought not to be. He had an urge to cry out, to run away, to leave for Moscow at once, but she was standing near him, and she seemed so beautiful that he was suddenly overcome with passion. He realized it was now too late to reason, and he clasped her to him in a passionate embrace, murmuring something, calling her thou, kissing first her neck, then her cheek, her hair. …

She turned from him and went to the window, frightened by his caresses; both of them already regretted their avowals; both were distractedly asking themselves: why has this happened?

“If you only knew how miserable I am!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands.

“What is it?” he asked, going to her. And he, too, began wringing his hands. “My darling, for God’s sake, tell me—what is it? But only the truth, I implore you, nothing but the truth!”

“Pay no attention,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “I promise you, I shall be a faithful and devoted wife. Come back again in the evening.”

Later, as he sat with his sister, reading to her from the historical novel, he recalled everything that had happened, and he felt mortified to think that his glorious, pure, deep emotion had met with such a shallow response. He was not loved, and, very likely, his proposal had been accepted only because he was rich: what was valued in him was the very thing he thought the least of. One might assume that a pure girl like Yulia, who believed in God, had not once thought of money; but then, she did not love him, did she, therefore she obviously must have motives that were not disinterested—vague though they may have been, and not entirely calculated, they were there all the same. The doctor’s house, with its commonplace furniture, was repulsive to him, and the doctor himself was like a miserable, fat moneygrub, a sort of operatic Gaspard out of Les Cloches de Corneville. Even the name Yulia had a vulgar sound. He thought of how he and his Yulia would go to the altar, virtual strangers to each other, without a modicum of feeling on her side, as if the marriage had been made by a professional matchmaker. And his only consolation—a consolation as banal as the marriage itself—was that he would be neither the first nor the last to enter into such a marriage; thousands of marriages were no different from his, and perhaps, in time, when Yulia came to know him better, she would grow to love him.

“Romeo and Juliet!” he said, as he closed the book. Then he laughed. “I, Nina, am Romeo. You may congratulate me. Today I proposed to Yulia Byelavina.”

Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she saw that he was serious, she began to weep. She was not pleased with this news.

“Well, then, I congratulate you,” she said. “But why is it so sudden?”

“It isn’t sudden. It has been going on since March, but you don’t notice things. … I fell in love with her in March, when I met her here in your room.”

“And I always thought you would marry one of our own friends in Moscow,” she said after a pause. “A girl from our circle would be simpler. But what is most important, Alyosha, is that you should be happy, that’s the important thing. My Grigory Nikolaich didn’t love me, and—it’s impossible to hide it—you can see how we live. Of course, any woman might love you for your goodness and your intellect, but, you see, Yulichka was educated at the Institute, she is of the gentry, and goodness and intellect are not enough for her. She is young, and you, Alyosha, are not so young, nor are you handsome.” To soften her last words she stroked his cheek and added, “You are not handsome, but you are dear.”

She became so excited that a slight flush appeared in her cheeks, and she talked with enthusiasm about whether or not it would be right for her to bless her brother with the ikon; after all, she was his elder sister, and took the place of his mother. She kept trying to persuade her dejected brother that the wedding must be properly celebrated, with all due solemnity and joy, so that no one could cast any reflection upon them.

As Yulia’s betrothed, Laptev commenced going to the Byelavins’ three or four times a day, and he no longer had the time to take Sasha’s place and read aloud from the historical novel. Yulia received him in her own two rooms, which were at the end of the house, far from the drawing room, and he liked them very much. Here the walls were dark, the ikon case stood in one corner, and there was a fragrance of fine perfume and oil from the holy lamp. Her bed and dressing table were behind a screen. The small doors of the bookcase were covered on the inside with green curtains, and there were rugs on the floor, which made her footsteps inaudible; he concluded from this that she had a reticent nature and liked a quiet, calm, secluded life.

In her own house she was treated as though she were still a child: she had no money of her own, and occasionally, when they were out walking together, she was ashamed of not having so much as a kopeck with her. Her father gave her very little, not more than a hundred rubles a year for clothes and books. And, in spite of having a good practice, the doctor himself had scarcely any money. Every evening he played cards at the club, and always lost; besides which, he bought houses through a credit and loan society, and then rented them. The tenants were always remiss in their payments, nevertheless, he was convinced that these operations were most profitable. He had mortgaged the house he and his daughter were living in, and with the money had bought a barren plot of land on which he was building a large two-story house. This he also intended to mortgage.

Laptev now lived in a sort of fog, as though he were not himself but his double, and he did a great many things he could never have brought himself to do before. On several occasions he had supper with the doctor at his club, and, of his own accord, offered him money for his buildings. He even visited Panaurov’s other family. It happened that his brother-in-law invited him to dinner, and without thinking, he accepted. He was met by a lady of about thirty-five, tall, extremely thin, with slightly graying hair and black eyebrows. She was evidently not Russian. Her face was blotched with white powder. She smiled cloyingly, and shook his hand so vigorously that the bracelets on her white arms jingled. Laptev felt that she smiled in this way to conceal from others and herself that she was not happy. He also saw two little girls, aged five and three, both of whom resembled Sasha. For dinner they were served a milky soup, soggy veal, and chocolate—it was sickly-sweet and unpalatable, but the table glittered with gold forks, bottles of soy sauce, cayenne pepper, a bizarre cruet stand, and a gold pepper pot.

Not until he had finished the soup did Laptev realize how inappropriate it was for him to be dining there. The lady was embarrassed, and continually smiled, displaying her teeth, while Panaurov didactically held forth on the subject of love, its nature and its cause.

“Here we have to do with one of the phenomena of electricity,” he said in French, turning to the lady. “Under the skin of every human being lie microscopic glands that contain electric currents. If you meet an individual whose currents are parallel to your own, the result is love.”

When Laptev returned home and his sister asked him where he had been, he felt uncomfortable and did not answer.

During all the time prior to the wedding, Laptev constantly felt himself to be in a false position. Daily his love grew stronger, and Yulia Sergeyevna seemed to him a poetic and exalted being, but the love was not mutual; in effect, she was selling herself, and he was the buyer. At times, as he thought about it, he was in utter despair, and he asked himself whether he ought to run away. He lay awake whole nights thinking of how, in Moscow, he would meet the woman he had referred to in his letter as “a certain person,” and of what attitude his father and brother, difficult people, would take towards his marriage and Yulia. He feared that his father might say something rude to Yulia at their first meeting. And lately his brother had been behaving oddly; he wrote long letters on the importance of health, the influence of illness on the mental state, on what religion was, but not a word about Moscow or business. These letters irritated Laptev, and it seemed to him that his brother’s character was changing for the worse.

The wedding took place in September. The ceremony was held after mass in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and on the same day the bride and groom went to Moscow. When Laptev and his wife, who, in her black dress and long train, already gave the appearance of a matron rather than a girl, said good-bye to Nina Fyodorovna, the invalid’s face was distorted with emotion, but she did not shed a tear.

“If I die, which God forbid, please take my little girls,” she said.

“Oh, I promise!” Yulia Sergeyevna replied, her lips and eyelids twitching nervously.

“I shall come to see you in October,” Laptev said, deeply moved. “Get well, my darling.”

They traveled in a private compartment. Both of them felt sad and awkward. She sat in the corner, without taking off her hat, and pretended to doze; he lay on the divan opposite her, troubled by various thoughts about his father, “a certain person,” and wondering whether Yulia would like her Moscow apartment. From time to time he glanced at his wife, who did not love him, and disconsolately thought: why has this happened?

V

The Laptevs had a wholesale notions business in Moscow; they dealt in fringe, braid, trimmings, crochet cotton, buttons, and so on. The gross receipts reached two million a year; what the net profits were, no one but the old man knew. His sons and the clerks estimated them to be approximately three hundred thousand, and said it would have been at least a hundred thousand more if the old man had not “spread it around,” by which they meant, had he not extended credit indiscriminately. In the last ten years alone the accumulation of bad debts amounted to almost a million, and whenever the subject was mentioned the senior clerk would wink slyly and assert, “The psychological consequences of the age”—the meaning of which was not clear to everyone.

The chief commercial operations were conducted in the city market in a building that was known as the warehouse. The entrance to it was through a yard where it was always dusk, smelled of bast matting, and resounded with the clatter of dray horses’ hooves on the asphalt. An unpretentious-looking iron-studded door led from the yard into a room with walls that had turned brown with damp and were all written over in charcoal; the light came from a narrow window with an iron grating over it. To the left was another room, somewhat larger and cleaner, with a cast-iron stove, two tables, and the same prisonlike window; this was the office, and from here a narrow stone staircase led to the second story, where the main room was located. It was a rather large room, but owing to the perpetual gloom, the low ceiling, the cramming together of boxes and bales, and people shoving their way through, it produced as disagreeable an impression on a newcomer as did the other two rooms. Upstairs, as well as in the office, goods lay on the shelves in piles, bundles, and cardboard boxes, displaying neither order nor artistry in the arrangement, and if one had not caught a glimpse here and there of a crimson thread, a tassel, or a tail of fringe, it would have been impossible to guess what sort of trade was carried on here. It was inconceivable, glancing at these crumpled paper bundles and boxes, that from such trifles millions were made, or that in this warehouse fifty men were employed daily, to say nothing of the buyers who came in

When Laptev went to the warehouse at noon on the day after his arrival in Moscow, the packers were hammering so loudly no one in the first room or the office heard him enter. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle of letters in his hand, his face screwed up at the noise, and he, too, failed to notice Laptev. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother, Fyodor Fyodorych, who looked so exactly like him that they were frequently thought to be twins. This resemblance had been a constant reminder to Laptev of his own appearance, and now, seeing before him a short, red-faced man with thinning hair, narrow, plebeian hips, completely uninteresting and unintellectual looking, he asked himself: Am I really like that?

“How happy I am to see you!” said Fyodor, kissing his brother and warmly shaking his hand. “I have been impatiently expecting you each day, my dear. When you wrote that you were to be married, I began to be tortured by curiosity, and then, I’ve missed you, brother. Think of it, six months since we’ve seen each other! Well? How are things? Nina’s bad? Very?”

“Very bad.”

“God’s will,” sighed Fyodor. “Well, and your wife? A beauty, I suppose? I love her already, she’ll be my little sister. Between us we’ll spoil her.”

Laptev caught sight of the broad, stooped back—so long familiar to him—of his father, Fyodor Stepanych. The old man was sitting on a stool near the counter, talking to a customer.

“Papa, God has sent us joy!” Fyodor cried. “Brother has come!”

Fyodor Stepanych was tall and of such an extraordinarily powerful build that, in spite of his eighty years and wrinkles, he had the appearance of a vigorous, healthy man. He spoke in a deep, booming bass that came rolling out of his broad chest as from a barrel. He shaved his beard, but wore a clipped military mustache, and smoked cigars. As it always seemed hot to him, he wore an ample duck coat at all seasons of the year, in the warehouse and at home. Recently he had had a cataract removed; he did not see well, and was no longer active in the business, but sat drinking tea with jam and talking to the customers.

Laptev bent down and kissed his hand, then kissed him on the lips.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, my dear sir,” said the old man. “A long time. So, am I to congratulate you on having taken the marriage vows? Well then, so be it, I congratulate you.” And he put out his lips for a kiss. Laptev leaned over and kissed him.

“Well, and have you brought your young lady?” the old man asked, and without waiting for an answer, turned to one of the customers and said, “I herewith beg to inform you, Papa, that I am about to enter into marriage with such and such a maiden. … Yes. But as for asking Papa’s blessing or advice, that’s not in the rules. Nowadays they have their own ideas. When I married I was over forty, but I fell at my father’s feet and asked his advice. Nothing like that today.”

The old man was delighted to see his son, but considered it unseemly to be affectionate with him, or in any way to display his joy. His voice and his manner of saying “your young lady” plunged Laptev into the same ill-humor he always experienced on coming to the warehouse. Here every detail reminded him of the past, when he used to be whipped and put on Lenten fare; he knew that even now the boys were flogged and given bloody noses, and that when these boys grew up, they in turn would do the same. He had only to spend five minutes in the warehouse to feel that he was about to be scolded or punched in the nose.

Fyodor slapped one of the customers on the shoulder and said to his brother, “Here, Alyosha, let me introduce our benefactor from Tambov, Grigory Timofeich. He well might serve as an example to the young men of today—he’s past fifty, and the father of infants!”

The clerks laughed, and the customer, a pale, scrawny, old man, joined them.

“Nature in excess of the norm,” commented the senior clerk, who was standing near the counter. “Consider the source.”

The senior clerk, a tall man of about fifty, with a dark beard, spectacles, and a pencil behind his ear, generally expressed his ideas abstrusely, with farfetched allusions, while a sly smile made it evident that he attached a particular and subtle significance to his own words. He liked to obscure his speech with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and often gave to perfectly ordinary words a meaning they did not possess. For example, the word “notwithstanding” when categorically expressing an opinion, in order to forestall any contradiction, he would extend his right arm and enunciate: “notwithstanding!” And the surprising thing was that the other clerks and the customers understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vasilich Pochatkin, and he came from Kashira. On congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself thus: “On your part it is the reward of valor, for the female heart is a Shamil.”

Another important person in the warehouse was the clerk Makeichev, a plump, stolid man with a bald head and blond whiskers. He went up to Laptev and respectfully congratulated him in an undertone: “I have the honor, sir. … The Lord has heard your parents’ prayers, sir. God be praised, sir.”

The other clerks followed with their congratulations. They were all fashionably dressed and looked like thoroughly honest, well-bred men. Between every two or three words they put in a “sir,” which made their rapidly spoken congratulations—“best wishes, sir, for happiness, sir”— sound like the hiss of a whip lash: “Whshsh-s-s-s!”

Laptev was soon bored with all this and longed to go home, but it was awkward to leave. For the sake of propriety he was obliged to spend at least two hours in the warehouse. He walked away from the counter and began asking Makeichev if everything had gone well during the summer, and whether there was anything new. The clerk, avoiding his eyes, answered him respectfully. A crop-eared boy in a gray smock handed Laptev a glass of tea without a saucer. A moment later another boy stumbled over a box in passing and almost fell, whereupon the decorous Makeichev was abruptly transformed; his face became fierce and malicious, the face of a monster.

“Keep on your feet!” he shouted.

The clerks were happy that the young master had married and at last returned; they cast inquisitive, friendly glances at him, each considering it his duty to make some deferential, agreeable remark in passing. But Laptev was convinced that it was all insincere, that they only flattered him because they feared him. He could never forget how fifteen years ago a clerk who was mentally ill had run out into the street barefoot, in nothing but his underwear, and, shaking his fists at the masters’ windows, cried out that he was being worked to death, and how, when the poor man recovered, the clerks long afterwards continued to ridicule him, reminding him that he had shouted “Explorers!” instead of “Exploiters!”

Conditions in general were very bad for the employees at Laptevs’, and it had long been a subject of talk for the whole market. The worst of it was that the old man, Fyodor Stepanych, adhered to a somewhat Asiatic policy in his treatment of them; thus, no one knew the wages of his favorites, Pochatkin and Makeichev; actually they received three thousand a year and bonuses, no more, but he made out that he paid them seven. Every year bonuses were given to all the clerks, but always covertly, so that those who received little were bound out of pride to say that they got more. Not one boy knew when he would be made a clerk; not one clerk knew whether or not his employer was satisfied with him. Nothing was directly forbidden, so they had no way of knowing exactly what was and what was not permitted. They were not forbidden to marry, but they did not marry for fear of displeasing the master and losing their jobs. They were allowed to have friends and pay visits, but at nine o’clock the gates were locked, and every morning the master suspiciously inspected each employee, trying to detect the smell of vodka: “Now then, breathe!”

Every holiday the employees were obliged to go to early mass and to stand in church where the old man could see them. The fasts were strictly observed. On festive occasions, such as the name day of the master or any member of his family, the clerks had to take up a collection and present an album or a cake from Fley’s. They lived three or four in a room on the lower floor and in the lodge of the house in Pyatnitsky Street. At dinner, although a plate was set before each of them, they ate from a common bowl. If one of the masters came in while they were at the table, they all stood up.

Laptev was conscious of the fact that only those among them who had been corrupted by the old man’s training could seriously consider him a benefactor; the others must have looked upon him as an enemy and an “explorer.” Now, after an absence of six months, he saw no change for the better; there was even something new that boded no good. His brother Fyodor, who had always been quiet, thoughtful, and extremely refined, now ran about the warehouse with a pencil behind his ear, looking like an energetic businessman, slapping customers on the back and shouting “Friends!” to the clerks. He appeared to be playing some sort of role, and Alexei did not recognize him in the part.

The old man’s voice boomed on uninterruptedly. Having nothing to do, he was giving advice to one of the customers, telling him how he ought to live his life and conduct his business, always holding himself up as an example. This boastfulness, this coercive, authoritarian tone, Laptev had heard ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago. The old man idolized himself; from what he said it always appeared that he had brought joy to his wife and all her relations, had been magnanimous to his children, a benefactor to his clerks and employees, and that the entire street and all his acquaintances felt impelled to pray eternally for him; whatever he did was right, and if things went wrong for other people, it was only because they had not consulted him—without his advice nothing could succeed. In church he always stood in the foremost place, and even made observations to the priests when, in his opinion, they were not conducting the service properly, and he believed that this was pleasing to God, because God loved him.

By two o’clock everyone in the warehouse was hard at work except the old man, whose voice went booming on. To avoid the appearance of idleness, Laptev took some trimmings from one of the workgirls and let her go; then he turned to one of the customers, a merchant from Vologda, listened to what he had to say, and told a clerk to attend to him.

“A.V.T.!” was heard on all sides (prices were denoted by letters in the warehouse, and goods by numbers). “R.I.T.!”

As he went out Laptev said good-bye to no one but Fyodor.

“Tomorrow I shall bring my wife to Pyatnitsky Street,” he said, “but I warn you, if Father says one rude word to her, I shall not remain there an instant.”

“You’re still the same,” sighed Fyodor. “Marriage hasn’t changed you. You must make allowances for the old man. Till tomorrow, then. Eleven o’clock. We shall be waiting impatiently. Come directly after mass.”

“I don’t go to mass.”

“Well, it’s all the same. The important thing is not to be later than eleven, so you’ll be in time to pray to God and have lunch with us. Greet my little sister, and kiss her hand for me. I have a presentiment I shall love her,” he added with complete sincerity. “I envy you, brother!” he called after Alexei, as he descended the stairs.

“Why is it he keeps shrinking into himself in that shy way, as though he felt naked?” Laptev wondered, as he walked along Nikolsky Street, trying to understand the change that had taken place in Fyodor. “And he speaks a new language, too; ‘Brother, dear brother; God has sent us joy; pray to God’—exactly like Shchedrin’s Iudushka.”

VI

The following day, which was Sunday, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Laptev and his wife were driving along Pyatnitsky Street in a light, one-horse carriage. He dreaded some possible vagary on the part of Fyodor Stepanych, and even now felt ill at ease.

After spending two nights in her husband’s house, Yulia Sergeyevna considered her marriage a mistake, a catastrophe, the horror of which would have been unendurable had she been forced to live with him in any other city. But Moscow diverted her; she liked the streets, the houses, the churches, and if it had been possible to drive about in one of those splendid sleighs drawn by costly horses, to drive all day, flying along from morning to night, breathing the cold autumn air, perhaps she would not have felt quite so unhappy.

Near a white, newly stuccoed, two-story house, the coachman pulled up the horse and turned to the right. It was apparent that they were expected; two policemen stood at the gate with the porter, who was wearing a new caftan, high boots, and galoshes. The entire area, from the middle of the street to the gate and across the yard to the porch, was strewn with fresh sand. The porter took off his hat, and the policemen saluted. Fyodor, looking exceedingly grave, met them near the porch.

“Very happy to make your acquaintance, little sister,” he said, kissing Yulia’s hand. “You are very welcome.”

He took her arm and led her upstairs, then along a corridor through a crowd of men and women. The anteroom was also crowded, and smelled of incense.

“I shall introduce you to our father presently,” Fyodor whispered in the midst of a sepulchral silence. “A venerable old man, paterfamilias.”

In the large reception hall Fyodor Stepanych, in obvious expectation, was standing by a table prepared for the service; with him stood a deacon and the priest in a calotte. The old man gave Yulia his hand without saying a word. Everyone was silent. Yulia was embarrassed.

The priest and the deacon put on their vestments. A censer was brought in, scattering sparks and giving off a smell of incense and charcoal. Candles were lit. The clerks entered the hall on tiptoe and stood in two rows along the wall. There was absolute silence, not even a cough was heard.

“The blessing of the Lord,” began the deacon.

The service was read with great solemnity, nothing was omitted, and two canticles were sung: “To Sweetest Jesus,” and “Holy Mother of God,” the singers holding sheets of music up before them. Laptev saw how disconcerted his wife was. All during the singing of the canticles, and while the singers were intoning “Lord, have mercy on us” in different keys, he was under a mental strain, constantly expecting the old man to look round and make a remark such as: “You don’t know how to cross yourself.” Moreover, he was vexed: why this crowd? Why all the ceremony with priests and a choir? It was too bourgeois. But when Yulia, with his father, placed her head under the Gospels, and went down on her knees several times, he realized that she liked all this, and he felt relieved.

At the end of the service, during the Prayer for the Prolongation of Days, the priest gave the old man and Alexei the cross to kiss, but when Yulia Sergeyevna approached, he put his hand over the cross and indicated that he wanted to speak. Signs were made to the singers to stop.

“The prophet Samuel,” began the priest, “was sent by the Lord to Bethlehem, ‘and the elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord: sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ Even so, Yulia, servant of God, shall we ask thee of thy advent to this house: ‘Comest thou peaceably?’”

Yulia flushed with emotion. When he had finished, the priest gave her the cross to kiss, then in a quite different tone he said, “Now Fyodor Fyodorych must marry. It’s time.”

The singing was resumed, people commenced to move about, and the room grew noisy. The old man, deeply moved, his eyes brimming with tears, kissed Yulia three times, made the sign of the cross over her face, and said, “This is your home. I am an old man and need nothing.”

The clerks congratulated her and spoke a few words, but the singing was so loud it was impossible to catch what they said. Lunch was served, and champagne. Yulia sat next to the old man, and he talked to her about families living together in one house, telling her it was not good to live apart, that separation and discord lead to disruption.

“I’ve made the money, and all the children do is spend it,” he said. “Now, you come and live in this house with me, and hold onto it. It’s time for an old man to rest.”

Yulia was continually catching glimpses of Fyodor, so like her husband, except that he was shier and more restless; he kept fussing about her, frequently kissing her hand.

“We are simple people, little sister,” he said, and spots of red came out on his face as he spoke. “We live simply, like Russians and like Christians, little sister.”

Laptev was very pleased that everything had gone well, and that, contrary to his expectations, nothing untoward had occurred. On the way home he said to his wife, “You’re surprised that such a powerful, broad-shouldered father should have such undersized, narrow-chested sons as Fyodor and me. But it’s quite understandable. My father married my mother when he was forty-five and she was only seventeen. She used to turn pale and tremble in his presence. Nina was born first—born of a comparatively healthy mother, therefore she turned out better, stronger than we were. By the time we were conceived and born, Mother had been worn out by constant fear. I can remember Father training me, or, to put it bluntly, beating me, before I was five years old. He used to whip me with a birch rod, pull my ears, and hit me on the head; every morning when I woke up my first thought was: will I be beaten today? To play or romp about was forbidden us; we had to go to morning service and to early mass, kiss the hands of priests and monks, and sing hymns at home. You are religious, and you love all that, but I am afraid of religion; when I pass a church I think of my childhood and am horrified. As soon as I was eight years old I was placed in the warehouse; I worked like any common boy, and it was very bad for my health, because there I was beaten almost daily. Later, when I went to high school, I had classes till dinnertime, then I had to sit in that warehouse till evening; and this went on until I was twenty-two and met Yartsev at the university. That Yartsev did me a lot of good. I tell you what”—Laptev laughed delightedly—“let’s go and visit Yartsev right now! He’s a very fine person! How touched he will be!”

VII

One Saturday in November, Anton Rubinstein was conducting a symphony conceit. It was very crowded and hot. Laptev stood behind the columns, while his wife and Kostya Kochevoi sat down in front in the third or fourth row. At the very beginning of the intermission “a certain person,” Polina Nikolaevna Rassudina, quite unexpectedly walked by him. Since the day of his wedding the thought of a possible meeting with her repeatedly crossed his mind, causing him some anxiety. Now, her frank, straightforward gaze reminded him that in all this time he had not brought himself to make any explanation, had failed even to write two or three friendly lines, had behaved, in fact, as though he were hiding from her; he blushed with shame. Impetuously and warmly she pressed his hand.

“Have you seen Yartsev?” And without waiting for an answer, she rushed on, with broad strides, as though someone were pushing her from behind.

She was an extremely thin, homely woman, with a long nose, and a face that always looked tired and worn; it seemed to cost her a great effort to keep her eyes open and remain on her feet. She had beautiful, dark eyes, and an intelligent, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were angular and abrupt. It was not easy to talk to her, because she could neither listen nor talk calmly, and loving her was very difficult. Sometimes when she stayed with Laptev she would laugh a great deal, hide her face in her hands, declare that for her love was not the most important thing in life, and would be as coy as a girl of seventeen, and he would have to put out all the candles before kissing her. She was thirty years old, and married to a schoolteacher, but she had not lived with her husband for a long time. She supported herself by giving music lessons and playing in quartets.

During the Ninth Symphony she again appeared, as if by chance, but the crowd of men standing like a thick wall behind the columns prevented her from going on, and she was forced to remain there. Laptev saw that she was wearing the same velvet blouse she had worn to concerts last year and the year before. Her gloves were new, and she carried a new but cheap fan. She loved clothes, but she did not know how to dress, and grudged the money for it; as a result she dressed badly and negligently, and striding rapidly down the street on her way to a lesson she might easily have been taken for a young novice.

The audience applauded and shouted bis.

“You shall spend this evening with me,” she said, going up to Laptev and looking sternly at him. “From here we’ll go and have tea together. Do you hear? I demand this of you. You are greatly indebted to me, and you haven’t the moral right to refuse me this trifle.”

“Very well, let us go,” Laptev acquiesced.

There were endless curtain calls after the symphony, and the audience was slow to leave. Laptev could not go without speaking to his wife; he waited for her at the door.

“I am desperate for tea!” Polina Nikolaevna complained. “My soul is parched.”

“You can get tea here,” said Laptev. “Let’s go into the buffet.”

“I have no money to throw away on bartenders. I’m not a merchant’s wife.”

He offered her his arm, but she refused in a long, tedious statement he had heard many times before, to the effect that she did not count herself a member of the weak, fair sex, and therefore did not require the assistance of gentlemen.

While talking to him she kept glancing at the audience and greeting her acquaintances, pupils, and fellow students in her courses at the conservatory. She grasped their hands convulsively, and gave them a quick, sharp tug. All at once her shoulders began to twitch and she trembled as though in a fever; then, with a look of dismay, she quietly said, “Whom have you married? Where were your eyes—were you out of your mind? What did you see in that silly, worthless girl? I loved you for your mind, your soul, while that china doll wants nothing but your money!”

“Let us drop that, Polina,” he entreated. “Everything you can say to me about my marriage I have already said to myself—many times. Do not add to my suffering.”

Yulia Sergeyevna appeared wearing a black dress and a large diamond brooch that her father-in-law had sent her after the service. She was followed by her retinue: Kochevoi, two doctors of their acquaintance, an officer, and a plump young man in a student’s uniform, called Kish.

“You go on with Kostya,” Laptev said to his wife. “I’ll come later.”

Yulia nodded and went on. Polina Nikolaevna gazed after her. A shudder ran through her body, she twitched nervously, and in her eyes there was a look of repugnance, hatred, and pain.

Laptev was afraid to go home with her, foreseeing a disagreeable discussion, bitterness, and tears; he suggested they have tea in a restaurant.

“No, no. We’ll go to my place. Don’t dare to mention restaurants to me!”

She did not like being in restaurants because she thought the air was polluted by tobacco smoke and the breath of men. She had a peculiar prejudice against any man she was not personally acquainted with, considering them all depraved and capable of attacking her at any minute. Furthermore, restaurant music irritated her to the point of making her head ache.

When they came out of the Hall of the Nobility, they took a cab in Ostozhenka and drove to Savelovsky Lane, where Rassudina lived. All the way there Laptev was thinking about her. It was true that he owed her a great deal. He had met her at Yartsev’s, when she was instructing his friend in music theory. She fell deeply in love with Laptev, and her love was completely disinterested. Her relations with him did not alter her way of life; she continued to give lessons, and, as before, to exhaust herself with work. Thanks to her, he began to understand and love music, which he had cared very little for until then.

“Half my kingdom for a glass of tea!” she said in a stifled voice, having covered her mouth with her muff to avoid catching cold. “I gave five lessons today—curse them! My pupils are such blockheads, such rubber stamps! I was so infuriated, I nearly died! And I don’t know when this slavery will ever end. I’m worn out. As soon as I can scrape together three hundred rubles I’m going to drop the whole business and go to the Crimea. I’ll lie on the beach and soak up the ozone. How I love the sea—oh, how I love the sea!”

“You won’t go anywhere,” Laptev said. “First, you’ll never save the money, and second, you’d begrudge spending it if you did. Forgive me, but again, I repeat: is it really less humiliating to accumulate this money kopeck by kopeck, from idlers who take your lessons merely because they have nothing else to do, than to borrow it from your friends?”

“I have no friends!” she replied irritably. “And I shall ask you to stop saying such stupid things. The working class, to which I belong, has one privilege: the consciousness of its incorruptibility, and the right to reject the patronage of tradesmen—and to disdain them. Oh, no—you don’t buy me! I’m no Yulichka!”

Laptev made no attempt to pay the driver, knowing it would only provoke a deluge of words, all of which he had heard many times before. She herself paid.

Rassudina lived in a small furnished room in the flat of a solitary lady who provided her with meals. Her large Becker piano was for the present at Yartsev’s in Great Nikolsky Street, where she went daily to practice. In her room there were armchairs in slipcovers, a bed with a white summer quilt, flowers that belonged to her landlady, and oleographs on the walls; there was absolutely nothing to suggest that the room was occupied by a woman—and a woman of education. There was no dressing table, no books, not even a writing table. She obviously went to bed as soon as she got home and went out as soon as she got up in the morning.

The cook brought in the samovar. Polina Nikolaevna made the tea and, still shivering—it was cold in the room—began to abuse the singers who had sung the Ninth Symphony. Her eyes closed with emotion. She drank one glass of tea, then another, and a third.

“And so you are married,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pine away; I shall be able to tear you out of my heart. Only it’s annoying and bitter for me to find out that you are just as rotten as all the others—that what you want in a woman is not a mind, an intellect, but a body, beauty, youth. Youth!” she snorted, as if mimicking someone. Then she burst into laughter. “Youth! You want purity, Reinheit! Reinheit!” When she had stopped laughing her eyes filled with tears.

“Are you happy, at least?” she asked.

“No.”

“Does she love you?”

“No.”

Laptev, agitated and unhappy, got up and began to pace the room.

“No,” he repeated. “If you want to know, Polina, I am miserable. What can I do? I’ve made a stupid mistake, and now it cannot be rectified. One must take it philosophically. She married without love, foolishly, perhaps even for money, but without reasoning; now she evidently realizes her mistake and is suffering. I see it. At night we sleep together, but in the daytime she’s afraid to be alone with me for five minutes, and seeks distraction, society. With me she feels ashamed and frightened.”

“But she does take money from you?”

“That’s stupid, Polina!” he cried. “She takes money from me because it makes absolutely no difference to her whether she has it or not. She’s a pure and honest girl. She married me simply because she wanted to get away from her father, and that is all.”

“And you are convinced that she would have married you even if you had not been rich?” Rassudina asked.

“I am convinced of nothing,” he replied wearily, “of nothing. I don’t understand anything. For God’s sake, Polina, let’s not talk about it!”

“Do you love her?”

“Desperately.”

They fell silent. She drank her fourth glass of tea, and he paced the room, thinking that by now his wife was probably having supper at the doctors’ club.

“But is it really possible to love without knowing why?” Rassudina asked with a shrug of her shoulders. “No, it’s the prompting of animal passion! You’re intoxicated! You’re poisoned by that beautiful body, that Reinheit! Get away from me! You’re filthy! Go back to her!” She made a despairing gesture, then picked up his hat and flung it at him.

He put on his fur coat and left without a word, but she ran into the passage after him, and, convulsively seizing his arm above the elbow, broke into sobs.

“Stop, Polina, that’s enough!” he said, but he was unable to unclasp her fingers. “Calm yourself, please!”

She closed her eyes, turned pale, and her long nose became an unpleasant waxy color, like that of a corpse; and still he could not unclasp her fingers. She fainted. He carefully lifted her up, laid her on the bed, then sat beside her for ten minutes or more, until she regained consciousness. Her hands were cold and her pulse was weak and uneven.

“Go home,” she said, opening her eyes. “Go away, otherwise I shall begin howling again. I have to get control of myself.”

When he left her, instead of going to the doctors’ club where his friends were expecting him, he went home. On the way he reproachfully asked himself why he had not arranged his life with this woman who loved him, and who was, in essence, his wife and friend. She was the only human being who was attached to him; and besides, would it not have been a more worthy and more gratifying task to give happiness, peace, and refuge to that clever, proud woman who was so oppressed by work? Was it for him, he asked himself, to lay claim to youth and beauty, to that happiness which could not be, and which, like a penalty or mockery, for three months now had kept him in a state of melancholy and depression? The honeymoon was long over, and yet, absurd as it seemed, he still did not know what sort of person his wife was. To her school friends and her father she wrote long, five-page letters, and could always find something to say, but to him she talked only of the weather, or informed him that it was time for dinner. When she said her long prayers before going to bed, kissing her many crosses and ikons, he watched her with animosity, and thought: “There she is praying, but what about? What is she praying for?” And in his thoughts he outraged both himself and her, telling himself that when he took her in his arms he was only taking what he had paid for; but it was appalling. Had she been a lusty, bold, sinful woman, instead of a young girl, meek, devout, with the pure eyes of innocence. … Before they were married her piety had touched him, but now her conventional, established views were like a barrier behind which the real truth could not be seen. By now every element in his life with her caused him to suffer. When she sat beside him in the theater and sighed or laughed, it pained him that she enjoyed herself alone and was unwilling to share her delight with him. She was on good terms with all his friends, and it was singular that they already knew what she was like, while he knew absolutely nothing about her, and could only brood in silent jealousy.

When he got home he put on his dressing gown and slippers and sat down in his study to read a novel. His wife was not at home. But within half an hour the bell rang, and Pyotr’s muffled footsteps could be heard as he ran to open the door. It was Yulia. She went into the study, still wearing her fur coat, her cheeks crimson from the frosty air.

“There’s a tremendous fire in Presnya,” she announced breathlessly. “The sky is glowing! I’m going to see it with Konstantin Ivanych.”

“Enjoy yourself.”

Laptev felt reassured by the sight of her fresh, healthy face, with its look of childish fear. He read for half an hour, then went to bed.

The following day Polina Nikolaevna sent to the warehouse two books she had borrowed from him, and all his letter and photographs; with them came a note consisting of one word: “Basta!”

VIII

By the end of October, Nina Fyodorovna had undergone an unmistakable relapse. She was rapidly growing thinner, and there was a change in her face. She continued to believe that she was recovering, despite the severe pain, and each day she got up and dressed as though she were well, then lay on the bed the whole day. Toward the end she became very talkative. She would lie on her back and speak in a low voice, breathing with great difficulty. She died suddenly in the following circumstances.

It was a clear, moonlight night, and the sounds of people tobogganing on the fresh snow could be heard in her room. She lay on her back, and Sasha, who had no one to relieve her now, sat dozing at her mother’s side.

“I can’t remember his father’s name,” Nina Fyodorovna was saying in a low voice, “but he was called Ivan Kochevoi. … a poor clerk. He was a terrible drunkard, God rest his soul! He used to come to us every month, and we gave him a pound of sugar and two ounces of tea. And sometimes money, too, of course. Yes. … And then this is what happened: he began drinking so heavily, our Kochevoi, that he died—consumed by vodka. He left a son, a little boy of seven … a poor little orphan. … We took him in and hid him in the steward’s quarters. He lived there a whole year, and Papa never knew. And when he did find out he only shrugged and said nothing. When Kostya, the little orphan, was eleven, I took him from one school to another, but not one would take him. And he cried. … “What’s the matter, little silly, why are you crying?’ I asked him. Then I took him to the Razgulyai School, and there, God bless them, they took him. The little boy began going to school every day, from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyai and back again on foot. … Alyosha paid for him. By the grace of God, the boy studied hard, he grasped everything, and turned out well. Now he’s a lawyer in Moscow, and Alyosha’s friend … and he’s highly educated. … We did not disdain a fellow creature, but took him into our home, and now, I suppose, he prays for us. … Yes. …”

She spoke more and more slowly, and with long pauses; after a brief silence she suddenly drew herself up to a sitting position.

“I feel … something is not. … Something seems to be wrong,” she said. “God have mercy on me! Oh, I can’t breathe!”

Sasha knew her mother was going to die soon; now, seeing her face suddenly grow pinched, she guessed it was the end and was frightened.

“Mama, dear, you mustn’t!” she sobbed. “You mustn’t!”

“Run to the kitchen. … Have them go for your father. … I am very ill. …”

Sasha ran through all the rooms, calling, but none of the servants was in the house; she found only Lida, asleep on a chest in the dining room, with no pillow and all her clothes on. Sasha ran into the yard just as she was, without her galoshes, and then into the street. Her nurse was sitting on a bench at the gate, watching the tobogganing. From the toboggan slope by the river came the sounds of a military band.

“Nurse, Mama’s dying!” Sasha sobbed. “You must go for Papa!”

The nurse went upstairs to the bedroom, and after looking at the sick woman, thrust a lighted candle into her hands. Sasha rushed about in terror, pleading with she knew not whom, to go for her papa. At last she put on her coat and a kerchief and ran into the street. She had learned from the servants that her father had another wife and two children with whom he lived in Bazarny Street. She ran out of the gate and turned left, crying and frightened of the strangers. Soon she began sinking into the snow and was shivering with cold.

She met an empty sleigh but did not take it, fearing perhaps that the man would drive her out of town, rob her, and throw her into the cemetery—at tea the servants had talked of such a case. She walked on and on, sobbing and panting with exhaustion. When she came to Bazarny Street she asked where Mr. Panaurov lived. A woman she did not know spent a long time explaining the way to her, then, seeing that she did not understand, took her by the hand and led her to a one-story house set back from the street. The door was unlocked and Sasha ran through the entry, down a corridor, and at last found herself in a bright, warm room, where her father was sitting by the samovar with a lady and two little girls. But by now she was unable to utter a word and only sobbed.

“I suppose Mama is bad? … Tell me, daughter, is Mama bad?”

He became alarmed and sent for a cab.

When they reached home they found Nina Fyodorovna propped up on pillows with a candle in her hand. Her face looked dark and her eyes were closed. Crowded together in the doorway stood the nurse, the cook, a housemaid, the peasant Prokofy, and several other simple people who were complete strangers. The nurse was giving them orders in a whisper, but they appeared not to understand. Lida, pale and sleepy, stood at the far end of the room by the window, staring at her mother with a grave expression.

Panaurov took the candle out of Nina Fyodorovna’s hand and flung it onto the chest of drawers, scowling with disgust.

“This is dreadful!” he exclaimed with a shudder. “Nina, you must lie down,” he said tenderly. “Lie down, dear.”

She looked up, but did not recognize him. They laid her down on her back.

When the priest and the doctor, Sergei Borisych, arrived, the servants all devoutly crossed themselves and began to pray.

“It’s a bad business,” the doctor said thoughtfully, as he went into the drawing room. “And she was still young, not yet forty.”

The little girls could be heard sobbing loudly. Panaurov, pale, with tears in his eyes, went up to the doctor and said in a weak, languid tone, “Will you be so good, my dear friend, as to send a telegram to Moscow? I’m definitely not up to it.”

The doctor got out the ink and wrote the following telegram to his daughter:

PANAUROVA DIED EIGHT O’CLOCK THIS EVENING. TELL YOUR HUSBAND: MORTGAGED HOUSE FOR SALE DVORYANSKY STREET. NINE THOUSAND CASH. AUCTION ON TWELFTH. ADVISE NOT TO MISS.

IX

Laptev lived in one of the lanes off Maly Dmitrovka, not far from Stary Pimen. In addition to a large house facing the street, he rented a two-story lodge in the yard for his friend Kochevoi, a counselor at law, whom all the Laptevs called Kostya, because he had grown up in their care. Opposite this lodge was another, also of two stories, in which there lived a French family consisting of a husband and wife and their five daughters.

A 20-degree frost had whitened all the windows. When he woke up in the morning, Kostya, with a preoccupied expression, first took fifteen drops of a certain medicine, then got two dumbbells from the bookcase and set about his gymnastics. He was tall and very thin, with a large reddish mustache; but the most conspicuous feature of his appearance was a pair of extraordinarily long legs.

Pyotr, a middle-aged peasant wearing a jacket and cotton breeches tucked into high boots, brought in the samovar and made tea.

“It’s fine weather today, Konstantin Ivanych!” he said.

“Yes, it is. But it’s a pity, brother, that we can’t get on without such exclamations.”

Pyotr sighed out of politeness.

“What are the little girls doing?”

“The priest has not come, and Alexei Fyodorych himself is giving them their lessons.”

Kostya found a spot on the window that was not covered with frost and trained his binoculars on the windows of the house opposite, where the French family lived.

“Can’t see,” he said.

Meanwhile, Alexei Fyodorych was giving Sasha and Lida religious instruction downstairs. They had been living in Moscow for the past six weeks, and, with a governess, were installed on the lower floor of the lodge. Three times a week a teacher from a city school, and a priest, came to give them lessons. Sasha was going through the New Testament, and Lida had recently begun the Old Testament. At the last lesson she had been set the task of learning everything up to Abraham.

“So, Adam and Eve had two sons,” said Laptev. “Excellent. And what were their names? Now, try to remember!”

Lida, with her customary solemn expression, moved her lips without making a sound and stared at the table. Sasha, the elder girl, looked at her in misery.

“You know very well, don’t be uneasy,” said Laptev. “Now, what were Adam’s sons called?”

“Abel and Cabel,” whispered Lida.

“Cain and Abel,” Laptev corrected her.

A big tear rolled down Lida’s cheek and dropped onto the book. Sasha flushed and looked down; she, too, was about to burst into tears. Laptev felt so sorry for them he could not speak; there was a lump in his throat and he got up from the table to light a cigarette. At that moment Kochevoi came downstairs with a newspaper in his hand. The little girls stood up and curtsied without looking at him.

“For God’s sake, Kostya, you give them their lesson,” Laptev pleaded. “I’m afraid I shall cry, too, and I have to go to the warehouse before dinner.”

“Very well.”

Alexei Fyodorych went out. Kostya, looking very serious, sat down and drew the Scriptures toward him.

“Well, where have you got to?” he asked.

“She knows about the Flood,” said Sasha.

“The Flood? Good! Let’s finish off the Flood. Fire away!”

Kostya skimmed through the story of the Flood in the book and said, “I must point out to you that, actually, there never was a Flood such as they describe here. Nor was there any such man as Noah. Several thousands of years before the birth of Christ, there was a rather unusual inundation of the earth, which is mentioned, not only in the Hebrew Bible, but also in the books of other ancient peoples: the Greeks, the Chaldeans, and the Hindus. But, whatever it may have been, this inundation could not have submerged the entire earth. The plains, perhaps. But the mountains very likely came through. It’s all right to read this book, of course, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

Again the tears began to flow; Lida turned away and all at once began sobbing so loudly that Kostya jumped up from the table in consternation.

“I want to go home to my papa and nurse!” she wailed.

Sasha, too, began to cry. Kostya went upstairs and called Yulia Sergeyevna on the telephone.

“Darling, the girls are crying again. Can’t do a thing with them.”

Yulia Sergeyevna ran across from the big house with only a knitted shawl over her dress, and got chilled through: she immediately began to comfort the children.

“Believe me, do believe me,” she pleaded, “your papa is coming today. He has sent a telegram. You’re grieving for Mama, and I am, too, but there is nothing we can do. We must accept the will of God.”

When they had stopped crying she wrapped them up and took them out for a drive. First they drove along Maly Dmitrovka and past the Strastnoi Monastery on Tvorskaya Street. They stopped near the Iverskaya Chapel, where they lit candles and knelt down and prayed. On the way back they went to Filipov’s and had Lenten cakes sprinkled with poppy seeds.

The Laptevs dined between two and three. They were served by Pyotr, who, besides waiting on them, ran to the post office, to the warehouse, and to the district court for Kostya; he spent the evenings making cigarettes, the nights running to open the door, and at five o’clock in the morning he was lighting the fires in the stoves. Nobody knew when he slept. He delighted in opening Seltzer bottles, which he did deftly, noiselessly, and without spilling a drop.

“Good luck!” said Kostya, tossing off a glass of vodka before the soup.

At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice, and his expressions, such as: “kicked him out,” “land him one on the beak,” “filth,” “produce the samovar” his habit of clinking glasses and becoming maudlin over a drink, all seemed trivial to her. But when she knew him better, she began to feel very much at ease with him. He was open with her, and liked to sit quietly talking to her in the evening; he even let her read the novels he had written, which up to that time he had kept secret even from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev. Because she did not want to hurt his feelings, she praised them, and this delighted him, as he intended sooner or later to become a famous writer.

In his novels he wrote only of the country and life on the estates of large landowners, although he had very rarely even seen the country—and then only when visiting acquaintances at a dacha—and had been at a country estate only once in his life, when on legal business in Volokolamsk. He avoided any element of love in his writing as though he were ashamed of it, but he put in frequent descriptions of nature, in which he liked using phrases such as “the wayward line of the mountains,” “the wondrous forms of clouds,” “the consonance of mysterious rhythms.” The fact that his novels had never been published he attributed solely to censorship.

During dinner Laptev said: “It’s an amazing business; again I am simply baffled by my brother. He said to me that we must find out the date of the firm’s centenary so that we can petition to be elevated to the nobility! And he said this in all seriousness. What has happened to him? Frankly, I’m beginning to be worried.”

They talked of Fyodor, and of how it now seemed to be the fashion to affect some sort of pose. Fyodor, for instance, was trying to appear like a simple merchant, though he no longer was one, and when the teacher from the school of which old Laptev was the patron came for his salary, Fyodor even changed his voice and his walk, behaving as though he were someone in a position of authority.

After dinner there was nothing to do so they sat in the study. They talked about the decadents, and The Maid of Orleans, then Kostya recited a monologue; he thought he gave a very successful imitation of Ermolova. Later they played vint. The little girls had not gone back to the lodge, but sat together in one armchair looking pale and sad; they were listening to the street noises, wondering if their father was coming. In the evening when it was dark and the candles had been lit they felt homesick. Everything upset them—the talk at the card table, Pyotr’s footsteps, the crackling in the fireplace, and they could not bear to look at the fire. At such times they tried not to cry, but their hearts were heavy. They could not understand how anyone could talk and laugh when their mother was dead.

“What did you see through the binoculars today?” Yulia Sergeyevna asked Kostya.

“Today nothing. But yesterday the old Frenchman himself took a bath.”

At seven o’clock Yulia and Kostya went to the Maly Theater, and Laptev was left with the children.

“Your papa should be here by now,” he said, looking at his watch. “The train must be late.”

The little girls sat in the armchair, huddled together like animals in the cold, while Laptev paced the room, impatiently glancing at his watch. It was quiet in the house. Shortly before ten o’clock the bell rang and Pyotr went to open the door.

Hearing the familiar voice, the children screamed, sobbed, and ran into the hall. Panaurov was wearing a luxurious fur coat, and his beard and mustache were white with hoarfrost.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” he murmured, while Sasha and Lida, laughing and crying, kissed his cold hands, his cap, his coat. With the nonchalance of a handsome man who has been spoiled by love, he caressed the children languidly, and went into the study.

“I shall not be with you long, my friends,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Tomorrow I go to St. Petersburg. They have promised to transfer me to another city.”

He was staying at the Dresden Hotel.

X

Ivan Gavrilych Yartsev was a frequent visitor at the Laptevs’. He was a healthy, vigorous man with black hair and an intelligent, pleasant face. He was considered handsome, but lately he had begun to grow stout, which marred both his face and figure; his appearance was also impaired by having his hair cut so close that the scalp showed through. When he was at the university his fellow students used to call him “Slugger” because of his tall and powerful build.

He had taken his degree in philology, together with the Laptev brothers, then he had gone into natural science, and now had a master’s degree in chemistry. He had never held a chair in the department, nor even been a laboratory assistant, but taught physics and natural history in a modern school and two girls’ high schools. He was enthusiastic about his students, especially the girls, and contended that the rising generation was a remarkable one. In addition to chemistry he studied sociology and Russian history at home, and occasional brief notes which he signed with the initial “Y” appeared in newspapers and journals. He discussed botany and zoology like an historian and approached the solution of any historical problem like a scientist.

Another friend who was like one of the family at the Laptevs’ was Kish, known as “the eternal student” He had studied medicine for three years, then had transferred to mathematics, spending two years in every course he took. His father, a provincial pharmacist, sent him forty rubles a month, to which his mother added another ten without her husband’s knowledge, and this sufficed not alone for his living expenses, but for such luxuries as an overcoat lined with Polish beaver, gloves, scent, and photographs (he often had photographs of himself taken and distributed them to his friends). He was immaculately clean, timid, and slightly bald, with golden side whiskers close to his ears. He had the air of a man always ready to oblige, and, in fact, was forever fussing over other people’s affairs, rushing about with a subscription list, freezing in the early morning at a theater box office to buy tickets for ladies of his acquaintance, or, at the request of a friend, placing an order for a wreath or a bouquet.

It was always said of him: “Kish will go; Kish will do it; Kish will buy it” For the most part the results of these efforts were unfortunate; he was continually being showered with reproaches, or people would forget to pay him for the purchases he made, but he took it all in silence, with merely a sigh for the more awkward occasions. He was never particularly glad or sorry, his stories were long and boring, and his jokes provoked laughter simply because they were pointless. One day, for instance, intending to be funny, he said to Pyotr, “Pyotr, you’re not a shoat!” Everyone laughed, he longest of all, so delighted was he with the success of his witticism. Whenever one of the professors was buried, he walked in front with the torchbearers.

Yarsev and Kish usually came to tea in the evening. If their hosts were not going to the theater or a concert, tea was prolonged till supper. One evening in February, the following conversation took place:

“A work of art is significant and effective only when it contains an idea about some serious social problem,” said Kostya, with an angry look at Yartsev. “If the work contains a protest against serfdom, or the author takes up arms against high society and its fatuousness, then it can be effective and significant. Those novels and tales where it’s: Oh, she fell in love with him, and Ah, he fell out of love with her—such works, I say, are trivial, and the hell with them!”

“I agree with you, Konstantin Ivanych,” said Yulia Sergeyevna. “One of them describes a love scene, another a betrayal, and a third a reconciliation. Are there no other themes? There are so many people who are sick, unhappy, and worn out by poverty; to them such books must be revolting.”

Laptev was distressed to hear his wife, a young woman not yet twenty-two, reasoning about love with such sober detachment. He suspected the reason for it.

“If poetry does not have the answers to questions that seem important to you,” said Yartsev, “you ought to consult books on technical subjects, criminal and financial law; read scientific pamphlets. What would be gained, if, say, in Romeo and Juliet, they had a discussion about freedom of speech or the disinfection of prisons, when you can find everything on the subject in special articles and manuals?”

“That’s going to extremes, Uncle,” Kostya interrupted. “We’re not talking about the giants, like Shakespeare and Goethe, we are talking about the hundreds of talented lesser writers, who would be of far greater benefit to us if they would drop love and occupy themselves with propagating knowledge and humane ideas among the masses.”

Kish, in a thick, nasal voice, began to recount a story he had recently read. He spoke deliberately, and without omitting the least detail; three minutes passed, five, ten, and still he went on. No one understood what he was talking about, and his face grew more and more apathetic and his eyes more dull.

“Kish, do get on with it!” Yulia Sergeyevna could endure it no longer. “It’s really agonizing!”

“Shut up, Kish!” Kostya shouted.

They all laughed, including Kish.

Fyodor arrived. There were red spots on his face as he hurriedly greeted everyone, and immediately led his brother away to the study. Lately he seemed to avoid any gathering of people, preferring to be with one person alone.

“Leave the young people to their laughter, in here you and I can speak from the heart,” he said, sitting in a deep armchair at a distance from the lamp. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, dear brother. How long is it since you were last in the warehouse? It must be a week.”

“Yes. There’s nothing for me to do there. And the old man, I must confess, is very tiresome.”

“Of course, they could get on without you and me at the warehouse, but one must have some sort of occupation. ‘In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,’ as they say. God loves work.”

Pyotr brought a glass of tea on a tray. Fyodor drank it without sugar and asked for another. He drank a great deal of tea, and could drink as many as ten glasses in an evening.

“Do you know what, brother,” he said, getting up and going to Alexei, “leaving sophistry aside, you must get elected to the town council, and then, gradually, by easy stages, we shall get you installed as a member of the board, then as assistant to the mayor. And, as time goes on—you’re a clever man, with a good education—-you’ll be noticed, and they’ll send for you in Petersburg. Active members of district and town councils are in vogue there, brother. And look, before you’re fifty you’ll be a privy councilor with a ribbon across your shoulder.”

Laptev did not answer; he understood that all this—being a privy councilor, wearing a decoration—was what Fyodor himself wanted, and he did not know what to say.

The brothers sat in silence. Fyodor opened his watch and stared at it with strained attention for a very long time, as though he were trying to observe the movement of the hands. The expression on his face struck Laptev as odd.

They were summoned to supper. Laptev went to the dining room, but Fyodor remained in the study. The argument was over and Yartsev was speaking in the tone of a professor delivering a lecture.

“Owing to the diversities in climate, energy, tastes, and growth, equality among men is physically impossible. But civilized man can render this inequality innocuous, as he already has done in the case of swamps and bears. One scientist succeeded in training a cat, a mouse, a falcon, and a sparrow to eat from the same plate, and it is to be hoped that education may yet accomplish as much with human beings. Life is continually advancing, civilization is making enormous progress, and it is plain to see that there will come a time when, for example, the position of the present-day factory worker will appear to us as absurd as the conditions under serfdom, when wenches were bartered for dogs.”

“That won’t be very soon, not so very soon,” said Kostya, smiling ironically, “at least not before Rothschild finds his cellars full of gold absurd. And until that time comes, the worker will be held in a yoke, and grow bloated from hunger. No-o-o sir! That’s not the answer, Uncle. We must not wait, we must struggle. If the cat eats from the same plate as the mouse, do you think it’s because she’s imbued with a consciousness of duty? Of course not! She is compelled to by main force.”

“Fyodor and I are rich; our father is a capitalist, a millionaire, you will have to struggle with us!” Laptev said, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand. “The idea of anyone struggling with me is something I am unable to grasp. I am rich, but, so far, what has money brought me——what has this power given me? In what way am I more fortunate than you? My childhood was unbearable; money did not save me from the rod. When Nina was ill and died, my money did not help her. If I am not loved, I cannot command love, though I spend a hundred million.”

“But you can do a great deal of good,” said Kish.

“Good! What sort of good? Yesterday you spoke to me of a certain mathematician who was looking for a job. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I can give him money, but that’s not what he wants. I once asked a well-known musician to find a place for a destitute violinist, and the answer I got was: ‘You come to me simply because you’re not a musician.’ And I say to you: You come to me, confident of help, because you’ve never been in the position of a rich man.”

“Why this comparison with the well-known musician, I do not understand!” Yulia Sergeyevna burst out, and then blushed. “What has the well-known musician to do with it?”

Her face began to quiver with hatred, and she lowered her eyes to conceal it. Not only her husband, but everyone sitting at the table understood what that look meant.

“What has the well-known musician to do with it?” she quietly repeated. “There is nothing simpler than helping someone who is poor.”

No one spoke. Pyotr served the woodcock, but they all refused it and ate nothing but salad. Laptev could not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were odious to her, but the mere fact of his meddling in the conversation.

After supper he went back to his study; tense, his heart pounding in anticipation of some further humiliation, he tried to listen to what was going on in the hall. Another argument had begun. Then Yartsev sat down at the piano and sang a sentimental song. He was a man of many talents: he could sing, play the piano, and perform sleight-of-hand tricks.

“You may do as you please, gentlemen, but I do not intend to sit at home,” said Yulia. “We must go somewhere.”

they decided to drive out of town, and Kish was sent to the merchants’ club for a troika. They did not ask Laptev to go with them because his brother was with him, and, besides, it was not customary for him to join them on these drives; but he took it to mean that he bored them, that he was not wanted in the company of these gay young people. His disappointment and bitterness were so intense he almost wept, and he was positively glad that they were treating him so unkindly, so scornfully; he was glad that he was a stupid, dull husband, a moneybags; and it seemed to him that he would be more than glad if, this very night, his wife were to deceive him with his best friend, and afterwards, with a look of hatred, confess it to him…. He was jealous of their student friends, of actors, singers, of Yartsev, even of mere acquaintances; and now he passionately wished that she would actually be unfaithful to him; he wanted to find her in the arms of another man, to be outraged, once and for all to be set free from this nightmare. Fyodor drank tea in loud gulps. Now he too prepared to go.

“Our old man must have amaurosis,” he said, putting on his fur coat. “His sight is becoming very bad.”

Laptev also put on his coat and went out. He accompanied his brother as far as Strastnoi Street, then took a sleigh to Yar’s.

“And this is what is known as ‘family happiness’!” he said mockingly. “This is love!”

His teeth were chattering, whether from jealousy or some other cause, he did not know. At Yar’s he walked about near the tables, listening to a singer of topical songs. He had no ready phrase prepared, in the event he met his own party, and was convinced that if he were to see his wife he would only smile foolishly and pathetically, and everyone would know what had impelled him to come there. He was disconcerted by the loud music, the electric lights, the scent of powder, and the fact that the women he passed stared at him. He stood at the doors trying to see or overhear what was going on in the private rooms, and it seemed to him that he was playing some low, contemptible role, on a level with those women and the singer. He went on to Strelna, but his friends were not there either, and only on his way back, as he was again driving up to Yar’s, was he noisily overtaken by another troika. The driver was drunk and shouting, and he heard Yartsev’s laugh.

It was after three o’clock when Laptev returned home. Yulia Sergeyevna was already in bed. When he saw that she was not sleeping, he went up to her and said sharply, “I understand your hatred, your aversion—but you might spare me in the presence of others! You might at least conceal your feelings!”

She sat on the side of the bed with her legs dangling, and in the lamplight her eyes looked black and very large.

“I am sorry,” she said.

His whole body was shaking; he was so agitated he could not utter a word, but stood before her, silent. She, too, was trembling, and sat looking like a criminal, waiting to hear what he would say.

“How I suffer!” he said at last, clutching his head. “This is hell—I am going out of my mind!”

“And do you think it is easy for me?” she asked in a trembling voice. “Only God knows what it is like for me!”

“You have been my wife for six months now, but you haven’t a spark of love in your heart for me—nor is there any hope—-not a glimmer! Why did you marry me?” he went on in desperation. “Why? What demon thrust you into my arms? What were you hoping for? What did you want?”

She looked at him in horror, as though terrified that he would kill her.

“Did I fascinate you? Were you in love with me?” he continued, panting for breath. “No! Then, what? Tell me— what?” he shouted. “Oh, the damned money! The damned money!”

“I swear to God—no!” she cried, crossing herself. She shrank under the insult, and for the first time he heard her cry. “I swear to God, no!” she repeated. “I didn’t think of the money. I didn’t want it. I simply thought I should do wrong if I refused you. I was afraid of ruining your life and my own. And now I am suffering for my mistake—suffering unbearably!”

She sobbed bitterly; he realized that she was suffering, and, not knowing what to say, he sank to the floor at her feet.

“That’s enough, that’s enough,” he murmured. “I humiliated you because I love you madly.” He suddenly kissed her foot, clasping it passionately. “If only a spark of love! Lie to me—tell me a lie! Don’t say it’s a mistake!” …

But she only continued to weep, and he felt that she endured his caresses as an inevitable consequence of her mistake. And she drew the foot he had kissed under her like a bird. He felt sorry for her.

She lay down and covered her head, and he undressed and went to bed. In the morning they both were embarrassed and did not know what to talk about, and it seemed to him that she limped slightly on the foot he had kissed.

Before dinner Panaurov came to say good-bye. Yulia was seized with an irresistible desire to go to her own home; it would be good, she thought, to go away, to have a rest from married life, from this turmoil, and the persistent awareness of having done wrong. At dinner it was decided that she would leave with Panaurov and visit her father for two or three weeks, until she grew tired of it.

XI

Yulia Sergeyevna and Panaurov traveled in a private compartment. He wore an astrakhan cap of an odd shape.

“No, I was not at all satisfied with Petersburg.” He spoke deliberately, and sighed. “They promise a great deal … but nothing definite…. Yes, my dear, I have been a justice of the peace, a permanent member of the court, chairman of the district magistrates, and, finally, councilor of the provincial administration. It would seem that I have given sufficient service to the fatherland to have the right to some consideration, but, there you are! I can never manage to get transferred to another town….” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Naturally, I’m not an administrative genius, but, on the other hand, I’m a respectable, honest man, and even that is rare today. I’ll admit that occasionally I’ve been somewhat deceptive with women, but in my relations with the Russian government, I have always been a gentleman. But, enough of that,” he said, opening his eyes. “Let’s talk about you. Why did you suddenly take it into your head to visit Papa?”

“Oh … I wasn’t getting on so well with my husband,” Yulia replied, gazing at his cap.

“Yes, he’s a queer one, all right All the Laptevs are queer. Your husband’s not so bad, but his brother Fyodor is an absolute idiot.” Panaurov sighed and then very seriously inquired, “But you’ve taken a lover, of course?”

Yulia looked at him in amazement and laughed.

“Heavens! What are you talking about?”

It was after ten o’clock when they got out to have supper in one of the large stations. When the train started again Panaurov took off his overcoat and cap and sat down beside Yulia.

“I must tell you, you’re a very attractive girl,” he began. “I hope you will forgive the gastronomical comparison, but you remind me of a freshly pickled cucumber; it still smells of the hotbed, so to say, but already has a smack of the salt and a whiff of fennel. In time you’ll develop into a magnificent woman … a wonderful, elegant woman. If this little journey of ours had occurred five years ago,” he sighed, “I should have considered it my delightful duty to join the ranks of your adorers. But, now, alas, I’m on the retired list.” His smile was melancholy but gracious as he put his arm around her waist.

“You must be mad!” she cried. She was flushed, and so frightened that her hands and feet turned cold. “Stop it, Grigory Nikolaich!”

“What are you afraid of, darling?” he asked softly. “What’s so awful about it? It’s simply that you’re not used to it.”

If a woman protested he interpreted it as a sign that he had made an impression on her, that he attracted her. Holding Yulia by the waist, he kissed her firmly on the cheek then on the lips, fully convinced he was affording her the greatest pleasure. When she had recovered from her fright and confusion, Yulia began to laugh. He kissed her once more, then put on his absurd cap and said, “And that is all the old veteran is able to give you now…. A Turkish pasha, a kind-hearted old fellow, once received a gift—or perhaps he just inherited it—of a whole harem. When his beautiful young wives lined up before him, he walked around them, kissed every one, and said, ‘That is all that I am now in condition to offer you.’ And I say the same to you.”

All this seemed silly and fantastic to Yulia, but it amused her. She began to feel mischievous. Standing on the seat and humming, she took down a box of candy from the shelf, threw him a piece of chocolate, and cried, “Catch!”

He caught it. She laughed loudly and threw him another, then a third, and he continued to catch them and put them into his mouth, while gazing at her with pleading eyes. She found a great deal that was both feminine and childish in his features and expression. When she breathlessly sat down beside him, and continued to look at him and laugh, he lightly ran two fingers along her cheek and ruefully said, “Naughty girl!”

“Take it,” she said, giving him the box. “I don’t like sweet things.”

He ate it all, down to the last piece, then locked the empty box in his suitcase; he liked boxes with pictures on them.

“However, that’s enough mischief,” he said. “Time for the veteran to go night-night.”

He opened his carryall, took out his Bokhara dressing gown and a pillow, then lay down and covered himself with the dressing gown.

“Good night, darling!” he said softly, and sighed as though his whole body ached. He was soon snoring. Without the least feeling of constraint, she. too lay down and fell asleep.

The next morning, driving home from the station, the streets of her native town seemed empty and deserted; the snow looked gray, and the houses diminutive, as though someone had flattened them. She came upon a funeral procession in which the deceased was carried in an open coffin with banners.

“They say it’s lucky to meet a funeral procession,” she thought.

The windows of the house in which Nina Fyodorovna had lived were pasted over with white handbills.

With a sinking heart she drove into her own courtyard and rang the bell. The door was opened by a maid she had not seen before, a plump, sleepy girl in a thick quilted jacket. As she went upstairs, Yulia recalled that it was here Laptev had proposed to her; but now the staircase was unwashed and covered with traces of footprints. Upstairs in the chilly passage patients sat waiting in their coats. For some reason her heart beat violently, and she was so excited she was scarcely able to walk.

The doctor, stouter than ever, brick-red and disheveled, was drinking tea. He was delighted to see his daughter, and even shed a few tears; it occurred to her that she was the only joy in this old man’s life. She was touched, and warmly embraced him, telling him she would stay a long time—until Easter. After going to her own room and changing her clothes, she returned to the dining room to drink tea with him. He was pacing up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, humming “Ru-ru-ru-ru,” which meant he was dissatisfied with something.

“You have a gay time of it there in Moscow,” he said. “I’m glad for you…. I’m an old man, I don’t need anything. It won’t be long now before I’ll kick off, and you’ll all be rid of me. It’s really a wonder that I have such a thick hide—that I’m still alive! Amazing!”

He went on to say that he was a tough old donkey everyone rode on; that they had burdened him with the care of Nina Fyodorovna, all the cares of her children, and her funeral; that that fop, Panaurov, who did not care to bother about anything, had even borrowed a hundred rubles from him, which he had never repaid.

“Take me to Moscow and put me in a madhouse!” he shouted. “I’m crazy—I’m a naive child, I still believe in truth and justice!”

He then upbraided her husband for his shortsightedness in failing to buy houses that could have been bought so advantageously. And now Yulia began to see that perhaps she was not the only joy in this old man’s life. While he was receiving patients, and later, when he went out to pay his calls, she walked through all the rooms, not knowing what to do or what to think. She no longer felt at home in the house in which she had been born, nor in her native town; she had no desire to go out into the streets, nor to see her friends, and even the recollection of these friends and of her girlhood awakened no feeling of melancholy, no regret for the past.

In the evening she dressed somewhat more stylishly and went to the vesper service. But there were only simple people in the church, and her magnificent fur coat and hat made no impression. It seemed to her that some change had taken place in the church, as well as in herself. Formerly she had loved the reading of the canon at the evening service, and the choir singing a hymn such as “I Will Open My Lips” and she had liked moving slowly in the crowd toward the priest, who stood in the middle of the church, then feeling the holy oil upon her forehead; now she was simply waiting for the service to end. And leaving the church she had no feeling other than a dread that beggars might approach her; it would be so tiresome to have to stop and search her pockets—besides, there were no coppers in them now, only rubles.

She went to bed early, but it was a long time before she finally fell asleep. She kept dreaming of certain portraits, and of the funeral procession she had seen in the morning: the open coffin with the corpse was carried into the yard and came to a stop before the door; there the coffin was swung back and forth in a sheet, then violently flung against the door. Yulia woke and jumped up in horror. Actually there was the sound of knocking at the door downstairs, and the bell wire whirred against the wall, but no ring was heard.

She heard the doctor cough. The maid went down and came up again.

“Madam,” she said, knocking at Yulia’s door. “Madam!”

“What is it?” Yulia asked.

“A telegram for you!”

Yulia went out to her with a candle. Behind the maid stood the doctor wearing an overcoat over his underwear. He, too, carried a candle.

“The bell is broken,” he said, yawning sleepily. “It ought to have been repaired long ago.”

Yulia opened the telegram and read:

WE DRINK TO YOUR HEALTH.

YARTSEV, KOCHEVOI.

“Oh, what idiots!” she said, and burst out laughing; and all at once her heart felt light and gay.

Going back to her room, she quietly washed and dressed, and spent the hours till dawn packing her things. At noon she left for Moscow.

XII

During Holy Week the Laptevs went to an exhibition at the school of painting. The entire household went, in the Moscow fashion, including the two little girls with their governess, and Kostya.

Laptev knew the names of all the well-known painters and never missed an exhibition. When he was at his dacha, he himself sometimes painted landscapes in oil; he thought he had a good deal of taste, and that if he had studied he might have become a good painter. When he was abroad he used to visit curio shops, examine the antiques with the air of a connoisseur, give his opinion, then buy at whatever price the dealer chose to ask. These purchases then lay for a long time piled up in crates in the coach house, ultimately disappearing, no one knew where. Or, stopping in at a print shop, he would slowly and meticulously examine engravings, or perhaps a bronze, make various observations on them, and end by buying a cheap frame or a box of worthless prints. In his home the pictures were all large, but never good; and even the best of them were badly hung. More than once he had paid large sums for things that had turned out to be crude counterfeits. It was remarkable that, timid as he was in most matters, when it came to an exhibition of paintings, he was exceedingly bold and self-confident Why?

Yulia Sergeyevna looked at paintings, as did her husband, either through binoculars, or through the opening in a cupped hand held up to one eye. She was astonished that the people looked like live people, and the trees like real trees; but she understood nothing of art, thought many of the pictures were alike, and was convinced that the whole purpose of art was in figures and objects standing out as though real when peered at through a cupped hand.

“That forest is Shishkin’s,” her husband explained to her. “He always paints the same thing. But notice the snow: there is no such thing as lavender snow like that…. And the boy’s left arm is shorter than his right.”

When they were all tired and ready to go home, Laptev went to find Kostya. Yulia was left to gaze apathetically at a small landscape. In the foreground of the painting there was a small stream with a log bridge across it, and on the opposite shore a path disappearing into dark grass, then a field; on the right, part of a forest, and near it a campfire—probably that of night watchers—and in the distance a fading sunset.

Yulia imagined herself crossing the little bridge, following the path farther and farther, the stillness all round her, drowsy corn crakes calling, and the fire flickering in the distance. And for some reason she began to feel that long ago and many times before she had seen these same clouds extending across a glowing sky, a forest and a field. She had a feeling of loneliness, and she longed to follow the path on and on and on; the evening sunset held a reflection of something unearthly and eternal.

“How beautifully that is painted!” she exclaimed, surprised at her sudden understanding of the picture. “Look, Alyosha! Do you see how tranquil it is?”

She attempted to explain why the landscape appealed to her so strongly, but neither her husband nor Kostya understood her. She kept looking at the painting with a melancholy smile, and the fact that they found nothing exceptional in it disturbed her. She began walking through the rooms, examining the pictures again; she wanted to understand them, and no longer found them all alike. When she returned home, for the first time she really looked at the large painting that hung above the piano in the drawing room. It aroused a feeling of antagonism within her, and she said, “Why would anyone want to have such pictures?”

From that day on the gilt cornices, the Venetian mirrors with flowers, and paintings like the one that hung over the piano—to say nothing of discussions of art by her husband and Kostya—aroused in her a feeling of boredom and vexation, at times, even of hatred.

Life drifted on its accustomed course, day after day, holding no particular promise. The theatrical season came to an end, the days began to grow warm, and there followed a period of magnificent weather. One morning the Laptevs decided to attend the district court to hear Kostya plead a case; he had been assigned by the court to defend the accused. They were late in starting and arrived after the examination of the witness had begun. A soldier in the reserve was accused of housebreaking and burglary. There were a great many witnesses, all washerwomen; they testified to the fact that the accused frequented the house of their employer, the proprietress of the laundry. On Holy Cross Day he had come there late in the evening, begging money for a pick-me-up, but no one had given him anything. He went away, but returned an hour later with beer and gingerbread for the girls. They drank and sang till dawn. When they looked about them in the morning, they discovered that the lock on the door leading to the garret had been broken, and three men’s shirts, a petticoat, and two sheets were missing. Kostya, in an ironic tone, asked each witness whether she had drunk the beer the accused had brought on Holy Cross Day. He was obviously implying that the laundresses themselves had stolen the linen. He delivered his speech without the least nervousness, all the while glaring angrily at the jury.

He gave an explanation of housebreaking with burglary, and followed it with an explanation of simple burglary. He spoke persuasively and in great detail, evincing an extraordinary capacity for redundancy and solemnity of tone in matters that haul long been common knowledge.

It was not easy to understand exactly what he wanted. From his long speech the foreman of the jury could have drawn only one conclusion: that it was a case of housebreaking but not theft, as the washerwomen themselves had sold the linen for drink; or, if it was theft, that it was theft without housebreaking. But evidently he said exactly what was required, as his speech moved both the jury and the public, and was very much admired. When the verdict of acquittal was announced, Yulia nodded to Kostya, and later warmly pressed his hand.

In May the Laptevs moved to their dacha at Sokolniki. By that time Yulia was expecting a child.

XIII

More than a year had passed. At Sokolniki, not far from the Yaroslav railway embankment, Yulia and Yartsev were sitting on the grass; near them Kochevoi was lying, his hands under his head, gazing up at the sky. All three had been for a walk and now were waiting for the six o’clock train to pass before going home to tea.

“Mothers always see something remarkable in their own children—that’s part of nature’s plan,” said Yulia. “A mother will stand by the crib for hours admiring her baby’s ears, his eyes, his nose—enraptured! If anyone kisses her child, she, poor thing, imagines that it gives him the greatest pleasure. And a mother talks of nothing but her child. I am aware of this weakness in mothers, and I keep watch over myself. But, truly, my Olya is exceptional. The way she looks at me when I’m nursing her! And how she laughs! She is only eight months old, but I have never seen such intelligent eyes in a child of three!”

“By the way, tell me,” Yartsev asked, “whom do you love more, your husband or your child?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I never loved my husband very much, and Olya is actually my first love. You know, of course, that I didn’t marry Alexei for love. I was stupid in those days, and used to suffer, imagining I had ruined his life and my own; now I see that love is not at all necessary, it’s all nonsense.”

“But if it is not love, what is the feeling that binds you to your husband? What makes you go on living with him?”

“I don’t know … habit, I suppose. I respect him, I miss him when he’s away for long—but that’s not love. He’s an intelligent, honest man, and that suffices for my happiness. He’s very kind, and sincere….”

“Alyosha’s intelligent, Alyosha’s kind,” Kostya repeated, lazily lifting his head. “But, my darling, in order to find out that he’s intelligent and kind, and interesting, you have to eat three poods of salt with him…. And of what use is his kindness or his intellect? He’ll shell out all the money you like, that he can do, but when it comes to packing off some insolent, arrogant fellow, he shrinks and cowers. People like your obliging Alexei are absolutely useless in a struggle. In fact, they’re useless in general.”

At last the train appeared, spreading clouds of steam of an absolutely pink color above the grove; two windows of the end car flashed so brightly in the sunlight that it hurt their eyes to look at them.

“Time for tea!” said Yulia Sergeyevna, getting up.

Lately she had grown a little stout, and her walk was becoming matronly and rather indolent.

“Nevertheless it’s not good to live without love,” Yartsev said, following her. “We are forever talking of love, and reading about it, but we ourselves love very little, and this is decidedly wrong.”

“It’s all nonsense, Ivan Gavrilych,” said Yulia. “That’s not where happiness lies.”

They had tea in the little garden where the mignonette, stock, and tobacco plants were in bloom, and the early gladioli were beginning to come out. Yartsev and Kochevoi could see by her face that Yulia was going through a happy period of inner peace and serenity, that she wanted nothing but what she already had, and they themselves yielded to a feeling of well-being and tranquillity. Whatever any of them said seemed apposite and wise; the pine trees were lovelier, the resin more wonderfully fragrant than ever before, the cream tasted delicious, and Sasha was a good and clever little girl….

After tea Yartsev sang songs, accompanying himself on the piano, while Yulia and Kochevoi sat listening in silence. From time to time Yulia quietly rose and went to look at the baby and Lida, who for two days had been in bed, feverish and unable to eat.

“‘My friend, fond friend,’” Yartsev sang…. “No, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, shaking his head, “I’m hanged if I can understand why you’re opposed to love! If I weren’t occupied for fifteen out of every twenty-four hours, I should most certainly fall in love!”

Supper was served on the veranda; although the air was warm and still, Yulia wrapped herself in a shawl and complained of the damp. When it grew dark, she seemed not quite herself and she kept shivering and begging her friends to stay a little longer. She regaled them with wine, and after supper ordered brandy to keep them from going. She did not want to be left alone with the children and the servants.

“The summer residents are getting up a performance for the children,” she said. “We’ve already got everything—actors, and a theater—now all we need is a play. We’ve been sent some twenty plays of various kinds, but not one of them is suitable. You like the theater, and you know history,” she said, turning to Yartsev, “why don’t you write an historical play for us?”

“Well, I might.”

The guests finished the brandy and prepared to go. It was past ten, which was late for the summer residents.

“How dark it is! One can’t see a thing,” said Yulia, accompanying them to the gate. “I don’t know how you will find your way. And it’s so cold!”

She wrapped the shawl more tightly around herself and walked back to the veranda.

“My Alexei is probably playing cards somewhere,” she called after them. “Good night!”

Coming from the lighted rooms Yartsev and Kochevoi were unable to see, and, like blind men, groped their way to the railway embankment and across it.

“Can’t see a damned thing,” said Kostya in his bass voice, stopping and peering up at the sky. “But the stars—those stars are exactly like brand-new fifteen-kopeck pieces! Gavrilych!”

“Ah?” Yartsev called out from somewhere in the darkness.

“I say: I can’t see a thing. Where are you?”

Yartsev whistled as he came up to him and took his arm.

“Hey, you summer people!” Kostya suddenly shouted at the top of his voice. “We’ve caught a socialist!”

When he had been drinking he always became loud and troublesome, quarreling with policemen and cab drivers, and intemperately laughing and singing.

“The hell with nature!” he shouted.

“Come now,” Yartsev tried to quiet him. “Don’t do that. Please!”

They soon grew accustomed to the dark and were able to distinguish the silhouettes of tall pine trees and telephone poles. The sounds of whistles from the Moscow stations reached them from time to time, and the wires hummed plaintively. There was not a sound from the grove itself, and in This silence there was something majestic, powerful, and mysterious. By night it seemed that the tops of the pine trees almost touched the sky. The friends found a track and walked along it It was quite dark there, and only from the long strip of star-strewn sky, and from the fact that under foot the earth was firmly trampled down, did they know that they were on a path. They walked side by side in silence, and both of them imagined that people were moving toward them. Their intoxicated mood forsook them. It came into Yartsev’s mind that this grove was perhaps inhabited by the spirits of the Muscovite tsars, boyars, and patriarchs, and he was on the verge of telling this to Kostya, but he restrained himself.

When they reached the city gate day was just breaking. They continued to walk in silence along the wooden pavement, past the cheap summer cottages, the taverns, the stacks of timber; beneath the span of intertwining branches overhead, the damp air was chilly and pleasantly fragrant of lime trees; then a long, broad street opened before them, with not a soul, not a light on it…. When they reached the Red Pond it was daylight.

“Moscow—a city that will have to suffer a great deal more,” said Yartsev, looking at the Alexeyevsky Monastery.

“What made you think of that?”

“I just did. I love Moscow.”

Both Yartsev and Kostya had been born in Moscow; they adored their native city, and for some reason were hostile to all others. They were convinced that Moscow was a remarkable city, and Russia a remarkable country. When they went to the Crimea, the Caucasus, or abroad, they felt uncomfortable, bored, and ill at ease, but the gray climate of Moscow they found appealing and wholesome. On days when a cold rain beat against the windows and dusk descended early, when the walls of the houses and churches took on a somber brown color, and when one did not know what to put on when going out—such days were to them delightfully stimulating.

At last, near the station, they took a cab.

“As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea to write an historical play—but, of course, without the Lyapunovs or the Godunovs—something from the days of Yaroslav or Monomachus…. I hate all Russian historical plays, with the exception of Pimen’s monologue. When you are dealing with any kind of historical source material, or even when you read a textbook on Russian history, it appears that in Russia everyone is extraordinarily talented, gifted, and interesting; but when I go to the theater and see an historical play, Russian life begins to seem dull, morbid, and lacking in any originality.”

Near Dmitrovka the friends parted, and Yartsev went on to his apartment in Great Nikitsky Street. Still thinking about the play, he became drowsy with the swaying of the cab. He began to imagine a fearful tumult, with clanking and shouting in some unknown tongue like Kalmuk; a village enveloped in flames, a neighboring forest covered with hoarfrost, faintly pink from the reflection of the fire, and for a great distance everything so clearly visible that each single fir tree was distinguishable, and flying through the village, savage people on horseback and on foot, all as crimson as the glowing sky. “The Polovtsy,” thought Yartsev. One of them, a terrifying old man with a bloody face and covered with burns from the fire, was tying a young girl to his saddle. The girl had the face of a Byelorussian, and she was looking sadly and wisely at the old man as he shouted at her in a towering rage. Yartsev shook his head and woke up.

“‘My friend, fond friend,’” he hummed.

Even after he had paid the cabman and had gone upstairs to his own rooms, he was unable to shake off his dream; he continued to see flames enveloping a village, a crackling, smoking forest, a huge wild boar, panic-stricken, rampaging through the village…. And the girl bound to the saddle still gazing….

It was already daylight when he arrived home. On the piano near some open sheets of music two candles had burned low. Lying on the sofa in a black dress with a sash was Rassudina, sound asleep with a newspaper in her hand. She had probably been playing the piano until late, waiting for Yartsev to return, and had finally fallen asleep.

“Look here! She’s worn out!” he thought.

Carefully taking the newspaper from her hand, he covered her with a plaid, extinguished the candles, and went into the bedroom. As he lay down he was thinking of the historical play, and the melody of “My friend, fond friend” was still running through his head….

Two days later Laptev dropped in to tell him that Lida had diphtheria and Yulia Sergeyevna and the baby had both caught it from her; and five days after that he received the news that Lida and Yulia were recovering, but the baby was dead, and that the Laptevs had left their Sokolniki dacha in haste and returned to Moscow.

XIV

Laptev now found it unpleasant to spend much time at home. His wife frequently went to the lodge, saying that she had to look after the little girls; but he knew she went there, not to give them their lessons, but to weep in Kostya’s room. The ninth day came, then the twentieth, and the fortieth, and still he had to go to the cemetery, had to listen to the requiem, and afterwards, the whole day and night, to exhaust himself thinking of nothing but that unfortunate baby, and repeating all sorts of banal things to his wife in an effort to comfort her. He seldom went to the warehouse now, but occupied himself solely with charitable work. He devised various tasks and duties for himself, and was glad when the occasion made it necessary for him to spend an entire day driving here and there on some trifling matter. Lately he had thought of going abroad to make a study of hostels, and the idea appealed to him now.

It was an autumn day. Yulia had just gone to the lodge to weep, and Laptev lay on the sofa in his study, wondering where he should go. At that moment Pyotr announced Polina Rassudina. Laptev was delighted; he jumped up and went to meet this unexpected visitor, his former friend, whom he had almost begun to forget. She had not changed in the least since that evening when he had seen her for the last time; she was just the same as she had always been.

“Polina!” he exclaimed, extending both hands to her. “I have not seen you for ages! If you knew how glad I am to see you! Come in!”

Rassudina greeted him, jerked him by the hand, and, without removing her coat and hat, went into the study and sat down.

“I’ve come for one minute,” she said. “And I haven’t the time to talk of trivialities. Please sit down and listen. It’s all one to me whether you’re glad to see me or not; the gracious attentions of you lordly gentlemen are not worth a pin to me. I’m here only because I’ve tried five other places today and have met with refusals in every one—and this is a matter that cannot be put off. Listen,” she went on, looking into his eyes, “five students of my acquaintance—limited, confused people, but unquestionably poor—have not paid their fees and have been expelled. Your wealth makes it your duty to go straight to the university and pay for them.”

“With pleasure, Polina.”

“Here are their names,” she said, giving Laptev a list. “Go this instant; you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy your domestic bliss later.”

At that moment a noise was heard behind the door leading into the drawing room; it must have been the dog scratching himself. Rassudina turned red and jumped up.

“Your Dulcinea is eavesdropping,” she said. “That is vile!”

Laptev was offended for Yulia.

“She is not here; she’s in the lodge,” he said. “And don’t speak of her in that way. Our baby died and she is terribly grief-stricken.”

“You can console her,” Rassudina said bitterly, and sat down again. “She’ll have a dozen more. It doesn’t require much wit to bring children into the world!”

Laptev remembered hearing this, or something like it, many times in days gone by, and it brought back the poetry of the past, the freedom of his solitary, bachelor life, when he felt young and as though he could do anything he wished, when there had been neither the love for a wife nor the memory of a child.

“Let us go together,” he said, stretching himself.

When they reached the university Polina waited at the gate while Laptev went into the office; before long he came back and handed her five receipts.

“Where are you going now?”

“To Yartsev’s.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“But you’ll interfere with his work.”

“No, I assure you!” he said with an imploring look.

She was wearing a black, crepe-trimmed hat, as though she were in mourning, and a very short, threadbare coat, with bulging pockets. Her nose seemed longer than ever, and, in spite of the cold, her face was deathly pale. Laptev found it pleasant to be following her, obeying her, and listening to her grumbling. He was thinking as they walked along: what inner strength this woman must have, if, being so ugly, awkward, and so nervous, not knowing how to dress properly, or even comb her hair, and always somehow lacking in grace, she was, nevertheless, fascinating.

They entered Yartsev’s apartment by the back door, through the kitchen, where they were met by the cook, a clean little old woman with gray curls; she was terribly embarrassed, and with a sweet smile that made her little face look like a pie, she said, “Please, come in.”

Yartsev was not at home. Rassudina sat down at the piano and, ordering Laptev not to bother her, set to work upon a tedious, difficult exercise. He sat on one side and without distracting her with conversation, turned the pages of The Messenger of Europe. Having practiced for two hours, her daily task, she ate something in the kitchen and went out to give her lessons. Laptev read the continuation of a story, then sat for a long time without reading and without feeling bored, quite content to think that it was now too late to go home for dinner.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Yartsev’s laugh was heard, then he himself appeared, red-cheeked, robust, and elated, in a new coat with bright buttons. “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The two friends dined together, then Laptev lay on the sofa while Yartsev sat near him smoking a cigar. Dusk was falling.

“I must be getting old,” said Laptev. “Ever since my sister Nina died, for some reason, I often think of death.”

They talked of death, the immortality of the soul, of how good it would be to be resurrected and fly off somewhere, to Mars, to be eternally idle and happy, and, above all, to think in some special way, unlike the way one does on earth.

“But, one does not want to die.” Yartsev spoke quietly. “There is no philosophy that can reconcile me to death; I regard it as nothing but extinction. I want to live.”

“You love life, Gavrilych?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And here I am, in no way able to understand myself in this respect. I am either in a state of depression or indifference. I’m timid, lack confidence in myself, have an abject conscience, and am quite incapable of adapting myself to life or mastering it. Another man may talk nonsense or cheat people, and enjoy doing it, while it is my lot consciously to do good and yet feel nothing but anxiety or the most complete indifference. This I ascribe to my being a slave, the grandson of a serf. Before we rabble can find the right road, many of us will fall by the wayside in the struggle.”

“All that is good, my dear,” said Yartsev with a sigh. “It only proves once again how rich and varied Russian life is. Ah, how rich! Do you know, I am more convinced each day that we are now living on the eve of the greatest triumph, and I should like to live long enough to have a part in it. You can believe it or not, but, in my opinion, a remarkable generation is now growing up. When I teach these children, especially the girls, I revel in it! They are marvelous children!”

Yartsev walked over to the piano and struck a chord.

“I am a chemist, I think in terms of chemistry, and I shall die a chemist,” he went on, “but I have a craving, and I’m afraid I shall die before I can satisfy it. Chemistry is not enough for me; therefore I take up Russian history, the history of art, pedagogy, music…. Last summer your wife suggested I write an historical play, and now I am longing to write; I could sit for three days and nights without getting up, just writing. I am overcome by these images, my head is crammed with them; I feel as though a pulse were throbbing in my brain. It’s not that I have the least desire to become anything special, or to create something momentous; I simply want to live, to dream, to hope, not to miss anything…. Life, my dear fellow, is short, and one must spend it well.”

After this comradely talk, which ended only at midnight, Laptev began visiting Yartsev almost every day. He felt drawn to him. Generally he arrived before evening, lay down and patiently waited for Yartsev to come home, never feeling the slightest boredom. Yartsev would return, have dinner, and sit down to work. When Laptev asked him a question, however, a discussion would spring up and work would be forgotten; at midnight the friends would part, well pleased with each other.

But this did not last long. One day when he arrived at Yartsev’s he found Rassudina alone there; she was at the piano practicing her exercises. She looked at him coldly, almost with enmity, and without even shaking hands said, “Will you kindly tell me when this is going to end?”

“This—what?” Laptev asked, not understanding.

“You come here every day and prevent Yartsev from working. Yartsev is not a merchant, he’s a scholar, and every minute of his life is precious. You ought to understand this and have at least a little tact.”

“If you consider that I hinder him,” Laptev replied meekly in embarrassment, “I shall put an end to my visits.”

“And a good thing! You’d better go now; he may come in at any moment and find you here.”

The tone in which this was said, and the look of indifference in her eyes, decidedly disconcerted him. It was apparent that she had absolutely no feeling for him other than a desire to see him go as soon as possible. What a contrast this was to her former love! He left without shaking hands with her, thinking she would call him back; but he heard only the piano scales, and he slowly descended the stairs, realizing that he was now no more than a stranger to her.

Three days later Yartsev came to spend the evening with him.

“I have news,” he said with a laugh. “Polina Nikolaevna has moved into my place for good.” He was somewhat embarrassed as he went on in a low voice, “Why not? Of course, we’re not in love with each other, but I think that … that doesn’t make any difference. I’m glad I can give her a refuge and peace, and make it possible for her not to work if she should fall ill. She believes that by living with me she will bring more order into my life, and that under her influence I shall become a great scientist. That’s what she fancies. Well, let her think so. In the south they have a saying: ‘A fool grows rich on fancies.’ Ha-ha-ha!”

Laptev said nothing. Yartsev walked up and down the study, looking at the pictures he had seen many times before; then, with a sigh, he said, “Yes, my friend, I’m three years older than you, and it’s too late for me to think of real love. Actually, a woman like Polina Nikolaevna is a godsend to me, and I shall spend my life quite happily with her till I’m an old man. But the devil knows why it is one always has to feel some sort of regret, some sort of longing; I go on feeling as if I am lying in the Vale of Dagestan, dreaming of a ball. In other words, a man is never satisfied with what he has.”

He went into the drawing room and, as though nothing had happened, began singing sentimental songs, while Laptev sat in his study with closed eyes, trying to understand why Rassudina had gone to live with Yartsev. It made him sad to think that there were no lasting, constant attachments; he felt annoyed that Polina Nikolaevna had gone to live with Yartsev, and annoyed with himself that his feeling for his wife was no longer what it had been.

XV

Laptev was reading as he swayed back and forth in a rocking chair; Yulia was also in the study reading. They seemed to have nothing to talk about, and both had been silent since morning. Now and then he looked at her from over his book, thinking: whether one marries from passionate love, or without any love, doesn’t it come to the same thing? The days of his jealousy, worry, and suffering now seemed remote. He had succeeded in going abroad, and now was resting after the journey. He looked forward to the spring, when he again planned to visit England, which had greatly appealed to him.

Yulia Sergeyevna had grown accustomed to her sorrow, and no longer went to the lodge to weep. That winter she had given up shopping expeditions, the theater and concerts, and stayed at home. She did not like large rooms and always sat in her husband’s study or in her own room, where she kept the ikon cases that were part of her dowry, and where the landscape painting she had liked so much at the exhibition was hung. She spent almost no money on herself, and lived on as little as she had in her father’s house.

The winter passed without gaiety. Wherever one went in Moscow there was card playing, and if anyone introduced a different kind of amusement, such as singing, reading, or drawing, it turned out to be even more boring. Since there were few talented people in Moscow, and the same singers and readers performed at all the evening parties, the delights of art itself gradually palled, and for many were reduced to a tiresome, monotonous social obligation.

Furthermore, never a day passed at the Laptevs’ without its misfortune. Old Fyodor Stepanych was losing his sight, and the oculists said he would soon be blind. For some reason Fyodor also had given up going to the warehouse, and spent all his time at home writing. Panaurov had been transferred to another city with a promotion to Actual Civil Councilor, and was now staying at the Dresden; he came to Laptev almost every day to ask for money. Kish had at last left the university, and while waiting for the Laptevs to find him some sort of work, spent whole days at their house, telling his long, boring stories. All this was irritating and wearing, and made life continually unpleasant.

Pyotr came into the study and announced an unknown lady. On the card he brought in was the name Josephina Iosifovna Milan.

Yulia Sergeyevna lazily rose and left the room, limping slightly, as her foot had gone to sleep. In the doorway appeared a thin, extremely pale woman with dark eyebrows, dressed entirely in black. She clasped her hands to her breast and in a supplicating voice exclaimed, “Monsieur Laptev, save my children!”

Her powder-splotched face and the sound of jingling bracelets seemed familiar to Laptev; suddenly he recognized her as the lady at whose house he had so inappropriately dined one day before his marriage. It was Panaurov’s second wife.

“Save my children!” she repeated, and her face quivered, suddenly looking old and pitiful. “You alone can save us. I have spent my last kopeck coming to Moscow to see you. My children will die of starvation!”

She made a movement as though she were about to fall on her knees. Laptev was alarmed, and seized her arm.

“Sit down, sit down …” he mumbled, putting her into a chair. “I beg you to be seated!”

“We have no money—not even for bread,” she said. “Grigory Nikolaich is going to his new post, but he doesn’t want to take the children and me with him, and the money you so generously have been sending us he spends only on himself. What are we to do? What? My poor, unfortunate children!”

“I beg you to calm yourself. I shall instruct the office to send the money in your name.”

She began to sob, then grew calm, and he noticed that the tears had made little paths down her powdered cheeks, and that she had a mustache.

“You are infinitely generous, Monsieur Laptev. But, be our guardian angel, our good fairy, and persuade Grigory Nikolaich not to abandon me, but to take me with him. I love him, you see, love him madly, he is my solace!”

Laptev gave her a hundred rubles and promised to speak to Panaurov; he then accompanied her to the entrance hall, afraid that at any moment she might break into sobs or fall on her knees.

When she had gone Kish arrived. Then Kostya came with his photographic apparatus. Lately he had been captivated by photography, and several times a day took pictures of everyone in the house. This new pursuit caused him many disappointments, and he had grown even thinner.

Before evening tea Fyodor came in. Having seated himself in one corner of the study, he opened a book and stared unceasingly at one page, obviously not reading. He spent a long time drinking tea, and his face grew very red. In his presence Laptev felt heavy-hearted; even his brother’s silence disturbed him.

“You may congratulate Russia on the appearance of a new pamphleteer,” said Fyodor. “Joking aside, brother, I’ve turned out a little article—testing my pen, so to say. I’ve brought it to show you. Read it, my dear, and give me your opinion. But sincerely!”

He took a copybook out of his pocket and handed it to his brother. The article was called “The Russian Soul” it was laboriously written in the colorless style generally employed by untalented writers with a secret vanity. Its principal idea was that the intellectual man has a right not to believe in the supernatural, but has a duty to conceal his disbelief so that he may not tempt believers to doubt; without faith there is no idealism, and idealism is destined to save Europe and guide humanity into the true path.

“But you do not say what Europe has to be saved from,” said Laptev.

“That’s understood.”

“Nothing is understood,” said Laptev, nervously pacing the room. “I don’t even understand why you wrote it! But that’s your business.”

“I want to publish it in a special pamphlet.”

“That’s your affair.”

“I shall forever deeply regret that you and I think differently. Ah, Alyosha, my dear brother! You and I are Russian, we are orthodox believers, men of breadth; what have we to do with all these German and Jewish vagaries? We’re not upstarts or anything like that, you know, but representatives of an eminent merchant family.”

“What do you mean—an eminent family?” Laptev exclaimed, trying to restrain his irritation. “Eminent! Our grandfather was flogged by landowners, and punched in the face by every insignificant little government clerk! Grandfather beat our father, our father beat us. What has this eminent family bequeathed to us? What sort of blood and nerves have we received as our heritage? For nearly three years now you’ve been discoursing like a sexton, talking all sorts of rot; and now you’ve written—this obsequious gibberish! And I—and I? Look at me…. No resourcefulness, no courage, no strength of will; I’m scared of every step I take, as though I were going to be beaten for it; I’m timid in the presence of nonentities, idiots, and brutes who are immeasurably beneath me mentally and morally; I’m afraid of porters, doormen, policemen, the political police; I’m afraid of everyone, because I was born of a mother who was persecuted, and because I was beaten and frightened in my childhood! You and I will do well to have no children. God grant that this eminent merchant family may die with us!”

Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat down at the table.

“Were you having an argument?” she asked. “Am I interrupting you?”

“No, little sister,” Fyodor replied. “We were having a discussion of principles…. Now you talk this way and that about the family,” he said, addressing his brother, “but this family has created a business in the millions. That’s worth something!”

“That’s enormously important—a business in the millions! A man of no particular intelligence or ability quite by accident becomes a huckster, then, having grown rich, he goes on trading day after day, with no system of any sort, with no aim, not even the greed for money; he trades mechanically, and the money comes to him of itself, he doesn’t even go after it. There he sits all his life, loving his work simply because he can tyrannize over his clerks and make fools of his customers. He’s the patron of a school because he enjoys the feeling that the teacher is his subordinate and he can lord it over him, and he’s an elder in the church because there he can domineer over the choristers and keep them under his thumb. What the merchant loves is not trade, but power, and your warehouse is not so much a commercial establishment as a torture chamber! And for a business like yours you need clerks who have been deprived of everything, who have lost their individuality—and you yourself prepare them for this by forcing them in childhood to go down on their knees to you for a piece of bread, from childhood inculcating in them the idea that you are their benefactor! It’s not likely you’d ever take a university man into your warehouse!”

“University men are not suited to our business.”

“That’s not true!” Laptev shouted. “It’s a lie!”

“Excuse me, but it seems to me you are spitting into the well from which you drink,” said Fyodor, getting up. “You despise our business, yet you are able to enjoy the income from it.”

“Ah-hah! At last you have said what you think!” Laptev laughed and then glared angrily at his brother. “Yes, if I did not belong to your eminent family, if I had even a scrap of will or courage, I should long since have flung away that income and worked for my living. But from my very childhood you and your warehouse deprived me of any sense of responsibility! I belong to you!”

Fyodor glanced at the clock and hurriedly made his farewells. He kissed Yulia’s hand and went out, but instead of going into the hall, he went into the drawing room, then into the bedroom.

“I’ve forgotten the arrangement of the rooms,” he said, in extreme confusion. “It’s a strange house. Isn’t it a strange house?”

Putting on his fur coat he acted as though he were stunned, and there was a look of pain on his face. Laptev was no longer angry; he became frightened, but at the same time he felt sorry for Fyodor, and his warm, sincere love for his brother, which seemed to have been extinguished during those three years, now awoke in his heart, and he felt an intense desire to express it.

“Fedya, come and have dinner with us tomorrow,” he said, stroking his shoulder. “Will you come?”

“Yes, yes…. But give me some water.”

Laptev ran into the dining room and picked up the first thing on the sideboard that came to hand; it was a tall beer mug, and he poured some water into it and took it to his brother. Fyodor eagerly began to drink, but suddenly bit a piece out of the mug; a crunching sound was heard, followed by sobbing. The water spilled all over his fur coat and frock coat. Laptev, who had never before seen a man cry, stood frightened and confused, not knowing what to do. While Yulia and the maid removed Fyodor’s coat and led him back into the living room, he looked on helplessly, then followed after them with a feeling of guilt.

Yulia helped Fyodor to lie down then knelt beside him.

“It’s all right,” she said comfortingly. “It’s only nerves….”

“My dear, I am so miserable!” he said. “I am so unhappy, so unhappy…. But all the time I’ve kept it hidden … hidden!” He put his arm round her neck and whispered in her ear, “Every night I see my sister Nina. She comes and sits in the armchair next to my bed.”

When he went into the hall an hour later and again put on his coat, he was smiling, but embarrassed before the maid. Laptev accompanied him to Pyatnitsky Street.

“Come and have dinner with us tomorrow,” he said, holding his brother’s arm as they walked. “And at Easter we’ll go abroad together. You must have a change, otherwise you’ll grow rusty.”

“Yes, yes … I shall, I shall go…. And we’ll take little sister with us.”

On his return home Laptev found his wife extremely agitated and nervous. The incident with Fyodor had upset her, and she was in no way able to calm herself. She did not weep, but she was very pale and kept tossing about in bed, plucking with cold fingers at the quilt, the pillows, and her husband’s hands. Her eyes were large and frightened.

“Don’t go away; don’t go away from me,” she said to her husband. “Tell me, Alyosha, why have I given up saying my prayers? What has become of my faith? Oh, why did you discuss religion before me? You’ve confused me, you and your Mends. I can no longer pray.”

He put compresses on her head, chafed her hands, and gave her tea to drink, and she pressed close to him in fear….

Toward morning she fell asleep, exhausted; but because he sat beside her holding her hand, Laptev was unable to sleep. All the next day he felt jaded and dull; he wandered listlessly from one room to another, unable to think of anything.

XVI

The doctors said that Fyodor was mentally ill. Laptev did not know what to do with himself in the house in Pyatnitsky Street, and the dark warehouse, where neither Fyodor nor the old man ever appeared now, gave him the feeling of a tomb. When his wife told him that he ought to go to the warehouse and to Pyatnitsky Street every day without fail, he remained silent or began talking irritably of his childhood, saying that it was not within his power to forgive his father for the past, that the Pyatnitsky Street house and the warehouse were abhorrent to him, and so on.

One Sunday morning Yulia herself went to Pyatnitsky Street. She found old Fyodor Stepanych in the large reception hall where the service had been held the day of her first visit. Without a necktie, wearing his duck coat and slippers, he sat motionless in an armchair, blinking his sightless eyes.

“It is I, your daughter-in-law,” she said, as she approached him. “I’ve come to see how you are.”

He began breathing heavily with excitement. Touched by his misfortune and his loneliness, she kissed his hand, and he passed his hand over her face and head, as though to convince himself that it was she, and then made the sign of the cross over her.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “I’ve lost my eyes, you know, and can see nothing…. I can just barely see the window and the fire, but I’m unable to make out people and objects. Yes, I’m going blind, and Fyodor has fallen ill; things go badly without the master’s eye. If something goes wrong there’s no one to look into it; people get spoiled. And why is Fyodor ill? Did he catch cold? Never in my life was I ailing, never took medicines, knew nothing of doctors.”

And, as was his habit, the old man began boasting. Meanwhile the servants hurriedly laid a table in the reception room, setting out appetizers and bottles of wine. There were about a dozen bottles on the table, one of which looked like the Eiffel Tower, and a full platter of hot pies smelling of jam, rice, and fish.

“I invite my dear guest to have a bite,” said the old man.

She took his arm and led him to the table, and then poured a glass of vodka for him.

“I’ll come again tomorrow,” she said, “and I’ll bring your grandchildren, Sasha and Lida. They will feel sorry for you, and they’ll be sweet to you.”

“No need; don’t bring them. They’re illegitimate.”

“Why illegitimate? Their father and mother were married.”

“Without my consent. I did not give them my blessing, and I don’t want to know them. Let them go.”

“That’s a strange way to talk, Fyodor Stepanych,” said Yulia with a sigh.

“In the Gospels it is written that children must respect and fear their parents.”

“Nothing of the sort In the Gospels it says we must forgive even our enemies.”

“In our business, that’s impossible. If you were to forgive everyone you’d be done for in three years.”

“But to forgive, to say a kind, friendly word to someone, even a guilty person, is far above business or wealth!”

Yulia longed to soften the old man, to inspire a feeling of compassion in him, to arouse his repentance, but he listened to her as an adult listens to a child, merely to humor her.

“Fyodor Stepanych,” said Yulia resolutely, “you are now an old man; soon God will call you to Himself. He is not going to ask you what sort of trader you were, or if your business was successful, but whether or not you were kind to people, or were harsh to those weaker than yourself, such as your servants and your clerks.”

“I have always been a benefactor to those that served me, and they ought to say eternal prayers for me,” the old man said with conviction; then, touched by Yulia’s tone of sincerity, and wishing to please her, he said, “Very well, bring the grandchildren tomorrow. I’ll order some little gifts to be bought for them.”

The old man was careless in his dress, and there were cigar ashes on the front of his coat and on his knees; evidently no one cleaned his clothes or shoes. The rice in the pies was undercooked, the tablecloth smelled of soap, the servants tramped about noisily…. Yulia was aware of the neglected look of the whole household, as well as of the old man, and she felt ashamed of herself and her husband.

“I shall come tomorrow without fail,” she said.

She went through the house and gave orders for the old man’s bedroom to be cleaned, and for the ikon lamp to be lighted. Fyodor was sitting in his own room gazing at an open book without reading. Yulia talked to him and ordered his room also to be put in order. Then she went downstairs to the clerks’ quarters. In the middle of the room in which they dined there was an unpainted wooden column that had been placed there to support the ceiling and prevent it from collapsing. Here the ceilings were low, the walls covered with cheap wallpaper, and a smell of charcoal fumes and cooking was in the air. It happened to be a holiday and all the clerks were at home, sitting on their beds waiting for dinner. When Yulia entered the room they jumped to their feet and meekly answered her questions, sullenly staring at her like convicts.

“Heavens, what a wretched place you have here!” she said, clasping her hands. “Aren’t you crowded?”

“Crowded, but not at odds!” said Makeichev. “We are deeply gratified by you, and shall offer up our prayers to our merciful Lord.”

“The congruity of life with the aspirations of the individual,” said Pochatkin.

Seeing that Yulia did not understand Pochatkin, Makeichev hastened to explain, “We are humble folk, and must live according to our rank.”

She inspected the boys’ quarters and the kitchen, made the acquaintance of the housekeeper, and was thoroughly dissatisfied.

At home she said to her husband, “We must move to your father’s house as soon as possible, and stay there. And every day you will go to the warehouse.”

They sat side by side in the study without speaking.

His heart was heavy; he had no desire to move to Pyatnitsky Street nor to go into the warehouse, but he guessed what his wife was thinking and was powerless to oppose her. He stroked her cheek and said, “I feel as though our life had already come to an end, and that a gray half-life is about to begin for us. When I learned that brother Fyodor was hopelessly ill, I wept. We spent our childhood and youth together; there was a time when I loved him with all my heart—and now, this catastrophe. It seems to me that in losing him I have been cut off from my past, irrevocably. And now, when you say that we must move to Pyatnitsky Street, to that prison, I begin to feel that there is no future for me either.”

He got up and walked to the window.

“Be that as it may, one must relinquish all thoughts of happiness,” he said, gazing out into the street. “There is none. I have never known it, and, probably, it doesn’t exist. Once in my life, however, I was happy—the night I spent sitting under your parasol. Do you remember the time you left your parasol at Nina’s?” he asked, turning to his wife. “I was in love with you then, and I remember sitting the whole night under that parasol in a state of perfect bliss.”

Near the bookcase in the study stood a mahogany and bronze chest of drawers in which Laptev kept various useless things, and among them the parasol. He took it out and handed it to his wife.

“Here it is.”

Yulia looked at it for a minute, recognized it, and smiled sadly.

“I remember,” she said. “You were holding it in your hand when you proposed to me.”

When she saw him preparing to go out she said, “Please come back early if you can. I miss you.”

Then she went to her own room and sat looking at the parasol for a long time.

XVII

In spite of the complexity of the business and the huge turnover in the warehouse, there was no bookkeeper, and it was impossible to make out anything in the books kept by the office clerk. Agents came to the warehouse every day, German and English, with whom the clerks discussed politics and religion. There was an alcoholic nobleman, a sick, pitiful man, who came to translate the foreign correspondence in the office; the clerks called him “Bagatelle” and put salt in his tea. In general, this entire enterprise struck Laptev as being a monstrous eccentricity of some sort.

He now went to the warehouse every day and tried to establish new procedures; he forbade the clerks to whip the boys or mock the buyers, and he was beside himself when they gleefully consigned shopworn and worthless goods to the provinces under the guise of the latest and most fashionable stock. He was now the head of the warehouse, but he still did not know how great his fortune was, whether the business was doing well, how much the chief clerks were paid, and so on. Pochatkin and Makeichev considered him young and inexperienced, concealed a great deal from him, and continued to hold mysterious, whispered conversations with his blind old father every evening.

It happened that in the beginning of June Laptev and Pochatkin went to the Bubnovsky restaurant to discuss business over lunch. Pochatkin had worked for the Laptevs a long time; he had come to them at the age of eight, and was almost like one of them. They trusted him completely, and when he gathered up the daily receipts and stuffed them into his pockets on leaving the warehouse, it aroused no suspicion. He was the chief clerk in the warehouse, at home, and even in church, where he performed the duties of the elder in place of his master. Because of his cruel treatment of the boys and the subordinate clerks, he was nicknamed Malyuta Skuratov.

When they entered the restaurant he nodded to a waiter and said, “Bring us half a miracle, my boy, and twenty-four unsavories.”

In a few minutes the waiter brought a tray on which there was a half bottle of vodka and several plates of various kinds of appetizers.

“Now as follows, my dear fellow,” Pochatkin said to him, “give us a portion of the prime mover of all gossip and slander, with mashed potatoes.”

The waiter did not understand and became confused; he was about to say something but Pochatkin gave him a severe look and said, “Notwithstanding!” After a moment of intent thought the waiter went into consultation with his colleagues and finally was able to surmise what was wanted: he brought a platter of tongue.

After they both had drunk a couple of glasses of vodka and had eaten, Laptev said, “Tell me, Ivan Vasilych, is it true that in recent years the business has begun to fall off?”

“Not at all.”

“Speak out and tell me frankly what the profits have been, what they now are, and what our financial condition is. It’s impossible, you know, to go on like this in the dark. Not long ago we had an accounting at the warehouse, but, if you will forgive me, I don’t trust it; you apparently find it necessary to conceal something from me, and tell the truth to no one but my father. From early years you have been accustomed to playing politics, and now you can’t do anything else. What’s the good of it? And so, I ask you to be frank. What is the condition of our business?”

“It all depends on the undulation of credit,” Pochatkin replied, after giving the matter some thought.

“What do you mean by ‘undulation of credit’?”

Pochatkin began to explain, but Laptev could make nothing of what he was saying and sent for Makeichev. He appeared promptly, and after saying a prayer ate something, then, in his staid, mellow baritone, began to speak of the clerics’ duty to pray day and night for their benefactors.

“Splendid, but, with your permission, I do not consider myself your benefactor,” said Laptev.

“Every person ought to remember what he is and be conscious of his rank. You, by the grace of God, are our father and our benefactor, and we are your slaves.”

“I am fed up with all that!” Laptev exclaimed angrily. “Please, you be my benefactor now, and explain the condition of our business to me. Kindly give up looking on me as a boy, otherwise I shall close the warehouse tomorrow. My father is blind, my brother is in a lunatic asylum, my nieces are still young; I loathe this business, and I should be glad to leave it, but, as you yourselves know, there is no one to replace me. Drop the diplomacy, for God’s sake!”

They went to the warehouse to go over the accounts, and continued to work on them at home in the evening, the old man himself helping them. Initiating his son into his commercial secrets, he spoke as though he were engaged, not in trade, but in sorcery. It appeared that the yearly increase in profits was approximately ten per cent, and that the Laptev fortune, in cash and securities alone, amounted to six million rubles.

At one o’clock in the morning, after finishing the accounts, Laptev went out into the fresh air, still feeling as though he were under the spell of figures. The moonlight night was still and sultry. The white walls of the houses on the other side of the river, the heavy, barred gates, the silence, and the black shadows all combined to create the impression of a fortress; the only thing lacking was a sentry with a gun.

Laptev went into the garden and sat down on a bench near the fence that separated them from the neighbor’s yard, which also had a garden. The bird cherry was in bloom. He remembered this tree as being just as large and crooked when he was a child; it had in no way changed since then. Every corner of the garden and the yard reminded him of a time long past. In his childhood, even as now, the whole moonlit yard could be seen through the sparse trees, the shadows had been just as mysterious and forbidding, the windows of the clerks’ rooms had stood wide open, and then, as now, a black dog had lain in the middle of the yard. All these were melancholy memories.

Beyond the fence, in the neighboring yard, there was the sound of light footsteps…. “My darling, my sweetheart,” whispered a masculine voice, so near the fence that Laptev could even hear the sound of breathing.

Now they were kissing…. Laptev was convinced that the millions and the business, for which he had an aversion, would ruin his life and end in making a slave of him; he visualized how, little by little, he would habituate himself to his position, little by little enter into the role of head of a commercial firm, grow dull, old, and finally die like any ordinary man, wretched, embittered, and plaguing everyone around him. But what was to prevent his giving up the millions and the business, and leaving this yard and garden, which since childhood had been hateful to him?

The whispering and kissing on the other side of the fence agitated him. He walked to the middle of the yard, unbuttoned his shirt over his chest, and looked at the moon; he felt like ordering the gate to be unlocked and walking out, never to return. His heart throbbed sweetly with a foretaste of freedom; he laughed for joy, imagining how wonderful, poetic, and even consecrated life might be….

And still he did not move, but stood there asking himself: What is it that holds me here? He was vexed with himself and with the black dog, which, instead of running in a field, a forest, any place where it could be free and happy, lay stretched out on the stone paving. Clearly, both he and the dog were prevented from leaving the yard by one and the same thing: habituation to captivity and the servile condition….

At noon the following day he went to see his wife, and, to avoid being bored, invited Yartsev to go with him. Yulia Sergeyevna was living in a dacha at Butovo, and he had not visited her for five days. On arriving at the station the friends took a carriage, and all the way Yartsev sang and was in ecstasy over the magnificent weather. The villa was located in a large park not far from the station. About twenty paces from where the principal avenue began, Yulia Sergeyevna sat under a broad old poplar tree waiting for her guests. She was wearing a sheer, elegant dress of a pale cream color, trimmed with lace, and in her hand she held the old familiar parasol. Yartsev greeted her and went on to the house, from whence came the sounds of Sasha’s and Lida’s voices. Laptev sat down beside his wife to talk of business matters.

“Why have you been so long in coming?” she asked, still keeping his hand in hers. “I sit here for whole days, watching, wondering whether you will come. I miss you so!” She stood up, passed her hand over his hair, and looked intently into his face, at his shoulders, and his hat. “You know, I love you,” she said, blushing. “You are very dear to me. Now you have come, I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you! Well, let us talk. Tell me something.”

She had told him that she loved him, and he could only feel as though he had been married to her for ten years, and was longing for his lunch. She put her arm around his neck and the silk of her dress tickled his cheek; he carefully removed her hand, stood up, and, without a word, walked toward the house. The little girls came running to meet him.

“How they have grown!” he thought. “And how many changes there have been in these three years. … But then, one may have to live another thirteen, another thirty years. … Something still awaits us in the future! We shall live—and we shall see.”

Sasha and Lida clung to him; he embraced them and said, “Grandfather sends his regards. … Uncle Fedya is not going to live much longer. … Uncle Kostya has sent a letter from America, with greetings to you. He’s bored at the exposition and will return soon. And Uncle Alyosha is hungry.”

He sat on the porch and watched his wife walking slowly along the avenue toward the house. She was deep in thought; her face wore a charming, melancholy expression and her eyes glistened with tears. She was no longer the pale, slender, fragile girl she once had been, but a mature, vigorous, beautiful woman. Laptev noticed the delight with which Yartsev gazed at her when they met, and saw a reflection of her new, lovely expression in the rapturous melancholy of his face. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time in his life. While they were at lunch on the porch, Yartsev kept looking at Yulia, at her beautiful neck, with a sort of joyous, shy smile. Laptev could not help watching them; and he was thinking that perhaps he would have to live another thirteen, another thirty years. … And what would he be obliged to live through in that time? … What does the future hold for us?

And he thought: We shall live—and we shall see.

—1895