The Complete Short Novels

Konstantin rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire, and laughed. ‘‘You love her, that is . . .’’ said Pantelei.

‘‘She’s so good, so nice,’’ Konstantin repeated, not listening. ‘‘Such a housewife, clever and sensible, you won’t find another like her from simple folk in the whole province. She went away ... But she misses me, I kno-o-ow it! I know it, the magpie! She said she’d come back tomorrow by dinnertime... But what a story it was!’’ Konstantin nearly shouted, suddenly taking a higher pitch and changing his position. ‘‘Now she loves me and misses me, but she didn’t want to marry me!’’

‘‘Eat, why don’t you!’’ said Kiriukha.

‘‘She didn’t want to marry me,’’ Konstantin went on, not listening. ‘‘Three years I struggled with her! I saw her at the fair in Kalachik, fell mortally in love, could have hanged myself... I’m in Rovnoe, she’s in Demidovo, twenty-five miles between us, and I just can’t take it. I send matchmakers to her, but she says, ‘I don’t want to!’ Ah, you magpie! I try this with her and that with her, earrings, and gingerbreads, and a big pot of honey—‘I don’t want to!’ There you go. Sure, if you reason it out, what kind of match am I for her? She’s young, beautiful, gunpowder, and I’m old, I’ll soon turn thirty, and so very handsome: a broad beard—like a nail, a clean face—bumps all over. I can’t compare with her! The only thing is that we have a rich life, but they, the Vakhramenkos, also live well. They keep three pair of oxen and two hired hands. I fell in love, brothers, and went clean off my head... I don’t sleep, don’t eat, there’s all sorts of thoughts in my head, and such a fuddle, God help me! I want to see her, but she’s in Demidovo... And what do you think? God punish me if I’m lying, I went there on foot three times a week just to look at her. I stopped working! Such a darkening came over me, I even wanted to get hired as a farmhand in Demidovo, so as to be closer to her. I wore myself out! My mother called in a wise woman, my father set about beating me some ten times. Well, three years I languished, and then I decided like this: three times anathema on you, I’ll go to the city and become a cabby... It means it’s not my lot! During Holy Week I went to Demidovo to look at her for the last time...’

Konstantin threw his head back and dissolved into such rapid, merry laughter as if he had just very cleverly hoodwinked someone.

‘‘I saw her with the boys by the river,’’ he went on. ‘‘I got angry... I called her aside and spent maybe a whole hour saying various words to her... She fell in love with me! For three years she didn’t love me, but for my words she fell in love with me!...’

‘‘But what words?’’ asked Dymov.

‘What words? I don’t remember... How should I remember? It poured out then like water from a gutter, without stop: rat-a-tat-tat! But now I can’t get out a single word... Well, so she married me... She’s gone to her mother now, my magpie, and I wander about the steppe without her. I can’t sit at home. It’s beyond me!’’

Konstantin clumsily freed his legs from under him, stretched out on the ground, and propped his head with his fists, then raised himself and sat up again. They all understood perfectly well now that this was a man in love and happy, happy to the point of anguish; his smile, his eyes, and each of his movements expressed a languorous happiness. He could not stay put and did not know what position to assume or what to do so as not to be exhausted by the abundance of pleasant thoughts. Having poured out his soul in front of strangers, he finally sat down quietly, looked at the fire, and fell to pondering.

At the sight of a happy man, they all felt bored and also craved happiness. They all fell to pondering. Dymov stood up, slowly walked about near the fire, and by his gait, by the movement of his shoulder blades, you could see that he felt languid and bored. He stood for a while, looked at Konstantin, and sat down.

But the campfire was dying out. The light no longer danced, and the red patch shrank, grew dim... And the more quickly the fire burned out, the more visible the moonlit night became. Now the road could be seen in all its width, the bales, the shafts, the munching horses; on the opposite side the other cross was faintly outlined...

Dymov propped his cheek in his hand and began softly singing some plaintive song. Konstantin smiled sleepily and sang along in a thin little voice. They sang for half a minute and fell silent... Emelyan roused himself, moved his elbows, and flexed his fingers.

‘‘Brothers!’’ he said pleadingly. ‘‘Let’s sing something godly!’’

Tears welled up in his eyes.

‘‘Brothers!’’ he repeated, pressing his hand to his heart. ‘‘Let’s sing something godly!’’

‘‘I can’t,’’ said Konstantin.

They all refused; then Emelyan began to sing by himself. He waved both hands, nodded his head, opened his mouth, but nothing except wheezing, soundless breath burst from his throat. He sang with his hands, his head, his eyes, and even his bump, he sang passionately and with pain, and the harder he strained his chest to tear at least one note from it, the more soundless his breath became...

Egorushka, like everyone else, was overcome by boredom. He went to his wagon, climbed up on a bale, and lay down. He looked at the sky and thought about the happy Konstantin and his wife. Why do people get married? What are women for in this world? Egorushka asked himself vague questions and thought it is probably nice for a man if a gentle, cheerful, and beautiful woman constantly lives at his side. For some reason he recalled the Countess Dranitsky and thought that it was probably very agreeable to live with such a woman; he might well have married her with great pleasure, if it were not so embarrassing. He remembered her eyebrows, her pupils, her carriage, the clock with the horseman... The quiet, warm night was descending on him and whispering something in his ear, and it seemed to him that it was that beautiful woman bending over him, looking at him with a smile, and wanting to kiss him...

Only two little red eyes remained from the campfire, and they were growing smaller and smaller. The wagoners and Konstantin sat by them, dark, motionless, and it seemed there were now many more of them than before. Both crosses were equally visible, and far, far away, somewhere on the high road, a red fire glowed—someone else was probably also cooking kasha.

‘‘Our beloved Mother Russia is the head of all the wo-o-orld!’’ Kiriukha suddenly sang in a wild voice, choked, and fell silent. The steppe echo picked up his voice, carried it, and it seemed stupidity itself was rolling over the steppe on heavy wheels.

‘‘Time to go!’’ said Pantelei. ‘‘Up you get, boys!’’

While they were harnessing, Konstantin walked among the wagons and sang his wife’s praises.

‘‘Farewell, brothers!’’ he cried as the wagons started off. ‘‘Thanks for your hospitality! And I’ll make for that fire. It’s beyond me!’’

And he quickly vanished into the darkness, and for a long time could be heard striding towards where the little light glowed, in order to tell other strangers of his happiness.

When Egorushka woke up the next day, it was early morning; the sun had not risen yet. The wagon train stood still. Some man in a white peaked cap and a suit of cheap gray cloth, mounted on a Cossack colt, was talking about something with Dymov and Kiriukha by the very first wagon. Two miles or so ahead of the wagon train, long, low barns and little houses with tiled roofs showed white; there were no yards or trees to be seen near the houses.

‘‘What’s that village, grandpa?’’ asked Egorushka.

‘‘Those are Armenian farmsteads, my lad,’’ answered Pantelei. ‘‘Armenians live there. They’re all right folk... Armenians, that is.’’

The man in gray finished talking with Dymov and Kiriukha, tightened the reins on his colt, and looked towards the farmsteads.

‘‘Such a business, just think!’’ sighed Pantelei, also looking towards the farmsteads and shrinking from the morning freshness. ‘‘He sent a man to the farmstead for some paper, and the man won’t come back... We should send Styopka!’’

‘‘But who is that, grandpa?’’ asked Egorushka.

‘‘Varlamov.’’

My God! Egorushka quickly jumped up, stood on his knees, and looked at the white cap. The undersized gray little man, shod in big boots, mounted on an ugly horse, and talking with peasants at a time when all decent people were asleep, was hard to identify with the mysterious, elusive Varlamov, sought by everyone, who always ‘‘circled around’’ and had much more money than the Countess Dranitsky.

‘‘He’s all right, a good man...’ Pantelei said, looking towards the farmsteads. ‘‘God grant him health, he’s a nice master... Varlamov, that is, Semyon Alexandrych... The world stands on such people, brother. That’s for sure... The cocks haven’t crowed yet, and he’s already on his feet... Another man would sleep or gibble-gabble with his guests at home, but he’s on the steppe the whole day... Circling around... This one won’t let any deal slip away... No-o-o! A fine fellow...’

Varlamov would not take his eyes off the farmstead and was saying something; the colt shifted impatiently from one foot to the other.

‘‘Semyon Alexandrych,’’ shouted Pantelei, taking off his hat, ‘‘allow us to send Styopka! Emelyan, holler for them to send Styopka!’’

But now, at last, a rider detached himself from the farmstead. Leaning strongly to one side and swinging the whip above his head, as if he was a trick horseman and wanted to astonish everybody with his bold riding, he flew towards the wagon train with birdlike swiftness.

‘‘That must be his breaker,’’ said Pantelei. ‘‘He’s got maybe a hundred of these breakers, if not more.’’

Coming up to the first wagon, the rider reined in his horse and, taking off his hat, handed Varlamov a book. Varlamov took several papers from the book, read them, and shouted:

‘‘But where’s Ivanchuk’s note?’’

The rider took the book back, looked over the papers, and shrugged; he began to say something, probably justifying himself and asking permission to go to the farmsteads again. The colt suddenly stirred, as if Varlamov had become heavier. Varlamov also stirred.

‘‘Get out!’’ he shouted angrily and swung his whip at the rider.

Then he turned the horse about and, studying the papers in the book, rode at a slow pace the length of the train. As he approached the last wagon, Egorushka strained his eyes to examine him better. Varlamov was an old man. His face, with its small gray beard, a simple, sunburnt Russian face, was red, wet with dew, and covered with little blue veins; it expressed the same businesslike dryness as Ivan Ivanych’s face, the same businesslike fanaticism. But still, what a difference you could feel between him and Ivan Ivanych! Uncle Kuzmichov, along with businesslike dryness, always had care on his face, and fear that he might not find Varlamov, might be late, might miss a good price; nothing of the sort, proper to small and dependent people, could be seen either on the face or in the figure of Varlamov. This man set the prices himself, he did not seek anyone, did not depend on anyone; ordinary as his appearance might be, you could sense in everything, even in his way of holding a whip, an awareness of strength and habitual authority over the steppe.

Riding past Egorushka, he did not glance at him; only the colt deemed Egorushka worthy of his attention and looked at him with his big, stupid eyes, and even that with indifference. Pantelei bowed to Varlamov; the man noticed it and, without taking his eyes from the papers, said, swallowing his R’s:

‘‘Ghreetings, ghraybeard!’’

Varlamov’s conversation with the rider and the swing of the whip evidently made a dispiriting impression on the whole train. They all had serious faces. The rider, discouraged by the strong man’s wrath, stood hatless, with slack reins, by the first wagon, silent and as if not believing that the day had begun so badly for him.

‘‘A tough old man...’ Pantelei muttered. ‘‘Awfully tough! But all right, a good man... He won’t harm you for nothing... No fear...’

Having examined the papers, Varlamov put the book in his pocket; the colt, as if understanding his thoughts without waiting for orders, gave a start and went racing down the high road.

VII

ON THE FOLLOWING night, the wagoners again made a halt and cooked kasha. This time, from the very beginning, some indefinite anguish was felt in everything. It was stifling; they all drank a great deal and simply could not quench their thirst. The moon rose intensely crimson and morose, as if it was sick; the stars were also morose, the murk was thicker, the distance dimmer. It was as if nature anticipated something and languished.

There was none of yesterday’s animation and talk by the campfire. They were all bored and spoke sluggishly and reluctantly. Pantelei only sighed, complained about his feet, and now and then began talking about an impudent death.

Dymov lay on his stomach, said nothing, and chewed on a straw; his expression was squeamish, as if the straw smelled bad, and angry, and weary... Vasya complained that his jaw ached and prophesied bad weather; Emelyan did not wave his hands, but sat motionless and sullenly looked at the fire. Egorushka also languished. The slow driving wearied him, and the afternoon heat had given him a headache.

When the kasha was ready, Dymov, out of boredom, began picking on his comrades.

‘‘He sprawls about, the bump, and sticks his spoon in first!’’ he said, looking spitefully at Emelyan. ‘‘Greed! Aims to sit himself down first at the cauldron. He used to sing in the choir, so he thinks he’s a master! You find lots of these choir singers begging for alms along the high road!’’

‘‘What do you want from me?’’ Emelyan asked, also looking at him with spite.

‘‘That you don’t shove up first to the cauldron. Don’t think so much of yourself!’

‘‘A fool, that’s all he is,’’ wheezed Emelyan.

Knowing from experience how such conversations usually end, Pantelei and Vasya intervened and started persuading Dymov not to be abusive for nothing.

‘‘Choir singer...’ the prankster grinned scornfully, refusing to calm down. ‘‘Anybody can sing like that. Go sit on the church porch and sing: ‘Alms for the sake of Christ!’ Ah, you!’’

Emelyan said nothing. His silence had an irritating effect on Dymov. He looked at the former choir singer with still greater hatred and said:

‘‘I don’t want to get involved, otherwise I’d teach you to think much of yourself!’

‘‘Why are you bothering me, mazepa?’’²³ Emelyan flared up. ‘‘Am I touching you?’’

‘‘What did you call me?’’ Dymov asked, straightening up, and his eyes became bloodshot. ‘‘What? Me a mazepa? Eh? Take this, then! Go and hunt for it!’’

Dymov snatched the spoon from Emelyan’s hand and flung it far away. Kiriukha, Vasya, and Styopka jumped up and ran to look for it, while Emelyan stared pleadingly and questioningly at Pantelei. His face suddenly became small, winced, blinked, and the former choir singer cried like a baby.

Egorushka, who had long hated Dymov, felt the air suddenly become unbearably stifling; the flames of the campfire hotly burned his face; he would have liked to run quickly to the wagons in the darkness, but the spiteful, bored eyes of the prankster drew him to them. Passionately wishing to say something offensive in the highest degree, he took a step towards Dymov and said, choking:

‘‘You’re the worst of all! I can’t stand you!’’

After that, he should have run to the wagons, but he could not move from the spot and went on:

‘‘You’ll burn in fire in the other world! I’ll complain to Ivan Ivanych! Don’t you dare offend Emelyan!’’

‘‘Well, there’s a nice how-do-you-do!’’ Dymov grinned. ‘‘Some little pig, the milk still not dry on his lips, and he goes giving orders. How about a box on the ear?’’

Egorushka felt he had no air left to breathe: he suddenly shook all over—this had never happened to him before— stamped his feet, and shouted piercingly:

‘‘Beat him! Beat him!’’

Tears poured from his eyes; he was ashamed and ran staggering to the wagons. What impressions his shout made, he did not see. Lying on a bale and weeping, he thrashed his arms and legs and whispered:

‘‘Mama! Mama!’’

These people, and the shadows around the campfire, and the dark bales, and the distant lightning flashing every moment in the distance—all now looked desolate and frightening to him. He was terrified and asked himself in despair how and why he had ended up in an unknown land in the company of frightening muzhiks. Where were his uncle, Father Khristofor, and Deniska now? Why were they so long in coming? Had they forgotten him? The thought that he was forgotten and abandoned to the mercy of fate made him feel cold and so eerie that several times he was about to jump off the bale and run headlong back down the road without looking back, but the memory of the dark, sullen crosses, which he was sure to meet on his way, and lightning flashing in the distance, stopped him... And only when he whispered, ‘‘Mama! Mama!’’ did he seem to feel better...

The wagoners must also have felt eerie. After Egorushka ran away from the campfire, they were silent for a long time, then began saying in low and muted voices that something was coming and that they had to make ready quickly and get away from it... They ate a quick supper, put out the fire, and silently began harnessing up. From their bustling and their curt phrases, one could tell that they foresaw some disaster.

Before they started on their way, Dymov went up to Pantelei and asked quietly:

‘‘What’s his name?’’

‘Egory ...’ answered Pantelei.

Dymov put one foot on the wheel, took hold of the rope that tied down the bale, and hoisted himself up. Egorushka saw his face and curly head. His face was pale, tired, and serious, but it no longer expressed spite.

‘‘Era!’’ he said quietly. ‘‘Go on, hit me!’’

Egorushka looked at him in surprise; just then lightning flashed.

‘‘Never mind, just hit me!’’ Dymov repeated.

And, without waiting for Egorushka to hit him or talk to him, he jumped down and said:

‘‘I’m bored!’’

Then, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, rolling his shoulders, he lazily plodded along the line of wagons and repeated in a half-plaintive, half-vexed voice:

‘‘I’m bored! Oh, Lord! And don’t be offended, Emelya,’’ he said as he passed Emelyan. ‘‘Our life’s cruel, beyond hope!’’

Lightning flashed to the right and, as if reflected in a mirror, at once flashed in the distance.

‘‘Egory, take this!’’ Pantelei shouted, handing up something big and dark from below.

‘‘What is it?’’ asked Egorushka.

‘‘A bast mat! There’ll be rain, you can cover yourself.’’

Egorushka raised himself and looked around. The distance had become noticeably more black and now blinked more than once a minute with a pale light, as if through eyelids. Its blackness leaned to the right, as though weighted down.

‘‘Will there be a thunderstorm, grandpa?’’ asked Egorushka.

‘‘Ah, my poor, ailing, frozen feet!’’ Pantelei said in a singsong voice, not hearing him and stamping his feet.

To the left, as if someone had struck a match against the sky, a pale phosphorescent strip flashed and went out. There was a sound of someone walking on an iron roof somewhere very far away. He was probably walking barefoot, because the iron made a dull rumble.

‘‘It’s all around!’’ cried Kiriukha.

Between the distance and the horizon to the right, lightning flashed, so bright that it lit up part of the steppe and the place where the clear sky bordered on the blackness. An awful thunderhead was approaching unhurriedly, in a solid mass; from its edge hung big black rags; exactly the same rags, crushing each other, heaped up on the horizon to right and left. This torn, ragged look of the thunderhead gave it a drunken, mischievous expression. Thunder rumbled clearly and not dully. Egorushka crossed himself and quickly began putting on his coat.

‘‘I’m bored!’’ Dymov’s cry came from the front wagons, and one could tell by his voice that he was beginning to get angry again. ‘‘Bored!’’

Suddenly there was a gust of wind, so strong that it almost tore Egorushka’s little bundle and bast mat from his hands; the mat fluttered up, tearing in all directions, and flapped on the bale and on Egorushka’s face. The wind raced whistling over the steppe, whirled haphazardly, raising such a din with the grass that because of it neither the thunder nor the creaking of the wheels could be heard. It blew from the black thunderhead, carrying clouds of dust and the smell of rain and wet earth with it. The moonlight grew dim, became as if dirtier, the stars became still more morose, and you could see clouds of dust and their shadows hurrying backwards somewhere along the edge of the road. Now, in all probability, whirlwinds, spinning and drawing dust, dry grass, and feathers up from the ground, were rising all the way into the sky; tumbleweed was probably flying about right by the black thunderhead, and how frightened it must be! But nothing could be seen through the dust that clogged the eyes except flashes of lightning.

Egorushka, thinking the rain would pour down that minute, got to his knees and covered himself with the bast mat.

‘‘Pantel-ei!’’ someone shouted from the front. ‘A... a ... va!’

‘‘I can’t hear you!’’ Pantelei answered loudly and in a singsong voice.

‘A ... a ... va! Arya ... a!’

Thunder crashed angrily, rolling across the sky from right to left, then back, and dying down near the front wagon.

‘‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth,’’ Egorushka whispered, crossing himself, ‘‘heaven and earth are full of Thy glory...’²⁴

The blackness in the sky opened its mouth and breathed out white fire; at once thunder rolled again; it had barely fallen silent when lightning flashed so broadly that Egorushka suddenly saw, through the openings in the bast mat, the whole of the high road into the far distance, all the wagoners, and even Kiriukha’s waistcoat. On the left, the dark rags were already rising upwards, and one of them, crude, clumsy, looking like a paw with fingers, was reaching towards the moon. Egorushka decided to shut his eyes tight, pay no attention, and wait till it was all over.

The rain, for some reason, took a long time to begin. Egorushka, hoping the storm cloud might pass by, peeked out from behind the bast mat. It was awfully dark. Egorushka could not see Pantelei, or the bale, or himself; he glanced sidelong to where the moon had been recently, but there was the same black darkness as on the wagon. And in the dark the lightning seemed more white and dazzling, so that it hurt his eyes.

‘‘Pantelei!’’ cried Egorushka.

No answer came. But now, finally, the wind tore at the bast mat for a last time and ran off somewhere. A calm, steady noise was heard. A big cold drop fell on Egorushka’s knee, another trickled down his arm. He noticed that his knees were not covered and was going to straighten the bast mat, but just then something poured down and beat on the road, then on the shafts, on the bale. It was rain. The rain and the bast mat, as if they understood each other, began talking about something rapidly, merrily, and quite disgustingly, like two magpies.

Egorushka stood on his knees, or, more precisely, sat on his boots. When the rain began to beat on the bast mat, he leaned his body forward to shield his knees, which suddenly became wet; he managed to cover his knees, but in less than a minute he felt a sharp, unpleasant dampness behind, on his lower back and his calves. He reassumed his former position, stuck his knees out into the rain, and began thinking what to do, how to straighten the invisible bast mat in the dark. But his arms were already wet, water ran down his sleeves and behind his collar, his shoulder blades were cold. And he decided to do nothing but sit motionless and wait till it all ended.

‘‘Holy, holy, holy ...’ he whispered.

Suddenly, just above his head, the sky broke up with a frightful, deafening crash; he bent over and held his breath, waiting for the pieces to fall on his neck and back. His eyes opened inadvertently, and he saw a blinding, cutting light flash and blink some five times on his fingers, on his wet sleeves, on the streams running off the bast mat, on the bale, and on the ground below. Another clap resounded, just as strong and terrible. The sky no longer rumbled or crashed, but produced dry, crackling noises, like the creaking of dry wood.

‘‘Trrack! Tak! Tak! Tak!’’ the thunder rapped out clearly, rolled down the sky, stumbled, and collapsed somewhere by the front wagons or far behind, with an angry, abrupt ‘‘Trrah!’’

The earlier flashes of lightning had only been scary, but with such thunder, they felt sinister. Their bewitching light penetrated your closed eyelids and spread cold through your whole body. What to do so as not to see them? Egorushka decided to turn and face the other way. Carefully, as if afraid he was being watched, he got up on all fours and, his hands slipping on the wet bale, turned around.

‘‘Trrack! Tak! Tak!’’ swept over his head, fell under the wagon, and exploded—‘‘Rrrah!’’

His eyes again opened inadvertently, and Egorushka saw a new danger; behind the wagon walked three huge giants with long spears. Lightning flashed on the tips of their spears and lit up their figures very clearly. They were people of huge size, with covered faces, drooping heads, and heavy footsteps. They seemed sad and despondent, immersed in thought. Maybe they were not walking after the train in order to do any harm, but still, there was something terrible in their nearness.

Egorushka quickly turned frontwards and, trembling all over, cried out:

‘‘Pantelei! Grandpa!’’

‘‘Trrak! Tak! Tak!’’ the sky answered him.

He opened his eyes to see whether the wagoners were there. Lightning flashed in two places and lit up the road into the far distance, the whole wagon train, and all the wagoners. Streams flowed down the road, and bubbles leaped. Pantelei strode along beside the wagon, his tall hat and shoulders covered by a small bast mat; his figure expressed neither fear nor alarm, as if he had been deafened by the thunder and blinded by the lightning.

‘‘Grandpa, giants!’’ Egorushka cried to him, weeping.

But the old man did not hear. Emelyan walked further on. He was covered from head to foot with a big bast mat and now had the form of a triangle. Vasya, not covered by anything, strode along as woodenly as ever, lifting his legs high and not bending his knees. In the glare of the lightning, it seemed that the wagon train was not moving and the wagoners were frozen, that Vasya’s lifted leg had stopped dead...

Egorushka called the old man again. Not getting any answer, he sat without moving, no longer waiting for it all to end. He was certain that a thunderbolt would kill him that very minute, that his eyes would open inadvertently and he would see the frightful giants. And he did not cross himself anymore, did not call out to the old man, did not think of his mother, and only went numb with cold and the certainty that the storm would never end.

But suddenly voices were heard.

‘‘Egory, are you asleep or what?’’ Pantelei shouted from below. ‘‘Climb down! Are you deaf, you little fool?...’

‘‘What a storm!’’ said some unfamiliar bass, grunting as if he had drunk a good glass of vodka.

Egorushka opened his eyes. Below, by the wagon, stood Pantelei, the triangular Emelyan, and the giants. The latter were now much smaller and, once Egorushka had taken a better look, turned out to be ordinary muzhiks, holding not spears but iron pitchforks on their shoulders. In the space between Pantelei and the triangle shone the lighted window of a low cottage. This meant that the wagon train was standing in a village. Egorushka threw off the bast mat, took his little bundle, and hastened down from the wagon. Now, with people talking nearby and the lighted window, he was no longer afraid, though the thunder crashed as before and lightning slashed across the whole sky.

‘‘A good storm, all right...’ muttered Pantelei. ‘‘Thank God... My feet got a little soggy from the rain, but that’s all right, too... Did you climb down, Egory? Well, go inside the cottage... It’s all right...’

‘‘Holy, holy, holy ...’ wheezed Emelyan. ‘‘It must have struck somewhere... Are you from hereabouts?’’ he asked the giants.

‘‘No, we’re from Glinovo... Glinovo folk. We work for the Plater family.’’

‘‘Threshing or what?’’

‘‘All sorts of things. Right now we’re harvesting wheat. But what lightning, what lightning! Haven’t had such a storm in a long time...’

Egorushka went into the cottage. He was met by a skinny, humpbacked old woman with a sharp chin. She was holding a tallow candle, squinting, and letting out long sighs.

‘‘What a storm God sent us!’’ she said. ‘‘And ours spent the night on the steppe, that’s hard on ’em, dear hearts! Get undressed, laddie, get undressed...’

Trembling with cold and shrinking squeamishly, Egorushka pulled off his drenched coat, then spread his arms and legs wide and did not move for a long time. Each little movement gave him an unpleasant sensation of wetness and cold. The sleeves and back of his shirt were wet, the trousers clung to his legs, his head was dripping...

‘‘What are you standing all astraddle for, poppet?’’ said the old woman. ‘‘Go sit down!’’

Moving his legs wide apart, Egorushka went over to the table and sat down on a bench by somebody’s head. The head stirred, let out a stream of air from its nose, munched its lips, and grew still. From the head, a lump extended along the bench, covered by a sheepskin coat. It was a sleeping peasant woman.

The old woman, sighing, went out and soon came back with a watermelon and a cantaloupe.

‘‘Eat, laddie! There’s nothing else to give you ...’ she said, yawning, then rummaged in the table drawer and took out a long, sharp knife, very much like the knives with which robbers kill merchants in roadside inns. ‘‘Eat, laddie!’’

Egorushka, trembling as in a fever, ate a slice of cantaloupe with some rye bread, then a slice of watermelon, and that made him feel even more chilled.

‘‘Ours spent the night on the steppe ...’ the old woman sighed while he ate. ‘‘Suffering Jesus... I’d light a candle in front of the icon, but I don’t know where Stepanida put them. Eat, laddie, eat...’

The old woman yawned and, thrusting her right hand behind her back, scratched her left shoulder with it.

‘‘Must be two o’clock now,’’ she said. ‘‘Soon time to get up. Ours spent the night on the steppe ... must be all soaked...’

‘‘Grandma,’’ said Egorushka, ‘‘I’m sleepy.’’

‘‘Lie down, laddie, lie down ...’ the old woman sighed, yawning. ‘‘Lord Jesus Christ! I was asleep, and it seemed I heard somebody knocking. I woke up, looked, and it was this storm God sent us... I should light a candle, but I can’t find any.’’

Talking to herself, she pulled some rags off the bench, probably her own bedding, took two sheepskin coats from a nail by the stove, and started making up a bed for Egorushka.

‘‘The storm won’t be still,’’ she muttered. ‘‘Hope nothing burns down, worse luck. Ours spent the night on the steppe... Lie down, laddie, sleep... Christ be with you, sonny... I won’t put the melon away, maybe you’ll get up and eat it.’’

The old woman’s sighs and yawns, the measured breathing of the sleeping woman, the dimness in the cottage, and the sound of the rain outside the window were conducive to sleep. Egorushka was embarrassed to undress in front of the old woman. He took off only his boots, lay down, and covered himself with a sheepskin coat.

‘‘The lad’s lying down?’’ Pantelei’s whisper was heard a minute later.

‘‘He is!’’ the old woman answered in a whisper. ‘‘Suffering, suffering Jesus! It rumbles and rumbles, and no end to be heard...’

‘‘It’ll soon pass...’ Pantelei hissed, sitting down. ‘‘It’s getting quieter... The boys went to the cottages, but two of them stayed with the horses... The boys, that is... Otherwise... The horses will get stolen... I’ll sit awhile and go to take my shift... Otherwise they’ll get stolen...’

Pantelei and the old woman sat beside each other at Egorushka’s feet and talked in a hissing whisper, interrupting their talk with sighs and yawns. But Egorushka was simply unable to get warm. He was covered with a warm, heavy sheepskin coat, but his whole body was shaking, he had cramps in his arms and legs, his insides trembled... He undressed under the sheepskin coat, but that did not help. The chill became stronger and stronger.

Pantelei went to take his shift and then came back again, but Egorushka still could not sleep and was shivering all over. Something weighed on his head and chest, crushing him, and he did not know what it was: the old people’s whispering or the heavy smell of the sheepskin? There was an unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth from the cantaloupe and watermelon he had eaten. Besides, the fleas were biting.

‘‘I’m cold, grandpa!’’ he said and did not recognize his own voice.

‘‘Sleep, sonny, sleep,’’ sighed the old woman.

Titus came up to his bed on skinny legs and began waving his arms, then grew up to the ceiling and turned into a windmill. Father Khristofor, dressed not as in the britzka but in full vestments and with a sprinkler in his hand, walked around the windmill sprinkling it with holy water, and it stopped waving. Egorushka, knowing it was delirium, opened his eyes.

‘‘Grandpa!’’ he called. ‘‘Give me water!’’

No one answered. Egorushka felt unbearably suffocated and uncomfortable lying down. He got up, dressed, and left the cottage. It was already morning. The sky was overcast, but there was no rain. Shivering and wrapping himself in his wet coat, Egorushka walked around the dirty yard, listening to the silence; a little shed with a half-open rush door caught his eye. He looked into this shed, went in, and sat in the dark corner on a pile of dry dung.

The thoughts tangled in his heavy head, the metallic taste made his mouth feel dry and disgusting. He examined his hat, straightened the peacock feather on it, and remembered how he had gone with his mother to buy this hat. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a lump of brown, sticky putty. How had this putty ended up in his pocket? He thought, sniffed it: it smelled of honey. Aha, it was the Jewish gingerbread! How soggy it was, poor thing!

Egorushka examined his coat. His coat was gray, with big bone buttons, tailored like a frock coat. As a new and expensive thing, it had hung at home not in the front hall but in the bedroom, next to his mother’s dresses; wearing it was permitted only on feast days. Looking it over, Egorushka felt sorry for it, remembered that he and the coat had both been left to the mercy of fate, that they would never return home anymore, and burst into such sobs that he almost fell off the dung pile.

A big white dog, wet with rain, with tufts of fur that looked like curling papers on its muzzle, came into the shed and stared at Egorushka with curiosity. She was apparently wondering whether to bark or not. Deciding there was no need to bark, she warily approached Egorushka, ate the putty, and left.

‘‘They’re Varlamov’s!’’ somebody shouted in the street.

Having wept his fill, Egorushka left the shed and, skirting a puddle, trudged out to the street. On the road, just in front of the gate, stood the wagons. The wet wagoners, with dirty feet, sluggish and sleepy as autumnal flies, wandered about or sat on the shafts. Egorushka looked at them and thought: ‘‘How boring and uncomfortable it is to be a peasant!’’ He went up to Pantelei and sat beside him on the shaft.

‘‘I’m cold, grandpa!’’ he said, shivering and sticking his hands into his sleeves.

‘‘It’s all right, we’ll soon be there,’’ Pantelei yawned. ‘‘You’ll get warm all right.’’

The wagon train started early, because it was not hot. Egorushka lay on the bale and shivered with cold, though the sun soon appeared in the sky and dried his clothes, his bale, and the ground. As soon as he closed his eyes, he again saw Titus and the windmill. Feeling nauseated and heavy all over, he strained his forces to drive these images away, but they no sooner disappeared than the prankster Dymov, with red eyes and upraised fists, threw himself at Egorushka with a roar, or his anguished ‘‘I’m bored!’’ was heard. Varlamov rode by on his Cossack colt; happy Konstantin passed by with his smile and his bustard. And how oppressive, unbearable, and tiresome all these people were!

Once—it was before evening—he raised his head to ask for a drink. The wagon train stood on a big bridge stretched across a wide river. There was dark smoke below, over the river, and through it a steamboat could be seen towing a barge. Ahead, across the river, was a huge motley hill scattered with houses and churches; at the foot of the hill, near the freight cars, a locomotive shuttled back and forth...

Egorushka had never seen steamboats before, or locomotives, or wide rivers. Looking at them now, he was neither afraid nor surprised; his face even showed nothing resembling curiosity. He only felt nauseated, and hastened to lean his chest over the edge of the bale. He threw up. Pantelei, who saw it, grunted and shook his head.

‘‘Our little lad’s sick!’’ he said. ‘‘Must have caught a chill in his stomach... our little lad, that is... In foreign parts... A bad business!’’

VIII

THE WAGON TRAIN stopped not far from the pier at a big trading inn. Climbing down from the wagon, Egorushka heard someone’s very familiar voice. Someone helped him down, saying:

‘‘And we already came last evening... Been waiting for you all day today. Wanted to catch up with you yesterday, but it didn’t work out, we took another road. Look how you’ve crumpled your coat! You’re going to get it from your uncle!’’

Egorushka peered into the speaker’s marbled face and remembered that this was Deniska.

‘‘Your uncle and Father Khristofor are in their room now,’’ Deniska went on, ‘‘having tea. Come on!’’

And he led Egorushka to a big two-story building, dark and gloomy, that looked like the N. almshouse. Going through the entry, up the dark stairs, and down a long narrow corridor, Egorushka and Deniska came to a small room where indeed Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor were sitting at the tea table. On seeing the boy, the two old men showed surprise and joy on their faces.

‘‘Ahh, Egor Nikola-a-aich!’’ Father Khristofor sang out. ‘‘Mr. Lomonosov!’’

‘‘Ah, Mr. Nobleman!’’ said Kuzmichov. ‘‘Kindly join us.’’

Egorushka took off his coat, kissed his uncle’s and Father Khristofor’s hands, and sat down at the table.

‘‘Well, how was the journey, puer bone?’’ Father Khristofor showered him with questions, pouring tea for him and smiling radiantly, as usual. ‘‘Sick of it, I suppose? And God keep you from traveling by wagon train or oxcart! You go on and on, Lord forgive me, you look ahead, and the steppe still stretches out as continuously as before: there’s no end of it to be seen! That’s not traveling, it’s sheer punishment. Why aren’t you drinking your tea? Drink! And while you were dragging yourself around with the wagon train, we’ve wrapped up all our business nicely. Thank God! We sold the wool to Cherepakhin, and God grant everybody does as well... We made a good profit.’’

With the first glance at his own people, Egorushka felt an irresistible need to complain. He was not listening to Father Khristofor and tried to think how to begin and what in fact to complain about. But Father Khristofor’s voice, which seemed sharp and unpleasant, interfered with his concentration and confused his thoughts. After sitting for less than five minutes, he got up from the table, went to the sofa, and lay down.

‘‘Look at this now!’’ Father Khristofor was surprised. ‘‘And what about your tea?’’

Trying to think up something to complain about, Egorushka pressed his forehead against the back of the sofa and burst into sobs.

‘‘Look at this now!’’ Father Khristofor repeated, getting up and going to the sofa. ‘‘What’s the matter, Georgiy? Why are you crying?’’

‘I ... I’m sick!’’ said Egorushka.

‘‘Sick?’’ Father Khristofor looked perplexed. ‘‘That’s not good at all, old boy... How can you be sick on a journey? Ai, ai, what a one you are, old boy ... eh?’

He put his hand to Egorushka’s head, touched his cheek, and said:

‘‘Yes, your head’s hot... You must have caught a chill or eaten something... Call upon God.’’

‘‘Maybe give him quinine...’ Ivan Ivanych said in perplexity.

‘‘No, give him something hot to eat... Georgiy, do you want some nice soup? Eh?’’

‘No ... I don’t ...’ Egorushka answered.

‘‘Do you have chills, or what?’’

‘‘Before I had chills, but now ... now I’m hot. I ache all over...’

Ivan Ivanych went over to the sofa, touched Egorushka’s head, grunted perplexedly, and went back to the table.

‘‘See here, you get undressed and go to sleep,’’ said Father Khristofor, ‘‘you need a good sleep.’’

He helped Egorushka to undress, gave him a pillow, covered him with a blanket, and put Ivan Ivanych’s coat on top of the blanket, then tiptoed away and sat down at the table. Egorushka closed his eyes, and it seemed to him at once that he was not in a room at an inn but by a campfire on the high road; Emelyan was waving his hand, and red-eyed Dymov was lying on his stomach and looking mockingly at Egorushka.

‘‘Beat him! Beat him!’’ cried Egorushka.

‘‘He’s delirious...’ Father Khristofor said in a half-whisper.

‘‘Bother!’’ sighed Ivan Ivanych.

‘‘We’ll have to rub him with oil and vinegar. God grant he’ll be well by tomorrow.’’

To get rid of his oppressive reveries, Egorushka opened his eyes and began looking at the fire. Father Khristofor and Ivan Ivanych had finished their tea and were talking about something in a whisper. The former was smiling happily and apparently was quite unable to forget that he had made a good profit on the wool: what made him so glad was not so much the profit itself as the thought that, on coming home, he would gather his whole big family, wink slyly, and burst out laughing; first he would deceive them all and say that he sold the wool for less than it was worth, and then he would give his son-in-law Mikhailo the fat wallet and say: ‘‘Here, take it! That’s how to do business!’’ Kuzmichov did not seem pleased. His face, as before, expressed a businesslike dryness and preoccupation.

‘‘Eh, if only I’d known Cherepakhin would give such a price,’’ he said in a low voice, ‘‘I wouldn’t have sold those five tons to Makarov at home! So vexing! Who could have known the price had gone up here?’’

A man in a white shirt put the samovar away and lit the lamp in front of the icon in the corner. Father Khristofor whispered something in his ear; the man made a mysterious face, like a conspirator—meaning ‘‘I understand’’—went out, and, returning a little later, placed a vessel under the sofa. Ivan Ivanych made up a bed for himself on the floor, yawned several times, prayed lazily, and lay down.

‘‘And tomorrow I think I’ll go to the cathedral...’ said Father Khristofor. ‘‘I know a sacristan there. I should go to see the bishop after the liturgy, but they say he’s sick.’’

He yawned and put out the lamp. Now there was no light except from the icon lamp.

‘‘They say he doesn’t receive people,’’ Father Khristofor went on, undressing. ‘‘So I’ll leave without seeing him.’’

He took off his caftan, and Egorushka saw Robinson Crusoe before him. Robinson mixed something in a saucer, went over to Egorushka, and whispered:

‘‘Lomonosov, are you asleep? Sit up. I’ll rub you with oil and vinegar. It’s a good thing, only you must call upon God.’’

Egorushka quickly raised himself and sat up. Father Khristofor took his shirt off of him and, shrinking and gasping heavily, as though he felt tickled himself, began rubbing Egorushka’s chest.

‘‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ...’ he whispered. ‘‘Lie on your stomach!... There. Tomorrow you’ll be well, only don’t sin anymore... Hot as fire! You must have been on the road during the thunderstorm?’’

‘‘We were.’’

‘‘No wonder you got sick! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... No wonder you got sick!’’

After rubbing Egorushka, Father Khristofor put the shirt back on him, covered him up, made a cross over him, and went away. Then Egorushka saw him pray to God. The old man probably knew a great many prayers by heart, because he stood in front of the icon and whispered for a long time. After saying his prayers, he made a cross over the windows, the door, Egorushka, and Ivan Ivanych, lay down on a little couch without a pillow, and covered himself with his caftan. The clock in the corridor struck ten. Egorushka remembered how long it still was till morning, pressed his forehead to the back of the sofa in anguish, and no longer tried to get rid of his foggy, oppressive reveries. But morning came much sooner than he thought.

It seemed to him that he had not lain with his forehead pressed against the back of the sofa for long, but when he opened his eyes, the slanting rays of the sun from both windows in the room were already reaching towards the floor. Father Khristofor and Ivan Ivanych were not there. The little room was tidied up, bright, cozy, and smelled of Father Khristofor, who always gave off a scent of cypress and dried cornflowers (at home he made sprinklers and decorations for icon stands out of dried cornflowers, and had become permeated with their smell). Egorushka looked at the pillow, at the slanting rays, at his boots, which were now polished and stood side by side near the sofa, and laughed. It seemed strange to him that he was not on a bale, that everything around was dry, and that there was no lightning or thunder on the ceiling.

He jumped up from the sofa and began to dress. He felt wonderful; nothing was left of the previous day’s illness except a slight weakness in his legs and neck. This meant the oil and vinegar had helped. He remembered the steamboat, the locomotive, and the wide river he had seen vaguely the day before, and he now hastened to dress quickly, so as to run to the pier and look at them. He washed and was putting on his red shirt when the door latch suddenly clicked and Father Khristofor appeared on the threshold in his top hat, holding his staff, and with a brown silk cassock over his canvas caftan. Smiling and radiant (old people who have just come back from church are always radiant), he put a prosphora and a package on the table, repeated a prayer, and said:

‘‘God has been merciful! Well, how do you feel?’’

‘‘I’m well now,’’ answered Egorushka, kissing his hand.

‘‘Thank God... And I’ve been to the liturgy... I went to see a sacristan I know. He invited me to his place for tea, but I didn’t go. I don’t like to go visiting early in the morning. God be with them!’’

He took off his cassock, stroked his chest, and unhurriedly opened the package. Egorushka saw a tin of caviar, a piece of smoked sturgeon, and a loaf of French bread.

‘‘There, I was walking past the fish store and bought them,’’ said Father Khristofor. ‘‘There’s no reason for this luxury on a weekday, but I thought, we’ve got a sick boy at home, so it seems pardonable. Good sturgeon caviar...’

A man in a white shirt brought a samovar and a tray of dishes.

‘‘Eat,’’ said Father Khristofor, spreading caviar on a slice of bread and handing it to Egorushka. ‘‘Eat and play now, and when the time comes, you can study. See that you study with attention and application, so there’s sense in it. What must be learned by heart, learn by heart, and where you should tell the inner meaning in your own words, without touching on the external, use your own words. And try to learn all the subjects. Some know mathematics very well but have never heard of Peter Mogila,²⁵ and some know about Peter Mogila but can’t explain about the moon. No, you should learn in such a way as to understand everything! Learn Latin, French, German ... geography, of course, history, theology, philosophy, mathematics... And once you’ve learned everything, not hurrying, but with prayer and with zeal, then you can find your work. Once you know everything, it will be easy for you on any path. Only study and acquire grace, and God will show you what you should be. A doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer...’

Father Khristofor spread a little caviar on a small piece of bread, put it in his mouth, and said:

‘‘The apostle Paul says: ‘Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.’²⁶ Of course, if it’s black magic, or senseless talk, or calling up spirits from the other world like Saul,²⁷ or learning subjects that are of no use either to you or to anyone else, then it’s better not to study. One should take in only what God has blessed. Just consider... The holy apostles spoke all languages—so you learn languages; Basil the Great taught mathematics and philosophy—so you learn them; Saint Nestor²⁸ wrote history—so you study and write history. Consider the saints...’

Father Khristofor sipped from his saucer, wiped his mustache, and shook his head.

‘‘Very well!’’ he said. ‘‘I was taught in the old way, I’ve forgotten a lot, and I also live differently from others. It’s even impossible to compare. For instance, somewhere in a big company, at a dinner or a gathering, I say something in Latin, or from history or philosophy, and people are pleased, and I’m pleased myself... Or there’s also when the circuit court arrives, and people have to be sworn in; all the other priests are embarrassed, but I hobnob with the judges and prosecutors and lawyers: I have some learned talk, drink tea with them, laugh, ask some questions about things I don’t know... And they’re pleased. So you see, old boy... Learning is light, and ignorance is darkness. Study! It’s hard, of course: these days learning costs a lot... Your mama’s a widow, she lives on a pension, well, but then...’

Father Khristofor glanced fearfully at the door and went on in a whisper:

‘‘Ivan Ivanych will help you. He won’t abandon you. He has no children of his own, and he’ll help you. Don’t worry.’’

He made a serious face and whispered still more softly:

‘‘Only watch out, Georgiy, God keep you from forgetting your mother and Ivan Ivanych. The commandment tells you to honor your mother, and Ivan Ivanych is your benefactor and takes the place of a father. If you become a learned man and, God forbid, begin to feel burdened and scorn people because they’re stupider than you are, then woe, woe to you!’’

Father Khristofor raised his arm and repeated in a thin little voice:

‘‘Woe! Woe!’’

Father Khristofor got warmed up and acquired what is known as a relish for speaking; he would have gone on till dinner, but the door opened and Ivan Ivanych came in. The uncle greeted them hastily, sat down at the table, and began quickly gulping tea.

‘‘Well, I’ve managed to take care of all my affairs,’’ he said. ‘‘We could have gone home today, but there’s still Egor to worry about. He’s got to be settled. My sister said her friend Nastasya Petrovna lives somewhere around here; maybe she’ll give him lodgings.’’

He rummaged in his wallet, took out a crumpled letter, and read:

‘‘ ‘To Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, at her own house, Malaya Nizhnyaya Street.’ I must go and look her up at once. Bother!’’

Soon after tea, Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka left the inn.

‘‘Bother!’’ the uncle muttered. ‘‘You’re stuck to me like a burr, deuce take it! For you it’s studies and noble ways, but for me you’re one big torment...’

When they passed through the yard, the wagons and wagoners were no longer there; they had gone to the pier early in the morning. In the far corner of the yard, the familiar britzka could be seen; beside it the two bays stood eating oats.

‘‘Farewell, britzka!’’ thought Egorushka.

First they had a long climb uphill by the boulevard, then they crossed a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanych asked a policeman how to get to Malaya Nizhnyaya Street.

‘‘Well, now!’’ the policeman grinned. ‘‘That’s pretty far, out there by the common!’’

On the way they met several cabs coming towards them, but the uncle allowed himself such a weakness as taking a cab only on exceptional occasions and major feast days. He and Egorushka walked for a long time along paved streets, then along streets where only the sidewalks were paved and not the roadways, and finally ended up on streets that had neither sidewalks nor paved roadways. When their legs and tongues had brought them to Malaya Nizhnyaya Street, they were both red in the face, and, taking off their hats, they wiped away the sweat.

‘‘Tell me, please,’’ Ivan Ivanych addressed an old man who was sitting on a bench by a gateway, ‘‘where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?’’

‘There’s no Toskunov here,’’ the old man replied, having pondered. ‘‘Maybe you mean Timoshenko?’’

‘‘No, Toskunov...’

‘‘Sorry, there’s no Toskunov...’

Ivan Ivanych shrugged his shoulders and plodded on.

‘‘Don’t go looking!’’ the old man called out behind him. ‘‘If I say no, it means no!’’

‘‘Listen, auntie,’’ Ivan Ivanych addressed an old woman who was selling sunflower seeds and pears at a stand on the corner, ‘‘where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house hereabouts?’’

The old woman looked at him in astonishment and laughed.

‘‘You mean you think Nastasya Petrovna still lives in her own house?’’ she asked. ‘‘Lord, it’s already some eight years since she married off her daughter and made the house over to her son-in-law! Her son-in-law lives in it now!’’

And her eyes said: ‘‘How is it you fools don’t know such a simple thing?’’

‘‘And where does she live now?’’ asked Ivan Ivanych.

‘‘Lord!’’ the old woman was astonished and clasped her hands. ‘‘She’s long been living in lodgings! It’s already eight years since she made her house over to her son-in-law. What’s the matter with you!’’

She probably expected that Ivan Ivanych would also be surprised and exclaim: ‘‘It can’t be!’’ but he asked very calmly: ‘‘Where are her lodgings?’’

The marketwoman rolled up her sleeves and, pointing with a bare arm, began to shout in a shrill, piercing voice:

‘‘Keep on straight, straight, straight... Once you’ve passed a little red house, there’ll be a lane on your left. Turn down that lane and look for the third gateway on the right...’

Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka reached the little red house, turned left into the lane, and made for the third gateway on the right. To both sides of this very old gray gateway stretched a gray wall with wide cracks; the right side of the wall leaned badly forward, threatening to collapse, the left sank backward into the yard, while the gates stood straight and seemed to be choosing whether it would suit them better to fall forward or backward. Ivan Ivanych opened the gate and, along with Egorushka, saw a big yard overgrown with weeds and burdock. A hundred paces from the gate stood a small house with a red roof and green shutters. A stout woman with rolled-up sleeves and a held-out apron stood in the middle of the yard, scattering something on the ground and calling out with the same piercing shrillness as the marketwoman:

‘Chick! ... chick! chick!’’

Behind her sat a ginger dog with sharp ears. Seeing the visitors, it ran to the gate and barked in a tenor voice (all ginger dogs bark in a tenor voice).

‘‘Who do you want?’’ shouted the woman, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘‘Good morning!’’ Ivan Ivanych also shouted to her, fending off the ginger dog with his stick. ‘‘Tell me, please, does Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov live here?’’

‘‘She does! What do you want with her?’’

Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka went up to her. She looked them over suspiciously and repeated:

‘‘What do you want with her?’’

‘‘Might you be Nastasya Petrovna?’’

‘‘So I am!’’

‘‘Very pleased... You see, your old friend Olga Ivanovna Knyazev sends you her greetings. This is her little son. And I, as you may remember, am her brother, Ivan Ivanych... You come from our N. You were born there and married...’

Silence ensued. The stout woman stared senselessly at Ivan Ivanych, as if not believing or not understanding, then flushed all over and clasped her hands; oats poured from her apron, tears burst from her eyes.

‘‘Olga Ivanovna!’’ she shrieked, breathing heavily from excitement. ‘‘My own darling! Ah, dear hearts, why am I standing here like a fool? My pretty little angel...’

She embraced Egorushka, wetted his face with her tears, and began weeping in earnest.

‘‘Lord!’’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘‘Olechka’s little son! What joy! Just like his mother! Exactly! But why are we standing in the yard? Please come in!’’

Weeping, breathless, and talking as she went, she hastened to the house; the visitors trudged after her.

‘‘It’s not tidied up!’’ she said, leading the visitors into a small and stuffy parlor all filled with icons and flowerpots. ‘‘Ah, Mother of God! Vasilissa, open the blinds, at least! My little angel! My indescribable beauty! I didn’t even know Olechka had such a son!’’

When she had calmed down and grown used to her visitors, Ivan Ivanych asked to have a private talk with her. Egorushka went to another room; there was a sewing machine there, in the window hung a cage with a starling in it, and there were as many icons and plants as in the parlor. A girl stood motionless by the sewing machine, sunburnt, with cheeks as plump as Titus’s, and in a clean cotton dress. She looked at Egorushka without blinking and apparently felt very awkward. Egorushka looked at her for a moment in silence, then asked:

‘‘What’s your name?’’

The girl moved her lips, made a tearful face, and answered softly:

‘Atka...’

This meant ‘‘Katka.’’

‘‘He’ll live with you,’’ Ivan Ivanych was whispering in the parlor, ‘‘if you’ll be so kind, and we’ll pay you ten roubles a month. He’s a quiet boy, not spoiled...’

‘‘I don’t really know what to say to you, Ivan Ivanych!’’ Nastasya Petrovna sighed tearfully. ‘‘Ten roubles is good money, but I’m afraid to take someone else’s child! What if he gets sick or something...’

When Egorushka was called back to the parlor, Ivan Ivanych was standing hat in hand and saying good-bye.

‘‘Well? So he can stay with you now,’’ he was saying. ‘‘Good-bye! Stay here, Egor!’’ he said, turning to his nephew. ‘‘Behave yourself, listen to Nastasya Petrovna... Good-bye! I’ll come again tomorrow.’’

And he left. Nastasya Petrovna embraced Egorushka once more, called him a little angel, and tearfully began setting the table. In three minutes Egorushka was already sitting beside her, answering her endless questions, and eating rich, hot cabbage soup.

And in the evening he was sitting again at the same table, his head propped on his hand, listening to Nastasya Petrovna. Now laughing, now weeping, she told him about his mother’s youth, about her own marriage, about her children... A cricket called out from the stove, and the mantle in the gas lamp hummed barely audibly. The mistress spoke in a low voice and kept dropping her thimble from excitement, and Katya, her granddaughter, went under the table to fetch it, and each time stayed under the table for a long while, probably studying Egorushka’s legs. And Egorushka listened drowsily and studied the old woman’s face, her wart with hairs on it, the streaks of her tears... And he felt sad, very sad! His bed was made up on a trunk, and he was informed that if he wanted to eat during the night, he should go out to the corridor and take some of the chicken that was there on the windowsill, covered with a plate.

The next morning Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor came to say good-bye. Nastasya Petrovna was glad and wanted to prepare the samovar, but Ivan Ivanych, who was in a great hurry, waved his hand and said:

‘‘We have no time for any teas and sugars! We’re about to leave.’’

Before saying good-bye, they all sat down and were silent for a moment. Nastasya Petrovna sighed deeply and looked at the icons with tearful eyes.

‘‘Well,’’ Ivan Ivanych began, getting up, ‘‘so you’re staying...’

The businesslike dryness suddenly left his face, he turned a little red, smiled sadly, and said:

‘‘See that you study... Don’t forget your mother and listen to Nastasya Petrovna... If you study well, Egor, I won’t abandon you.’’

He took a purse from his pocket, turned his back to Egorushka, rummaged for a long time among the small change, and, finding a ten-kopeck piece, gave it to the boy. Father Khristofor sighed and unhurriedly blessed Egorushka.

‘‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... Study,’’ he said. ‘‘Work hard, old boy... If I die, remember me. Here’s ten kopecks from me, too...’

Egorushka kissed his hand and wept. Something in his soul whispered to him that he would never see the old man again.

‘‘I’ve already applied to the school, Nastasya Petrovna,’’ Ivan Ivanych said in such a voice as if there was a dead person laid out in the parlor. ‘‘On the seventh of August you’ll take him to the examination... Well, good-bye! May God be with you. Good-bye, Egor!’’

‘‘You should at least have some tea!’’ Nastasya Petrovna groaned.

Through the tears that clouded his eyes, Egorushka did not see his uncle and Father Khristofor leave. He rushed to the window, but they were no longer in the yard, and the ginger dog, just done barking, trotted back from the gate with a look of duty fulfilled. Egorushka, not knowing why himself, tore from his place and went flying out of the house. When he came running through the gate, Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor, the one swinging his curved-handled stick, the other his staff, were just turning the corner. Egorushka felt that with these people, everything he had lived through up to then had vanished forever, like smoke; he sank wearily onto a bench and with bitter tears greeted the new, unknown life that was now beginning for him...

What sort of life would it be?

1888

THE DUEL

I

IT WAS EIGHT o’clock in the morning—the time when officers, officials, and visitors, after a hot, sultry night, usually took a swim in the sea and then went to the pavilion for coffee or tea. Ivan Andreich Laevsky, a young man about twenty-eight years old, a lean blond, in the peaked cap of the finance ministry¹ and slippers, having come to swim, found many acquaintances on the shore, and among them his friend the army doctor Samoilenko.

With a large, cropped head, neckless, red, big-nosed, with bushy black eyebrows and gray side-whiskers, fat, flabby, and with a hoarse military bass to boot, this Samoilenko made the unpleasant impression of a bully and a blusterer on every newcomer, but two or three days would go by after this first acquaintance, and his face would begin to seem remarkably kind, nice, and even handsome. Despite his clumsiness and slightly rude tone, he was a peaceable man, infinitely kind, good-natured, and responsible. He was on familiar terms with everybody in town, lent money to everybody, treated everybody, made matches, made peace, organized picnics, at which he cooked shashlik and prepared a very tasty mullet soup; he was always soliciting and interceding for someone and always rejoicing over something. According to general opinion, he was sinless and was known to have only two weaknesses: first, he was ashamed of his kindness and tried to mask it with a stern gaze and an assumed rudeness; and second, he liked it when medical assistants and soldiers called him ‘‘Your Excellency,’’ though he was only a state councillor.²

‘‘Answer me one question, Alexander Davidych,’’ Laevsky began, when the two of them, he and Samoilenko, had gone into the water up to their shoulders. ‘‘Let’s say you fell in love with a woman and became intimate with her; you lived with her, let’s say, for more than two years, and then, as it happens, you fell out of love and began to feel she was a stranger to you. How would you behave in such a case?’’

‘‘Very simple. Go, dearie, wherever the wind takes you— and no more talk.’’

‘‘That’s easy to say! But what if she has nowhere to go? She’s alone, no family, not a cent, unable to work...’

‘‘What, then? Fork her out five hundred, or twenty-five a month—and that’s it. Very simple.’’

‘‘Suppose you’ve got both the five hundred and the twenty-five a month, but the woman I’m talking about is intelligent and proud. Can you possibly bring yourself to offer her money? And in what form?’’

Samoilenko was about to say something, but just then a big wave covered them both, then broke on the shore and noisily rolled back over the small pebbles. The friends went ashore and began to dress.

‘‘Of course, it’s tricky living with a woman if you don’t love her,’’ Samoilenko said, shaking sand from his boot. ‘‘But Vanya, you’ve got to reason like a human being. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t let it show that I’d fallen out of love, I’d live with her till I died.’’

He suddenly felt ashamed of his words. He caught himself and said:

‘‘Though, for my part, there’s no need for women at all. To the hairy devil with them!’’

The friends got dressed and went to the pavilion. Here Samoilenko was his own man, and they even reserved a special place for him. Each morning a cup of coffee, a tall cut glass of ice water, and a shot of brandy were served to him on a tray. First he drank the brandy, then the hot coffee, then the ice water, and all that must have been very tasty, because after he drank it, his eyes became unctuous, he smoothed his side-whiskers with both hands, and said, looking at the sea:

‘‘An astonishingly magnificent view!’’

After a long night spent in cheerless, useless thoughts, which kept him from sleeping and seemed to increase the sultriness and gloom of the night, Laevsky felt broken and sluggish. Swimming and coffee did not make him any better.

‘‘Let’s continue our conversation, Alexander Davidych,’’ he said. ‘‘I won’t conceal it, I’ll tell you frankly, as a friend: things are bad between Nadezhda Fyodorovna and me, very bad! Excuse me for initiating you into my secrets, but I need to speak it out.’’

Samoilenko, who anticipated what the talk would be about, lowered his eyes and started tapping his fingers on the table.

‘‘I’ve lived with her for two years and fallen out of love...’ Laevsky went on. ‘‘That is, more precisely, I’ve realized that there has never been any love... These two years were a delusion.’’

Laevsky had the habit, during a conversation, of studying his pink palms attentively, biting his nails, or crumpling his cuffs with his fingers. And he was doing the same now.

‘‘I know perfectly well that you can’t help me,’’ he said, ‘‘but I’m talking to you because, for our kind, luckless fellows and superfluous men,³ talk is the only salvation. I should generalize my every act, I should find an explanation and a justification of my absurd life in somebody’s theories, in literary types, in the fact, for instance, that we noblemen are degenerating, and so on... Last night, for instance, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: ah, how right Tolstoy is, how pitilessly right! And that made it easier for me. The fact is, brother, he’s a great writer! Whatever they say.’’

Samoilenko, who had never read Tolstoy and was preparing every day to read him, got embarrassed and said:

‘‘Yes, other writers all write from the imagination, but he writes straight from nature.’’

‘‘My God,’’ sighed Laevsky, ‘‘the degree to which we’re crippled by civilization! I fell in love with a married woman, and she with me... In the beginning it was all kisses, and quiet evenings, and vows, and Spencer, ⁴ and ideals, and common interests... What a lie! Essentially we were running away from her husband, but we lied to ourselves that we were running away from the emptiness of our intelligentsia life. We pictured our future like this: in the beginning, in the Caucasus, while we acquaint ourselves with the place and the people, I’ll put on my uniform and serve, then, once we’re free to do so, we’ll acquire a piece of land, we’ll labor in the sweat of our brow, start a vineyard, fields, and so on. If it were you or that zoologist friend of yours, von Koren, instead of me, you’d live with Nadezhda Fyodorovna for maybe thirty years and leave your heirs a rich vineyard and three thousand acres of corn, while I felt bankrupt from the first day. The town is unbearably hot, boring, peopleless, and if you go out to the fields, you imagine venomous centipedes, scorpions, and snakes under every bush and stone, and beyond the fields there are mountains and wilderness. Alien people, alien nature, a pathetic culture—all that, brother, is not as easy as strolling along Nevsky⁵ in a fur coat, arm in arm with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and dreaming about warm lands. What’s needed here is a fight to the death, and what sort of fighter am I? A pathetic neurasthenic, an idler... From the very first day, I realized that my thoughts about a life of labor and a vineyard weren’t worth a damn. As for love, I must tell you that to live with a woman who has read Spencer and followed you to the ends of the earth is as uninteresting as with any Anfisa or Akulina. The same smell of a hot iron, powder, and medications, the same curling papers every morning, and the same self-delusion...’

‘‘You can’t do without an iron in the household,’’ said Samoilenko, blushing because Laevsky was talking to him so openly about a lady he knew. ‘‘I notice you’re out of sorts today, Vanya. Nadezhda Fyodorovna is a wonderful, educated woman, you’re a man of the greatest intelligence... Of course, you’re not married,’’ said Samoilenko, turning to look at the neighboring tables, ‘‘but that’s not your fault, and besides ... one must be without prejudices and stand on the level of modern ideas. I myself stand for civil marriage, yes... But in my opinion, once you’re together, you must go on till death.’’

‘‘Without love?’’

‘‘I’ll explain to you presently,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘Some eight years ago there was an agent here, an old man of the greatest intelligence. And this is what he used to say: the main thing in family life is patience. Do you hear, Vanya? Not love but patience. Love can’t last long. You lived in love for two years, but now evidently your family life has entered the period when, to preserve the balance, so to speak, you must put all your patience to use...’

‘‘You believe your old agent, but for me his advice is meaningless. Your old man could play the hypocrite, he could exercise patience and at the same time look at the unloved person as an object necessary for his exercise, but I haven’t fallen so low yet. If I feel a wish to exercise my patience, I’ll buy myself some dumbbells or a restive horse, but the person I’ll leave in peace.’’

Samoilenko ordered white wine with ice. When they had each drunk a glass, Laevsky suddenly asked:

‘‘Tell me, please, what does softening of the brain mean?’’

‘It’s ... how shall I explain to you ? . . . a sort of illness, when the brains become softer ... thin out, as it were.’’

‘‘Curable?’’

‘‘Yes, if the illness hasn’t been neglected. Cold showers, Spanish fly... Well, something internal.’’

‘So ... So you see what my position is like. Live with her I cannot: it’s beyond my strength. While I’m with you, I philosophize and smile, but at home I completely lose heart. It’s so creepy for me that if I were told, let’s say, that I had to live with her for even one more month, I think I’d put a bullet in my head. And at the same time, it’s impossible to break with her. She’s alone, unable to work, I have no money, and neither does she... What will she do with herself? Who will she go to? I can’t come up with anything... Well, so tell me: what’s to be done?’’

‘Mm-yes ...’ growled Samoilenko, not knowing how to reply. ‘‘Does she love you?’’

‘‘Yes, she loves me to the extent that, at her age and with her temperament, she needs a man. It would be as hard for her to part with me as with powder or curling papers. I’m a necessary component of her boudoir.’’

Samoilenko was embarrassed.

‘‘You’re out of sorts today, Vanya,’’ he said. ‘‘You must have slept badly.’’

‘‘Yes, I did... Generally, brother, I feel lousy. My head’s empty, my heartbeat’s irregular, there’s some sort of weakness ... I’ve got to escape!’’

‘‘Where to?’’

‘‘There, to the north. To the pines, to the mushrooms, to people, to ideas... I’d give half my life to be somewhere in the province of Moscow or Tula right now, swimming in a little river, getting chilled, you know, then wandering around for a good three hours with the worst of students, chattering away... And the smell of hay! Remember? And in the evenings, when you stroll in the garden, the sounds of a piano come from the house, you hear a train going by...’

Laevsky laughed with pleasure, tears welled up in his eyes, and, to conceal them, he reached to the next table for matches without getting up.

‘‘And it’s eighteen years since I’ve been to Russia,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘I’ve forgotten how it is there. In my opinion, there’s no place in the world more magnificent than the Caucasus.’’

‘‘Vereshchagin⁶ has a painting: two men condemned to death languish at the bottom of a deep well. Your magnificent Caucasus looks to me exactly like that well. If I were offered one of two things, to be a chimney sweep in Petersburg or a prince here, I’d take the post of chimney sweep.’’

Laevsky fell to thinking. Looking at his bent body, at his eyes fixed on one spot, at his pale, sweaty face and sunken temples, his bitten nails, and the slipper run down at the heel, revealing a poorly darned sock, Samoilenko was filled with pity and, probably because Laevsky reminded him of a helpless child, asked:

‘‘Is your mother living?’’

‘‘Yes, but she and I have parted ways. She couldn’t forgive me this liaison.’’

Samoilenko liked his friend. He saw in Laevsky a good fellow, a student, an easygoing man with whom one could have a drink and a laugh and a heart-to-heart talk. What he understood in him, he greatly disliked. Laevsky drank a great deal and not at the right time, played cards, despised his job, lived beyond his means, often used indecent expressions in conversation, went about in slippers, and quarreled with Nadezhda Fyodorovna in front of strangers—and that Samoilenko did not like. But the fact that Laevsky had once been a philology student, now subscribed to two thick journals, often spoke so cleverly that only a few people understood him, lived with an intelligent woman—all this Samoilenko did not understand, and he liked that, and he considered Laevsky above him, and respected him.

‘‘One more detail,’’ said Laevsky, tossing his head. ‘‘Only this is between you and me. So far I’ve kept it from Nadezhda Fyodorovna, don’t blurt it out in front of her... Two days ago I received a letter saying that her husband has died of a softening of the brain.’’

‘‘God rest his soul...’ sighed Samoilenko. ‘‘Why are you keeping it from her?’’

‘‘To show her this letter would mean: let’s kindly go to church and get married. But we have to clarify our relations first. Once she’s convinced that we can’t go on living together, I’ll show her the letter. It will be safe then.’’

‘‘You know what, Vanya?’’ said Samoilenko, and his face suddenly assumed a sad and pleading expression, as if he was about to ask for something very sweet and was afraid he would be refused. ‘‘Marry her, dear heart!’’

‘‘What for?’’

‘‘Fulfill your duty before that wonderful woman! Her husband has died, and so Providence itself is showing you what to do!’’

‘‘But understand, you odd fellow, that it’s impossible. To marry without love is as mean and unworthy of a human being as to serve a liturgy without believing.’’

‘‘But it’s your duty!’’

‘‘Why is it my duty?’’ Laevsky asked with annoyance.

‘‘Because you took her away from her husband and assumed responsibility for her.’’

‘‘But I’m telling you in plain Russian: I don’t love her!’’

‘‘Well, so there’s no love, then respect her, indulge her...’

‘‘Respect her, indulge her...’ Laevsky parroted. ‘‘As if she’s a mother superior... You’re a poor psychologist and physiologist if you think that, living with a woman, you can get by with nothing but deference and respect. A woman needs the bedroom first of all.’’

‘‘Vanya, Vanya...’ Samoilenko was embarrassed.

‘‘You’re an old little boy, a theoretician, while I’m a young old man and a practician, and we’ll never understand each other. Better let’s stop this conversation. Mustafa!’’ Laevsky called out to the waiter. ‘‘How much do we owe you?’’

‘‘No, no ...’ the doctor was alarmed, seizing Laevsky by the hand. ‘‘I’ll pay it. I did the ordering. Put it on my account!’’ he called to Mustafa.

The friends got up and silently walked along the embankment. At the entrance to the boulevard they stopped and shook hands on parting.

‘‘You’re much too spoiled, gentlemen!’’ sighed Samoilenko. ‘‘Fate has sent you a young woman, beautiful, educated—and you don’t want her, but if God just gave me some lopsided old woman, provided she was gentle and kind, how pleased I’d be! I’d live with her in my little vineyard and...’

Samoilenko caught himself and said:

‘‘And the old witch would serve the samovar there.’’

Having taken leave of Laevsky, he walked down the boulevard. When, corpulent, majestic, a stern expression on his face, in his snow-white tunic and perfectly polished boots, his chest thrust out, adorned by a Vladimir with a bow,⁷ he went down the boulevard, for that time he liked himself very much, and it seemed to him that the whole world looked at him with pleasure. Not turning his head, he kept glancing from side to side and found that the boulevard was perfectly well organized, that the young cypresses, eucalyptuses, and scrawny, unattractive palm trees were very beautiful and would, with time, afford ample shade; that the Circassians were an honest and hospitable people. ‘‘Strange that Laevsky doesn’t like the Caucasus,’’ he thought, ‘‘very strange.’’ Five soldiers with rifles passed by and saluted him. On the sidewalk to the right side of the boulevard walked the wife of an official with her schoolboy son.

‘‘Good morning, Marya Konstantinovna!’’ Samoilenko called out to her, smiling pleasantly. ‘‘Have you been for a swim? Ha, ha, ha... My respects to Nikodim Alexandrych!’’

And he walked on, still smiling pleasantly, but, seeing an army medic coming towards him, he suddenly frowned, stopped him, and asked:

‘‘Is there anyone in the infirmary?’’

‘‘No one, Your Excellency.’’

‘‘Eh?’’

‘‘No one, Your Excellency.’’

‘‘Very well, on your way...’

Swaying majestically, he made for a lemonade stand, where an old, full-breasted Jewess who passed herself off as a Georgian sat behind the counter, and said to her as loudly as if he was commanding a regiment:

‘‘Be so kind as to give me a soda water!’’

II

LAEVSKY’S DISLIKE OF Nadezhda Fyodorovna expressed itself chiefly in the fact that everything she said or did seemed to him a lie or the semblance of a lie, and that everything he read against women and love seemed to him to go perfectly with himself, Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and her husband. When he came back home, she was sitting by the window, already dressed and with her hair done, drinking coffee with a preoccupied face and leafing through an issue of a thick journal, and he thought that drinking coffee was not such a remarkable event that one should make a preoccupied face at it, and that she need not have spent time on a modish hairdo, because there was no one there to attract and no reason for doing so. In the issue of the journal, he saw a lie as well. He thought she had dressed and done her hair in order to appear beautiful and was reading the journal in order to appear intelligent.

‘‘Is it all right if I go for a swim today?’’ she asked.

‘‘Why not! I suppose it won’t cause an earthquake whether you do or don’t go...’

‘‘No, I’m asking because the doctor might get angry.’’

‘‘Well, so ask the doctor. I’m not a doctor.’’

This time what Laevsky disliked most of all in Nadezhda Fyodorovna was her white, open neck and the little curls of hair on her nape, and he remembered that Anna Karenina, when she stopped loving her husband, disliked his ears first of all, and he thought: ‘‘How right that is! How right!’’ Feeling weak and empty in the head, he went to his study, lay down on the sofa, and covered his face with a handkerchief so as not to be bothered by flies. Sluggish, viscous thoughts, all about the same thing, dragged through his brain like a long wagon train on a rainy autumnal day, and he lapsed into a drowsy, oppressed state. It seemed to him that he was guilty before Nadezhda Fyodorovna and before her husband, and that he was to blame for her husband’s death. It seemed to him that he was guilty before his own life, which he had ruined, before the world of lofty ideas, knowledge, and labor, and that this wonderful world appeared possible and existent to him not here on this shore, where hungry Turks and lazy Abkhazians wandered about, but there, in the north, where there were operas, theaters, newspapers, and all forms of intellectual work. One could be honest, intelligent, lofty, and pure only there, not here. He accused himself of having no ideals or guiding idea in his life, though now he vaguely understood what that meant. Two years ago, when he had fallen in love with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, it had seemed to him that he had only to take up with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and leave with her for the Caucasus to be saved from the banality and emptiness of life; so now, too, he was certain that he had only to abandon Nadezhda Fyodorovna and leave for Petersburg to have everything he wanted.

‘‘To escape!’’ he murmured, sitting up and biting his nails. ‘‘To escape!’’

His imagination portrayed him getting on a steamer, then having breakfast, drinking cold beer, talking with the ladies on deck, then getting on a train in Sebastopol and going. Hello, freedom! Stations flash by one after another, the air turns ever colder and harsher, here are birches and firs, here is Kursk, Moscow... In the buffets, cabbage soup, lamb with kasha, sturgeon, beer, in short, no more Asiaticism, but Russia, real Russia. The passengers on the train talk about trade, new singers, Franco-Russian sympathies; everywhere you feel living, cultured, intelligent, vibrant life... Faster, faster! Here, finally, is Nevsky, Bolshaya Morskaya, and here is Kovensky Lane, where he once used to live with the students, here is the dear gray sky, the drizzling rain, the wet cabs...

‘‘Ivan Andreich!’’ someone called from the next room. ‘‘Are you at home?’’

‘‘I’m here!’’ Laevsky responded. ‘‘What do you want?’’

‘‘Papers!’’

Laevsky got up lazily, with a spinning head, and, yawning and dragging on his slippers, went to the next room. Outside, at the open window, stood one of his young colleagues laying out official papers on the windowsill.

‘‘One moment, my dear boy,’’ Laevsky said softly and went to look for an inkstand; coming back to the window, he signed the papers without reading them and said: ‘‘Hot!’’

‘‘Yes, sir. Will you be coming today?’’

‘Hardly... I’m a bit unwell. Tell Sheshkovsky, my dear boy, that I’ll stop by to see him after dinner.’’

The clerk left. Laevsky lay down on the sofa again and began to think:

‘‘So, I must weigh all the circumstances and consider. Before leaving here, I must pay my debts. I owe around two thousand roubles. I have no money... That, of course, is not important; I’ll pay part of it now somehow and send part of it later from Petersburg. The main thing is Nadezhda Fyodorovna... First of all, we must clarify our relations... Yes.’’

A little later, he considered: hadn’t he better go to Samoilenko for advice?

I could go, he thought, but what use will it be? Again I’ll speak inappropriately about the boudoir, about women, about what’s honest or dishonest. Devil take it, what talk can there be here about honest or dishonest if I have to save my life quickly, if I’m suffocating in this cursed captivity and killing myself?... It must finally be understood that to go on with a life like mine is meanness and cruelty, before which everything else is petty and insignificant. ‘‘To escape!’’ he murmured, sitting up. ‘‘To escape!’’

The deserted seashore, the relentless heat, and the monotony of the smoky purple mountains, eternally the same and silent, eternally solitary, aroused his anguish and, it seemed, lulled him to sleep and robbed him. Maybe he was very intelligent, talented, remarkably honest; maybe, if he weren’t locked in on all sides by the sea and the mountains, he would make an excellent zemstvo activist,⁸ a statesman, an orator, a publicist, a zealot. Who knows! If so, wasn’t it stupid to discuss whether it was honest or dishonest if a gifted and useful man, a musician or an artist, for example, breaks through the wall and deceives his jailers in order to escape from captivity? In the position of such a man, everything is honest.

At two o’clock Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna sat down to dinner. When the cook served them rice soup with tomatoes, Laevsky said:

‘‘The same thing every day. Why not make cabbage soup?’’

‘‘There’s no cabbage.’’

‘‘Strange. At Samoilenko’s they make cabbage soup, and Marya Konstantinovna has cabbage soup, I alone am obliged for some reason to eat this sweetish slop. It’s impossible, my dove.’’

As happens with the immense majority of spouses, formerly not a single dinner went by for Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna without caprices and scenes, but ever since Laevsky had decided that he no longer loved her, he had tried to yield to Nadezhda Fyodorovna in everything, spoke gently and politely to her, smiled, called her ‘‘my dove.’’

‘‘This soup tastes like licorice,’’ he said, smiling; he forced himself to appear affable, but he could not restrain himself and said: ‘‘Nobody looks after the household here... If you’re so sick or busy reading, then, if you please, I’ll take care of our cooking.’’

Formerly she would have replied: ‘‘Go ahead’’ or: ‘‘I see you want to make a cook out of me,’’ but now she only glanced at him timidly and blushed.

‘‘Well, how are you feeling today?’’ he asked affectionately.

‘‘Not bad today. Just a little weak.’’

‘‘You must take care of yourself, my dove. I’m terribly afraid for you.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna was sick with something. Samoilenko said she had undulant fever and gave her quinine; the other doctor, Ustimovich, a tall, lean, unsociable man who sat at home during the day and, in the evening, putting his hands behind him and holding his cane up along his spine, quietly strolled on the embankment and coughed, thought she had a feminine ailment and prescribed warm compresses. Formerly, when Laevsky loved her, Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s ailment had aroused pity and fear in him, but now he saw a lie in the ailment as well. The yellow, sleepy face, the listless gaze and fits of yawning that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had after the attacks of fever, and the fact that she lay under a plaid during the attack and looked more like a boy than a woman, and that her room was stuffy and smelled bad—all this, in his opinion, destroyed the illusion and was a protest against love and marriage.

For the second course he was served spinach with hard-boiled eggs, while Nadezhda Fyodorovna, being sick, had custard with milk. When, with a preoccupied face, she first prodded the custard with her spoon and then began lazily eating it, sipping milk along with it, and he heard her swallow, such a heavy hatred came over him that his head even began to itch. He was aware that such a feeling would be insulting even to a dog, but he was vexed not with himself but with Nadezhda Fyodorovna for arousing this feeling in him, and he understood why lovers sometimes kill their mistresses. He himself would not kill, of course, but if he had now been on a jury, he would have acquitted the murderer.

‘‘Merci, my dove,’’ he said after dinner and kissed Nadezhda Fyodorovna on the forehead.

Going to his study, he paced up and down for five minutes, looking askance at his boots, then sat down on the sofa and muttered:

‘‘To escape, to escape! To clarify our relations and escape!’’

He lay down on the sofa and again remembered that he was perhaps to blame for the death of Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s husband.

‘‘To blame a man for falling in love or falling out of love is stupid,’’ he persuaded himself as he lay there and raised his feet in order to put on his boots. ‘‘Love and hate are not in our power. As for the husband, perhaps in an indirect way I was one of the causes of his death, but, again, am I to blame that I fell in love with his wife and she with me?’’

Then he got up and, finding his peaked cap, took himself to his colleague Sheshkovsky’s, where officials gathered each day to play vint and drink cold beer.

‘‘In my indecision I am reminiscent of Hamlet,’’ Laevsky thought on the way. ‘‘How rightly Shakespeare observed it! Ah, how rightly!’’

III

SO AS NOT to be bored and to condescend to the extreme need of newcomers and the familyless who, for lack of hotels in the town, had nowhere to dine, Dr. Samoilenko kept something like a table d’hôte in his home. At the time of writing, he had only two people at his table: the young zoologist von Koren, who came to the Black Sea in the summers to study the embryology of jellyfish; and the deacon Pobedov, recently graduated from the seminary and sent to our town to take over the functions of the old deacon, who had gone away for a cure. They each paid twelve roubles a month for dinner and supper, and Samoilenko made them give their word of honor that they would appear for dinner at precisely two o’clock.

Von Koren was usually the first to come. He would sit silently in the drawing room and, taking an album from the table, begin studying attentively the faded photographs of some unknown men in wide trousers and top hats and ladies in crinolines and caps. Samoilenko remembered only a few of them by name, and of those he had forgotten he said with a sigh: ‘‘An excellent man, of the greatest intelligence!’’ Having finished with the album, von Koren would take a pistol from the shelf and, squinting his left eye, aim for a long time at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or station himself in front of the mirror and study his swarthy face, big forehead, and hair black and curly as a Negro’s, and his faded cotton shirt with large flowers, which resembled a Persian carpet, and the wide leather belt he wore instead of a waistcoat. Self-contemplation afforded him hardly less pleasure than looking at the photographs or the pistol in its costly mounting. He was very pleased with his face, and his handsomely trimmed little beard, and his broad shoulders, which served as obvious proof of his good health and sturdy build. He was also pleased with his smart outfit, starting with the tie, picked to match the color of the shirt, and ending with the yellow shoes.

While he was studying the album and standing in front of the mirror, at the same time, in the kitchen and around it, in the hall, Samoilenko, with no frock coat or waistcoat, bare-chested, excited, and drenched in sweat, fussed about the tables, preparing a salad, or some sort of sauce, or meat, cucumbers, and onions for a cold kvass soup, meanwhile angrily rolling his eyes at the orderly who was helping him, and brandishing a knife or a spoon at him.

‘‘Give me the vinegar!’’ he ordered. ‘‘I mean, not the vinegar but the olive oil!’’ he shouted, stamping his feet. ‘‘Where are you going, you brute?’’

‘‘For the oil, Your Excellency,’’ the nonplussed orderly said in a cracked tenor.

‘‘Be quick! It’s in the cupboard! And tell Darya to add some dill to the jar of pickles! Dill! Cover the sour cream, you gawk, or the flies will get into it!’’

The whole house seemed to resound with his voice. When it was ten or fifteen minutes before two, the deacon would come, a young man of about twenty-two, lean, long-haired, beardless, and with a barely noticeable mustache. Coming into the drawing room, he would cross himself in front of the icon, smile, and offer von Koren his hand.

‘‘Greetings,’’ the zoologist would say coldly. ‘‘Where have you been?’’

‘‘On the pier fishing for bullheads.’’

‘‘Well, of course... Apparently, Deacon, you’re never going to take up any work.’’

‘‘Why so? Work’s not a bear, it won’t run off to the woods,’’ the deacon would say, smiling and putting his hands into the deep pockets of his cassock.

‘‘Beating’s too good for you!’’ the zoologist would sigh.

Another fifteen or twenty minutes would go by, but dinner was not announced, and they could still hear the orderly, his boots stomping, running from the hall to the kitchen and back, and Samoilenko shouting:

‘‘Put it on the table! Where are you shoving it? Wash it first!’’

Hungry by now, the deacon and von Koren would start drumming their heels on the floor, expressing their impatience, like spectators in the gallery of a theater. At last the door would open, and the exhausted orderly would announce: ‘‘Dinner’s ready!’’ In the dining room they were met by the crimson and irate Samoilenko, stewed in the stifling kitchen. He looked at them spitefully and, with an expression of terror on his face, lifted the lid of the soup tureen and poured them each a plateful, and only when he had made sure that they were eating with appetite and liked the food did he sigh with relief and sit down in his deep armchair. His face became languid, unctuous... He unhurriedly poured himself a glass of vodka and said:

‘‘To the health of the younger generation!’’

After his conversation with Laevsky, all the time from morning till dinner, despite his excellent spirits, Samoilenko felt a slight oppression in the depths of his soul. He felt sorry for Laevsky and wanted to help him. Having drunk a glass of vodka before the soup, he sighed and said:

‘‘I saw Vanya Laevsky today. The fellow’s having a hard time of it. The material side of his life is inauspicious, but above all, he’s beset by psychology. I feel sorry for the lad.’’

‘‘There’s one person I don’t feel sorry for!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If the dear chap were drowning, I’d help him along with a stick: drown, brother, drown...’

‘‘Not true. You wouldn’t do that.’’

‘‘Why don’t you think so?’’ the zoologist shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘I’m as capable of a good deed as you are.’’

‘‘Is drowning a man a good deed?’’ the deacon asked and laughed.

‘‘Laevsky? Yes.’’

‘‘This kvass soup seems to lack something ...’ said Samoilenko, wishing to change the subject.

‘‘Laevsky is unquestionably harmful and as dangerous for society as the cholera microbe,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘Drowning him would be meritorious.’’

‘‘It’s no credit to you that you speak that way of your neighbor. Tell me, what makes you hate him?’’

‘‘Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is stupid, but to consider anyone who comes along without discrimination as your neighbor—that, I humbly thank you, that means not to reason, to renounce a just attitude towards people, to wash your hands, in short. I consider your Laevsky a scoundrel, I don’t conceal it, and I treat him like a scoundrel in good conscience. Well, but you consider him your neighbor—so go and kiss him; you consider him your neighbor, and that means you have the same relation to him as to me and the deacon—that is, none at all. You’re equally indifferent to everybody.’’

‘‘To call a man a scoundrel!’’ Samoilenko murmured, wincing scornfully. ‘‘That’s so wrong, I can’t even tell you!’’

‘‘One judges people by their actions,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘So judge now, Deacon... I shall talk to you, Deacon. The activity of Mr. Laevsky is openly unrolled before you like a long Chinese scroll, and you can read it from beginning to end. What has he done in the two years he’s been living here? Let’s count on our fingers. First, he has taught the town inhabitants to play vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everybody plays vint from morning till night, even women and adolescents; second, he has taught the townspeople to drink beer, which was also unknown here; to him they also owe a knowledge of various kinds of vodka, so that they can now tell Koshelev’s from Smirnov’s No. 21 blindfolded. Third, before, they lived with other men’s wives here secretly, for the same motives that thieves steal secretly and not openly; adultery was considered something that it was shameful to expose to general view; Laevsky appears to be a pioneer in that respect: he lives openly with another man’s wife. Fourth...’

Von Koren quickly ate his kvass soup and handed the plate to the orderly.

‘‘I understood Laevsky in the very first month of our acquaintance,’’ he went on, addressing the deacon. ‘‘We arrived here at the same time. People like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity, and the like, because they always need company for vint, drinking, and eating; besides, they’re babblers and need an audience. We became friends, that is, he loafed about my place every day, preventing me from working and indulging in confidences about his kept woman. From the very first, he struck me with his extraordinary falseness, which simply made me sick. In the quality of a friend, I chided him, asking why he drank so much, why he lived beyond his means and ran up debts, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little culture and so little knowledge, and in answer to all my questions, he would smile bitterly, sigh, and say: ‘I’m a luckless fellow, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you want, old boy, from us remnants of serfdom,’ or ‘We’re degenerating...’ Or he would start pouring out some lengthy drivel about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov,⁹ of whom he said: ‘They are our fathers in flesh and spirit.’ Meaning he is not to blame that official packets lie unopened for weeks and that he drinks and gets others to drink, but the blame goes to Onegin, Pechorin, and Turgenev, who invented the luckless fellow and the superfluous man. The cause of extreme licentiousness and outrageousness, as you see, lies not in him but somewhere outside, in space. And besides—clever trick!— it’s not he alone who is dissolute, false, and vile, but we... ‘we, the people of the eighties,’ ‘we, the sluggish and nervous spawn of serfdom,’ ‘civilization has crippled us...’ In short, we should understand that such a great man as Laevsky is also great in his fall; that his dissoluteness, ignorance, and unscrupulousness constitute a natural-historical phenomenon, sanctified by necessity; that the causes here are cosmic, elemental, and Laevsky should have an icon lamp hung before him, because he is a fatal victim of the times, the trends, heredity, and the rest. All the officials and ladies oh’d and ah’d, listening to him, but I couldn’t understand for a long time whom I was dealing with: a cynic or a clever huckster. Subjects like him, who look intelligent, are slightly educated, and talk a lot about their own nobility, can pretend to be extraordinarily complex natures.’’

‘‘Quiet!’’ Samoilenko flared up. ‘‘I won’t allow bad things to be said in my presence about a very noble man!’’

‘‘Don’t interrupt, Alexander Davidych,’’ von Koren said coldly. ‘‘I’ll finish presently. Laevsky is a rather uncomplicated organism. Here is his moral structure: in the morning, slippers, bathing, and coffee; then up till dinner, slippers, constitutional, and talk; at two o’clock, slippers, dinner, and drink; at five o’clock, bathing, tea, and drink, then vint and lying; at ten o’clock, supper and drink; and after midnight, sleep and la femme. His existence is confined within this tight program like an egg in its shell. Whether he walks, sits, gets angry, writes, rejoices—everything comes down to drink, cards, slippers, and women. Women play a fatal, overwhelming role in his life. He himself tells us that at the age of thirteen, he was already in love; when he was a first-year student, he lived with a lady who had a beneficial influence on him and to whom he owes his musical education. In his second year, he bought out a prostitute from a brothel and raised her to his level—that is, kept her—but she lived with him for about half a year and fled back to her madam, and this flight caused him no little mental suffering. Alas, he suffered so much that he had to leave the university and live at home for two years, doing nothing. But that was for the better. At home he got involved with a widow who advised him to leave the law department and study philology. And so he did. On finishing his studies, he fell passionately in love with his present... what’s her name? ... the married one, and had to run away with her here to the Caucasus, supposedly in pursuit of ideals... Any day now he’ll fall out of love with her and flee back to Petersburg, also in pursuit of ideals.’’

‘‘How do you know?’’ Samoilenko growled, looking at the zoologist with spite. ‘‘Better just eat.’’

Poached mullet with Polish sauce was served. Samoilenko placed a whole mullet on each of his boarders’ plates and poured the sauce over it with his own hands. A couple of minutes passed in silence.

‘‘Women play an essential role in every man’s life,’’ said the deacon. ‘‘There’s nothing to be done about it.’’

‘‘Yes, but to what degree? For each of us, woman is a mother, a sister, a wife, a friend, but for Laevsky, she is all that—and at the same time only a mistress. She—that is, cohabiting with her—is the happiness and goal of his life; he is merry, sad, dull, disappointed—on account of a woman; he’s sick of his life—it’s the woman’s fault; the dawn of a new life breaks, ideals are found—look for a woman here as well... He’s only satisfied by those writings or paintings that have a woman in them. Our age, in his opinion, is bad and worse than the forties and the sixties only because we are unable to give ourselves with self-abandon to amorous ecstasy and passion. These sensualists must have a special growth in their brain, like a sarcoma, that presses on the brain and controls their whole psychology. Try observing Laevsky when he’s sitting somewhere in society. You’ll notice that when, in his presence, you raise some general question, for instance about cells or instincts, he sits to one side, doesn’t speak or listen; he has a languid, disappointed air, nothing interests him, it’s all banal and worthless; but as soon as you start talking about males and females, about the fact, for instance, that the female spider eats the male after fertilization, his eyes light up with curiosity, his face brightens, and, in short, the man revives! All his thoughts, however noble, lofty, or disinterested, always have one and the same point of common convergence. You walk down the street with him and meet, say, a donkey... ‘Tell me, please,’ he asks, ‘what would happen if a female donkey was coupled with a camel?’ And his dreams! Has he told you his dreams? It’s magnificent! Now he dreams he’s marrying the moon, then that he’s summoned by the police, and there they order him to live with a guitar...’

The deacon burst into ringing laughter; Samoilenko frowned and wrinkled his face angrily, so as not to laugh, but could not help himself and guffawed.

‘‘That’s all lies!’’ he said, wiping his tears. ‘‘By God, it’s lies!’’

IV

THE DEACON WAS much given to laughter and laughed at every trifle till his sides ached, till he dropped. It looked as though he liked being among people only because they had funny qualities and could be given funny nicknames. Samoilenko he called ‘‘the tarantula,’’ his orderly ‘‘the drake,’’ and he was delighted when von Koren once called Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna ‘‘macaques.’’ He peered greedily into people’s faces, listened without blinking, and you could see his eyes fill with laughter and his face strain in anticipation of the moment when he could let himself go and rock with laughter.

‘‘He’s a corrupted and perverted subject,’’ the zoologist went on, and the deacon, in anticipation of funny words, fastened his eyes on him. ‘‘It’s not everywhere you can meet such a nonentity. His body is limp, feeble, and old, and in his intellect he in no way differs from a fat merchant’s wife, who only feeds, guzzles, sleeps on a featherbed, and keeps her coachman as a lover.’’

The deacon guffawed again.

‘‘Don’t laugh, Deacon,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘it’s stupid, finally. I’d pay no attention to this nonentity,’’ he went on, after waiting for the deacon to stop guffawing, ‘‘I’d pass him by, if he weren’t so harmful and dangerous. His harmfulness consists first of all in the fact that he has success with women and thus threatens to have progeny, that is, to give the world a dozen Laevskys as feeble and perverted as himself. Second, he’s contagious in the highest degree. I’ve already told you about the vint and the beer. Another year or two and he’ll conquer the whole Caucasian coast. You know to what degree the masses, especially their middle stratum, believe in the intelligentsia, in university education, in highborn manners and literary speech. Whatever vileness he may commit, everyone will believe that it’s good, that it should be so, since he is an intellectual, a liberal, and a university man. Besides, he’s a luckless fellow, a superfluous man, a neurasthenic, a victim of the times, and that means he’s allowed to do anything. He’s a sweet lad, a good soul, he’s so genuinely tolerant of human weaknesses; he’s complaisant, yielding, obliging, he’s not proud, you can drink with him, and use foul language, and gossip a bit... The masses, always inclined to anthropomorphism in religion and morality, like most of all these little idols that have the same weaknesses as themselves. Consider, then, what a wide field for contagion! Besides, he’s not a bad actor, he’s a clever hypocrite, and he knows perfectly well what o’clock it is. Take his dodges and tricks—his attitude to civilization, for instance. He has no notion of civilization, and yet: ‘Ah, how crippled we are by civilization! Ah, how I envy the savages, those children of nature, who know no civilization!’ We’re to understand, you see, that once upon a time he devoted himself heart and soul to civilization, served it, comprehended it thoroughly, but it exhausted, disappointed, deceived him; you see, he’s a Faust, a second Tolstoy... He treats Schopenhauer¹⁰ and Spencer like little boys and gives them a fatherly slap on the shoulder: ‘Well, how’s things, Spencer, old boy?’ He hasn’t read Spencer, of course, but how sweet he is when he says of his lady, with a slight, careless irony: ‘She’s read Spencer!’ And people listen to him, and nobody wants to understand that this charlatan has no right not only to speak of Spencer in that tone but merely to kiss Spencer’s bootsole! Undermining civilization, authority, other people’s altars, slinging mud, winking at them like a buffoon only in order to justify and conceal one’s feebleness and moral squalor, is possible only for a vain, mean, and vile brute.’’

‘‘I don’t know what you want from him, Kolya,’’ said Samoilenko, looking at the zoologist now not with anger but guiltily. ‘‘He’s the same as everybody. Of course, he’s not without weaknesses, but he stands on the level of modern ideas, he serves, he’s useful to his fatherland. Ten years ago an old man served as an agent here, a man of the greatest intelligence... He used to say . . .’

‘‘Come, come!’’ the zoologist interrupted. ‘‘You say he serves. But how does he serve? Have the ways here become better and the officials more efficient, more honest and polite, because he appeared? On the contrary, by his authority as an intellectual, university man, he only sanctions their indiscipline. He’s usually efficient only on the twentieth, when he receives his salary, and on the other days he only shuffles around the house in slippers and tries to make it look as if he’s doing the Russian government a great favor by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexander Davidych, don’t defend him. You’re insincere from start to finish. If you actually loved him and considered him your neighbor, first of all you wouldn’t be indifferent to his weaknesses, you wouldn’t indulge them, but would try, for his own good, to render him harmless.’’

‘‘That is?’’

‘‘Render him harmless. Since he’s incorrigible, there’s only one way he can be rendered harmless...’

Von Koren drew a finger across his neck.

‘‘Or drown him, maybe...’ he added. ‘‘In the interests of mankind and in their own interests, such people should be destroyed. Without fail.’’

‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko murmured, getting up and looking with astonishment at the zoologist’s calm, cold face. ‘‘Deacon, what is he saying? Are you in your right mind?’’

‘‘I don’t insist on the death penalty,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If that has been proved harmful, think up something else. It’s impossible to destroy Laevsky—well, then isolate him, depersonalize him, send him to common labor...’

‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko was horrified. ‘‘With pepper, with pepper!’’ he shouted in a desperate voice, noticing that the deacon was eating his stuffed zucchini without pepper. ‘‘You, a man of the greatest intelligence, what are you saying?! To send our friend, a proud man, an intellectual, to common labor!!’’

‘‘And if he’s proud and starts to resist—clap him in irons!’’

Samoilenko could no longer utter a single word and only twisted his fingers; the deacon looked at his stunned, truly ridiculous face and burst out laughing.

‘‘Let’s stop talking about it,’’ the zoologist said. ‘‘Remember only one thing, Alexander Davidych, that primitive mankind was protected from the likes of Laevsky by the struggle for existence and selection; but nowadays our culture has considerably weakened the struggle and the selection, and we ourselves must take care of destroying the feeble and unfit, or else, as the Laevskys multiply, civilization will perish and mankind will become totally degenerate. It will be our fault.’’

‘‘If it comes to drowning and hanging people,’’ said Samoilenko, ‘‘then to hell with your civilization, to hell with mankind! To hell! I’ll tell you this: you’re a man of the greatest learning and intelligence, and the pride of our fatherland, but you’ve been spoiled by the Germans. Yes, the Germans! The Germans!’’

Since leaving Dorpat,¹¹ where he had studied medicine, Samoilenko had seldom seen Germans and had not read a single German book, but in his opinion, all the evil in politics and science proceeded from the Germans. Where he had acquired such an opinion, he himself was unable to say, but he held fast to it.

‘‘Yes, the Germans!’’ he repeated once more. ‘‘Let’s go and have tea.’’

The three men got up, put on their hats, went to the front garden, and sat down there under the shade of pale maples, pear trees, and a chestnut. The zoologist and the deacon sat on a bench near a little table, and Samoilenko lowered himself into a wicker chair with a broad, sloping back. The orderly brought tea, preserves, and a bottle of syrup.

It was very hot, about ninety-two in the shade. The torrid air congealed, unmoving, and a long spiderweb, dangling from the chestnut to the ground, hung slackly and did not stir.

The deacon took up the guitar that always lay on the ground by the table, tuned it, and began to sing in a soft, thin little voice: ‘‘ ‘Seminary youths stood nigh the pot-house ...’ ’ but at once fell silent from the heat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked up at the hot blue sky. Samoilenko dozed off; the torrid heat, the silence, and the sweet after-dinner drowsiness that quickly came over all his members left him weak and drunk; his arms hung down, his eyes grew small, his head lolled on his chest. He looked at von Koren and the deacon with tearful tenderness and murmured:

‘‘The younger generation . .. A star of science and a luminary of the Church... This long-skirted alleluia may someday pop up as a metropolitan, ¹² for all I know, I may have to kiss his hand... So what... God grant it...’

Soon snoring was heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tea and went out to the street.

‘‘Going back to the pier to fish for bullheads?’’ asked the zoologist.

‘‘No, it’s too hot.’’

‘‘Let’s go to my place. You can wrap a parcel for me and do some copying. Incidentally, we can discuss what you’re going to do with yourself. You must work, Deacon. It’s impossible like this.’’

‘‘Your words are just and logical,’’ said the deacon, ‘‘but my laziness finds its excuse in the circumstances of my present life. You know yourself that an uncertainty of position contributes significantly to people’s apathy. God alone knows whether I’ve been sent here for a time or forever; I live here in uncertainty, while my wife languishes at her father’s and misses me. And, I confess, my brains have melted from the heat.’’

‘‘That’s all nonsense,’’ said the zoologist. ‘‘You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without a wife. It won’t do to pamper yourself. You must keep yourself in hand.’’

V

NADEZHDA FYODOROVNA WAS going to swim in the morning, followed by her kitchen maid, Olga, who was carrying a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge. Two unfamiliar steamships with dirty white stacks stood at anchor in the roads, evidently foreign freighters. Some men in white, with white shoes, were walking about the pier and shouting loudly in French, and answering calls came from the ships. The bells were ringing briskly in the small town church.

‘‘Today is Sunday!’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna recalled with pleasure.

She felt perfectly well and was in a gay, festive mood. Wearing a new loose dress of coarse man’s tussore and a big straw hat, its wide brim bent down sharply to her ears, so that her face looked out of it as if out of a box, she fancied herself very sweet. She was thinking that in the whole town there was only one young, beautiful, intelligent woman—herself— and that she alone knew how to dress cheaply, elegantly, and with taste. For example, this dress had cost only twenty-two roubles, and yet how sweet it was! In the whole town, she alone could still attract men, and there were many, and therefore, willy-nilly, they should all envy Laevsky.

She was glad that lately Laevsky had been cold, politely restrained, and at times even impertinent and rude with her; to all his outbursts and all his scornful, cold, or strange, incomprehensible glances, she would formerly have responded with tears, reproaches, and threats to leave him, or to starve herself to death, but now her response was merely to blush, to glance at him guiltily and be glad that he was not nice to her. If he rebuked her or threatened her, it would be still better and more agreeable, because she felt herself roundly guilty before him. It seemed to her that she was guilty, first, because she did not sympathize with his dreams of a life of labor, for the sake of which he had abandoned Petersburg and come here to the Caucasus, and she was certain that he had been cross with her lately precisely for that. As she was going to the Caucasus, it had seemed to her that on the very first day, she would find there a secluded nook on the coast, a cozy garden with shade, birds, brooks, where she could plant flowers and vegetables, raise ducks and chickens, receive neighbors, treat poor muzhiks and distribute books to them; but it turned out that the Caucasus was bare mountains, forests, and enormous valleys, where you had to spend a long time choosing, bustling about, building, and that there weren’t any neighbors there, and it was very hot, and they could be robbed. Laevsky was in no rush to acquire a plot; she was glad of that, and it was as if they both agreed mentally never to mention the life of labor. He was silent, she thought, that meant he was angry with her for being silent.

Second, over those two years, unknown to him, she had bought all sorts of trifles in Atchmianov’s shop for as much as three hundred roubles. She had bought now a bit of fabric, then some silk, then an umbrella, and the debt had imperceptibly mounted.

‘‘I’ll tell him about it today ...’ she decided, but at once realized that, given Laevsky’s present mood, it was hardly opportune to talk to him about debts.

Third, she had already twice received Kirilin, the police chief, in Laevsky’s absence: once in the morning, when Laevsky had gone to swim, and the other time at midnight, when he was playing cards. Remembering it, Nadezhda Fyodorovna flushed all over and turned to look at the kitchen maid, as if fearing she might eavesdrop on her thoughts. The long, unbearably hot, boring days, the beautiful, languorous evenings, the stifling nights, and this whole life, when one did not know from morning to evening how to spend the useless time, and the importunate thoughts that she was the most beautiful young woman in town and that her youth was going for naught, and Laevsky himself, an honest man with ideas, but monotonous, eternally shuffling in his slippers, biting his nails, and boring her with his caprices— resulted in her being gradually overcome with desires, and, like a madwoman, she thought day and night about one and the same thing. In her breathing, in her glance, in the tone of her voice, and in her gait—all she felt was desire; the sound of the sea told her she had to love, so did the evening darkness, so did the mountains... And when Kirilin began to court her, she had no strength, she could not and did not want to resist, and she gave herself to him...

Now the foreign steamships and people in white reminded her for some reason of a vast hall; along with the French talk, the sounds of a waltz rang in her ears, and her breast trembled with causeless joy. She wanted to dance and speak French.

She reasoned joyfully that there was nothing terrible in her infidelity; her soul took no part in it; she continues to love Laevsky, and that is obvious from the fact that she is jealous of him, pities him, and misses him when he’s not at home. Kirilin turned out to be so-so, a bit crude, though handsome; she’s broken everything off with him, and there won’t be anything more. What there was is past, it’s nobody’s business, and if Laevsky finds out, he won’t believe it.

There was only one bathing cabin on the shore, for women; the men bathed under the open sky. Going into the bathing cabin, Nadezhda Fyodorovna found an older lady there, Marya Konstantinovna Bitiugov, the wife of an official, and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Katya, a schoolgirl; the two were sitting on a bench undressing. Marya Konstantinovna was a kind, rapturous, and genteel person who spoke in a drawl and with pathos. Until the age of thirty-two, she had lived as a governess, then she married the official Bitiugov, a small bald person who brushed his hair forward on his temples and was very placid. She was still in love with him, was jealous, blushed at the word ‘‘love,’’ and assured everyone that she was very happy.

‘‘My dear!’’ she said rapturously, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna and giving her face the expression that all her acquaintances called ‘‘almond butter.’’ ‘‘Darling, how nice that you’ve come! We’ll bathe together—that’s charming!’’

Olga quickly threw off her dress and chemise and began to undress her mistress.

‘‘The weather’s not so hot today as yesterday, isn’t that so?’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, shrinking under the rough touch of the naked kitchen maid. ‘‘Yesterday it was so stifling I nearly died.’’

‘‘Oh, yes, my dear! I nearly suffocated myself. Would you believe, yesterday I went bathing three times ... imagine, my dear, three times! Even Nikodim Alexandrych got worried.’’

‘‘How can they be so unattractive?’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna, glancing at Olga and the official’s wife. She looked at Katya and thought: ‘‘The girl’s not badly built.’’

‘‘Your Nikodim Alexandrych is very, very sweet!’’ she said. ‘‘I’m simply in love with him.’’

‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ Marya Konstantinovna laughed forcedly. ‘‘That’s charming!’’

Having freed herself of her clothes, Nadezhda Fyodorovna felt a wish to fly. And it seemed to her that if she waved her arms, she would certainly take off. Undressed, she noticed that Olga was looking squeamishly at her white body. Olga, married to a young soldier, lived with her lawful husband and therefore considered herself better and higher than her mistress. Nadezhda Fyodorovna also felt that Marya Konstantinovna and Katya did not respect her and were afraid of her. That was unpleasant, and to raise herself in their opinion, she said:

‘‘It’s now the height of the dacha season¹³ in Petersburg. My husband and I have so many acquaintances! We really must go and visit them.’’

‘‘It seems your husband’s an engineer?’’ Marya Konstantinovna asked timidly.

‘‘I’m speaking of Laevsky. He has many acquaintances. But unfortunately his mother, a proud aristocrat, rather limited...’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna did not finish and threw herself into the water; Marya Konstantinovna and Katya went in after her.

‘‘Our society has many prejudices,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna continued, ‘‘and life is not as easy as it seems.’’

Marya Konstantinovna, who had served as a governess in aristocratic families and knew something about society, said:

‘‘Oh, yes! Would you believe, at the Garatynskys’ it was

absolutely required that one dress both for lunch and for dinner, so that, like an actress, besides my salary, I also received money for my wardrobe.’’

She placed herself between Nadezhda Fyodorovna and Katya, as if screening her daughter from the water that lapped at Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Through the open door that gave onto the sea, they could see someone swimming about a hundred paces from the bathing cabin.

‘‘Mama, it’s our Kostya!’’ said Katya.

‘‘Ah, ah!’’ Marya Konstantinovna clucked in fright. ‘‘Ah! Kostya,’’ she cried, ‘‘go back! Go back, Kostya!’’

Kostya, a boy of about fourteen, to show off his bravery before his mother and sister, dove and swam further out, but got tired and hastened back, and by his grave, strained face, one could see that he did not believe in his strength.

‘‘These boys are trouble, darling!’’ Marya Konstantinovna said, calming down. ‘‘He can break his neck any moment. Ah, darling, it’s so pleasant and at the same time so difficult to be a mother! One’s afraid of everything.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna put on her straw hat and threw herself out into the sea. She swam some thirty feet away and turned on her back. She could see the sea as far as the horizon, the ships, the people on the shore, the town, and all of it, together with the heat and the transparent, caressing waves, stirred her and whispered to her that she must live, live... A sailboat raced swiftly past her, energetically cleaving the waves and the air; the man who sat at the tiller looked at her, and she found it pleasing to be looked at...

After bathing, the ladies dressed and went off together.

‘‘I have a fever every other day, and yet I don’t get thinner,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna said, licking her lips, which were salty from bathing, and responding with smiles to the bows of acquaintances. ‘‘I’ve always been plump, and now it seems I’m plumper still.’’

‘‘That, darling, is a matter of disposition. If someone is not disposed to plumpness, like me, for instance, no sort of food will help. But darling, you’ve got your hat all wet.’’

‘‘Never mind, it will dry.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna again saw people in white walking on the embankment and talking in French; and for some reason, joy again stirred in her breast, and she vaguely remembered some great hall in which she had once danced, or of which, perhaps, she had once dreamed. And something in the very depths of her soul vaguely and dully whispered to her that she was a petty, trite, trashy, worthless woman...

Marya Konstantinovna stopped at her gate and invited her to come in for a moment.

‘‘Come in, my dear!’’ she said in a pleading voice, at the same time looking at Nadezhda Fyodorovna with anguish and hope: maybe she’ll refuse and not come in!

‘‘With pleasure,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna accepted. ‘‘You know how I love calling on you!’’

And she went into the house. Marya Konstantinovna seated her, gave her coffee, offered her some sweet rolls, then showed her photographs of her former charges, the young Garatynsky ladies, who were all married now, and also showed her Katya’s and Kostya’s grades at the examinations; the grades were very good, but to make them look still better, she sighed and complained about how difficult it was now to study in high school... She attended to her visitor, and at the same time pitied her, and suffered from the thought that Nadezhda Fyodorovna, by her presence, might have a bad influence on Katya’s and Kostya’s morals, and she was glad that her Nikodim Alexandrych was not at home. Since, in her opinion, all men liked ‘‘such women,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna might have a bad influence on Nikodim Alexandrych as well.

As she talked with her visitor, Marya Konstantinovna remembered all the while that there was to be a picnic that evening and that von Koren had insistently asked that the macaques—that is, Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna—not be told about it, but she accidentally let it slip, turned all red, and said in confusion:

‘‘I hope you’ll be there, too!’’

VI

THE ARRANGEMENT WAS to go seven miles out of town on the road to the south, stop by the dukhan¹⁴ at the confluence of the two rivers—the Black and the Yellow—and cook fish soup there. They set out shortly after five. At the head of them all, in a charabanc, rode Samoilenko and Laevsky; after them, in a carriage drawn by a troika, came Marya Konstantinovna, Nadezhda Fyodorovna, Katya, and Kostya; with them came a basket of provisions and dishes. In the next equipage rode the police chief Kirilin and the young Atchmianov, the son of that same merchant Atchmianov to whom Nadezhda Fyodorovna owed three hundred roubles, and on a little stool facing them, his legs tucked under, sat Nikodim Alexandrych, small, neat, with his hair brushed forward. Behind them all rode von Koren and the deacon; at the deacon’s feet was a basket of fish.

‘‘Keep r-r-right!’’ Samoilenko shouted at the top of his lungs whenever they met a native cart or an Abkhazian riding a donkey.

‘‘In two years, when I have the means and the people ready, I’ll go on an expedition,’’ von Koren was telling the deacon. ‘‘I’ll follow the coast from Vladivostok to the Bering Straits and then from the Straits to the mouth of the Yenisei. We’ll draw a map, study the flora and fauna, and undertake thorough geological, anthropological, and ethnographic investigations. Whether you come with me or not is up to you.’’

‘‘It’s impossible,’’ said the deacon.

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘I’m attached, a family man.’’

‘‘The deaconess will let you go. We’ll provide for her. It would be still better if you persuaded her, for the common good, to be tonsured a nun; that would also enable you to be tonsured and join the expedition as a hieromonk.¹⁵ I could arrange it for you.’’

The deacon was silent.

‘‘Do you know your theology well?’’ asked the zoologist.

‘‘Poorly.’’

‘Hm... I can’t give you any guidance in that regard, because I have little acquaintance with theology. Give me a list of the books you need, and I’ll send them to you from Petersburg in the winter. You’ll also have to read the notes of clerical travelers: you sometimes find good ethnographers and connoisseurs of Oriental languages among them. When you’ve familiarized yourself with their manner, it will be easier for you to set to work. Well, and while there are no books, don’t waste time, come to me, and we’ll study the compass, go through some meteorology. It’s all much needed.’’

‘‘Maybe so ...’ the deacon murmured and laughed. ‘‘I’ve asked for a post in central Russia, and my uncle the archpriest has promised to help me in that. If I go with you, it will turn out that I’ve bothered him for nothing.’’

‘‘I don’t understand your hesitation. If you go on being an ordinary deacon, who only has to serve on feast days and rests from work all the other days, even after ten years you’ll still be the same as you are now; the only addition will be a mustache and a little beard, whereas if you come back from an expedition after the same ten years, you’ll be a different man, enriched by the awareness of having accomplished something.’’

Cries of terror and delight came from the ladies’ carriage. The carriages were driving along a road carved into the sheer cliff of the rocky coast, and it seemed to them all that they were riding on a shelf attached to a high wall, and that the carriages were about to fall into the abyss. To the right spread the sea, to the left an uneven brown wall with black spots, red veins, and creeping roots, and above, bending over as if with fear and curiosity, curly evergreens looked down. A minute later, there were shrieks and laughter again: they had to drive under an enormous overhanging rock.

‘‘I don’t understand why the devil I’m coming with you,’’ said Laevsky. ‘‘How stupid and banal! I need to go north, to escape, to save myself, and for some reason I’m going on this foolish picnic.’’

‘‘But just look at this panorama!’’ Samoilenko said to him as the horses turned left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into view, and the river itself glistened—yellow, turbid, mad...

‘‘I don’t see anything good in it, Sasha,’’ replied Laevsky. ‘‘To constantly go into raptures over nature is to show the paucity of your imagination. All these brooks and cliffs are nothing but trash compared to what my imagination can give me.’’

The carriages were now driving along the riverbank. The high, mountainous banks gradually converged, the valley narrowed, and ahead was what looked like a gorge; the stony mountain they were driving along had been knocked together by nature out of huge stones, which crushed each other with such terrible force that Samoilenko involuntarily grunted each time he looked at them. The somber and beautiful mountain was cut in places by narrow crevices and gorges that breathed dampness and mysteriousness on the travelers; through the gorges, other mountains could be seen, brown, pink, purple, smoky, or flooded with bright light. From time to time, as they drove past the gorges, they could hear water falling from a height somewhere and splashing against the rocks.

‘‘Ah, cursed mountains,’’ sighed Laevsky, ‘‘I’m so sick of them!’’

At the place where the Black River fell into the Yellow River and its water, black as ink, dirtied the yellow water and struggled with it, the Tartar Kerbalai’s dukhan stood by the side of the road, with a Russian flag on the roof and a sign written in chalk: ‘‘The Pleasant Dukhan.’’ Next to it was a small garden surrounded by a wattle fence, where tables and benches stood, and a single cypress, beautiful and somber, towered over the pitiful thorny bushes.

Kerbalai, a small, nimble Tartar in a blue shirt and white apron, stood in the road and, holding his stomach, bowed low to the approaching carriages and, smiling, showed his gleaming white teeth.

‘‘Greetings, Kerbalaika!’’ Samoilenko called out to him. ‘‘We’ll drive on a little further, and you bring us a samovar and some chairs! Step lively!’’

Kerbalai kept nodding his cropped head and muttering something, and only those sitting in the last carriage could hear clearly: ‘‘There are trout, Your Excellency!’’

‘‘Bring them, bring them!’’ von Koren said to him.

Having driven some five hundred paces past the dukhan, the carriages stopped. Samoilenko chose a small meadow strewn with stones suitable for sitting on, and where a tree brought down by a storm lay with torn-up, shaggy roots and dry yellow needles. A flimsy log bridge had been thrown across the river at this spot, and on the other bank, just opposite, a shed for drying corn stood on four short pilings, looking like the fairy-tale hut on chicken’s legs.¹⁶ A ladder led down from its doorway.

The first impression everyone had was that they would never get out of there. On all sides, wherever one looked, towering mountains loomed up, and the evening shadow was approaching quickly, quickly, from the direction of the dukhan and the somber cypress, and that made the narrow, curved valley of the Black River seem narrower and the mountains higher. One could hear the murmuring of the river and the constant trilling of cicadas.

‘‘Charming!’’ said Marya Konstantinovna, inhaling deeply with rapture. ‘‘Children, see how good it is! What silence!’’

‘‘Yes, it is good, in fact,’’ agreed Laevsky, who liked the view and, for some reason, when he looked at the sky and then at the blue smoke coming from the chimney of the dukhan, suddenly grew sad. ‘‘Yes, it’s good!’’ he repeated.

‘‘Ivan Andreich, describe this view!’’ Marya Konstantinovna said tearfully.

‘‘What for?’’ asked Laevsky. ‘‘The impression is better than any description. When writers babble about this wealth of colors and sounds that we all receive from nature by way of impressions, they make it ugly and unrecognizable.’’

‘‘Do they?’’ von Koren asked coldly, choosing for himself the biggest stone by the water and trying to climb up and sit on it. ‘‘Do they?’’ he repeated, staring fixedly at Laevsky. ‘‘And Romeo and Juliet? And Pushkin’s Ukrainian night,¹⁷ for instance? Nature should come and bow down at its feet.’’

‘Perhaps ...’ agreed Laevsky, too lazy to reason and object. ‘‘However,’’ he said a little later, ‘‘what are Romeo and Juliet essentially? A beautiful, poetic, sacred love—roses under which they want to hide the rot. Romeo is the same animal as everyone else.’’

‘‘Whatever one talks with you about, you always bring it all down to...’

Von Koren looked at Katya and did not finish.

‘‘What do I bring it down to?’’ asked Laevsky.

‘‘Somebody says to you, for instance, ‘How beautiful is a bunch of grapes!’ and you say, ‘Yes, but how ugly when it’s chewed and digested in the stomach.’ Why say that? It’s not new and ... generally, it’s a strange manner you have.’’

Laevsky knew that von Koren did not like him, and he was therefore afraid of him and felt in his presence as if they were all crowded together and somebody was standing behind his back. He said nothing in reply, walked away, and regretted that he had come.

‘‘Gentlemen, off you go to fetch brush for the fire!’’ commanded Samoilenko.

They all wandered off at random, and the only ones who stayed put were Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandrych. Kerbalai brought chairs, spread a rug on the ground, and set down several bottles of wine. The police chief, Kirilin, a tall, imposing man who wore an overcoat over his tunic in all weather, with his haughty bearing, pompous stride, and thick, somewhat rasping voice, resembled all provincial police chiefs of the younger generation. His expression was sad and sleepy, as though he had just been awakened against his wishes.

‘‘What is this you’ve brought, you brute?’’ he asked Kerbalai, slowly enunciating each word. ‘‘I told you to serve Kvareli, and what have you brought, you Tartar mug? Eh? What?’’

‘‘We have a lot of wine of our own, Egor Alexeich,’’ Nikodim Alexandrych observed timidly and politely.

‘‘What, sir? But I want my wine to be there, too. I’m taking part in the picnic, and I presume I have every right to contribute my share. I pre-sume! Bring ten bottles of Kvareli!’’

‘‘Why so many?’’ Nikodim Alexandrych, who knew that Kirilin had no money, was surprised.

‘‘Twenty bottles! Thirty!’’ cried Kirilin.

‘‘Never mind, let him!’’ Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandrych. ‘‘I’ll pay.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna was in a gay, mischievous mood. She wanted to leap, laugh, exclaim, tease, flirt. In her cheap calico dress with blue flecks, red shoes, and the same straw hat, it seemed to her that she was small, simple, light and airy as a butterfly. She ran out on the flimsy bridge and looked into the water for a moment to make herself dizzy, then cried out and, laughing, ran across to the drying shed, and it seemed to her that all the men, even Kerbalai, admired her. When, in the swiftly falling darkness, the trees were merging with the mountains, the horses with the carriages, and a little light shone in the windows of the dukhan, she climbed a path that wound up the mountainside between the stones and thorny bushes and sat on a stone. Below, the fire was already burning. Near the fire, the deacon moved with rolled-up sleeves, and his long black shadow circled radius-like around the flames. He kept putting on more brush and stirring the pot with a spoon tied to a long stick. Samoilenko, with a copper-red face, bustled about the fire as in his own kitchen and shouted fiercely:

‘‘Where’s the salt, gentlemen? Did you forget it? Why are you all sitting around like landowners, and I’m the only one bustling about?’’

Laevsky and Nikodim Alexandrych sat next to each other on the fallen tree and gazed pensively at the fire. Marya Konstantinovna, Katya, and Kostya were taking the tea service and plates out of the baskets. Von Koren, his arms crossed and one foot placed on a stone, stood on the bank just beside the water and thought about something. Red patches from the fire, together with shadows, moved on the ground near the dark human figures, trembled on the mountainside, on the trees, on the bridge, on the drying shed; on the other side, the steep, eroded bank was all lit up, flickered, and was reflected in the river, and the swift-running, turbulent water tore its reflection to pieces.

The deacon went for the fish, which Kerbalai was cleaning and washing on the bank, but halfway there, he stopped and looked around.

‘‘My God, how good!’’ he thought. ‘‘The people, the stones, the fire, the twilight, the ugly tree—nothing more, but how good!’’

On the far bank, by the drying shed, some unknown people appeared. Because the light flickered and the smoke from the fire was carried to the other side, it was impossible to make out these people all at once, but they caught glimpses now of a shaggy hat and a gray beard, now of a blue shirt, now of rags hanging from shoulders to knees and a dagger across the stomach, now of a swarthy young face with black brows, as thick and bold as if they had been drawn with charcoal. About five of them sat down on the ground in a circle, while the other five went to the drying shed. One stood in the doorway with his back to the fire and, putting his hands behind him, began telling something that must have been very interesting, because, when Samoilenko added more brush and the fire blazed up, spraying sparks and brightly illuminating the drying barn, two physiognomies could be seen looking out the door, calm, expressing deep attention, and the ones sitting in a circle also turned and began listening to the story. A little later, the ones sitting in a circle began softly singing something drawn-out, melodious, like church singing during Lent... Listening to them, the deacon imagined how it would be with him in ten years, when he came back from the expedition: a young hieromonk, a missionary, an author with a name and a splendid past; he is ordained archimandrite, then bishop; he serves the liturgy in a cathedral; in a golden mitre with a panagia, he comes out to the ambo and, blessing the mass of people with the trikíri and dikíri, proclaims: ‘‘Look down from heaven, O God, and behold and visit this vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted!’’ And the children’s angelic voices sing in response: ‘‘Holy God...’¹⁸

‘‘Where’s the fish, Deacon?’’ Samoilenko’s voice rang out.

Returning to the fire, the deacon imagined a procession with the cross going down a dusty road on a hot July day; at the head the muzhiks carry banners, and the women and girls icons; after them come choirboys and a beadle with a bandaged cheek and straw in his hair; then, in due order,

himself, the deacon, after him a priest in a skull cap and with a cross, and behind them, raising dust, comes a crowd of muzhiks, women, boys; there, in the crowd, are the priest’s wife and the deaconess, with kerchiefs on their heads. The choir sings, babies howl, quails call, a lark pours out its song... Now they stop and sprinkle a herd with holy water... Go further, and on bended knee pray for rain. Then a bite to eat, conversation...

‘‘And that, too, is good ...’ thought the deacon.

VII

KIRILIN AND ATCHMIANOV were climbing the path up the mountainside. Atchmianov lagged behind and stopped, and Kirilin came up to Nadezhda Fyodorovna.

‘‘Good evening!’’ he said, saluting her.

‘‘Good evening.’’

‘‘Yes, ma’am!’’ Kirilin said, looking up at the sky and thinking.

‘‘Why ‘Yes, ma’am’?’’ asked Nadezhda Fyodorovna after some silence, and noticed that Atchmianov was watching the two of them.

‘‘And so,’’ the officer pronounced slowly, ‘‘our love withered away before it had time to flower, so to speak. How am I to understand that? Is it coquetry on your part, or do you regard me as a scapegrace with whom you can act however you please?’’

‘‘It was a mistake! Leave me alone!’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna said sharply, looking at him with fear on that beautiful, wonderful evening, and asking herself in perplexity if there could indeed have been a moment when she had liked this man and been intimate with him.

‘‘So, ma’am!’’ said Kirilin. He stood silently for a while, pondering, and said: ‘‘What, then? Let’s wait till you’re in a better mood, and meanwhile, I venture to assure you that I am a respectable man and will not allow anyone to doubt it. I am not to be toyed with! Adieu!’’

He saluted her and walked off, making his way through the bushes. A little later, Atchmianov approached hesitantly.

‘‘A fine evening tonight!’’ he said with a slight Armenian accent.

He was not bad-looking, dressed according to fashion, had the simple manners of a well-bred young man, but Nadezhda Fyodorovna disliked him because she owed his father three hundred roubles; there was also the unpleasantness of a shopkeeper being invited to the picnic, and the unpleasantness of his having approached her precisely that evening, when her soul felt so pure.

‘‘Generally, the picnic’s a success,’’ he said after some silence.

‘‘Yes,’’ she agreed, and as if she had just remembered her debt, she said casually: ‘‘Ah, yes, tell them in your shop that Ivan Andreich will come one of these days and pay them the three hundred ... or I don’t remember how much.’’

‘‘I’m ready to give you another three hundred, if only you’ll stop mentioning this debt every day. Why such prose?’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna laughed. The amusing thought came to her head that, if she were immoral enough and wished to, she could get rid of this debt in one minute. If, for instance, she were to turn the head of this handsome young fool! How amusing, absurd, wild it would be indeed! And she suddenly wanted to make him fall in love with her, to fleece him, to drop him, and then see what would come of it.

‘‘Allow me to give you one piece of advice,’’ Atchmianov said timidly. ‘‘Beware of Kirilin, I beg you. He tells terrible things about you everywhere.’’

‘‘I’m not interested in knowing what every fool tells about me,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna said coldly, and uneasiness came over her, and the amusing thought of toying with the pretty young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.

‘‘We must go down,’’ she said. ‘‘They’re calling.’’

Down there the fish soup was ready. It was poured into plates and eaten with that religious solemnity which only occurs at picnics. They all found the soup very tasty and said they had never had anything so tasty at home. As happens at all picnics, lost amidst a mass of napkins, packets, needless greasy wrappings scudding about in the wind, no one knew which glass and which piece of bread was whose, they poured wine on the rug and on their knees, spilled salt, and it was dark around them, and the fire burned less brightly, and they were all too lazy to get up and put on more brush. They all drank wine, and Kostya and Katya got half a glass each. Nadezhda Fyodorovna drank a glass, then another, became drunk, and forgot about Kirilin.

‘‘A splendid picnic, a charming evening,’’ said Laevsky, made merry by the wine, ‘‘but I’d prefer a nice winter to all this. ‘A frosty dust silvers his beaver collar.’ ’’¹⁹

‘‘Tastes vary,’’ observed von Koren.

Laevsky felt awkward: the heat of the fire struck him in the back, and von Koren’s hatred in the front and face; this hatred from a decent, intelligent man, which probably concealed a substantial reason, humiliated him, weakened him, and, unable to confront it, he said in an ingratiating tone:

‘‘I passionately love nature and regret not being a student of natural science. I envy you.’’

‘‘Well, and I have no regret or envy,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘I don’t understand how it’s possible to be seriously occupied with bugs and gnats when people are suffering.’’

Laevsky shared her opinion. He was totally unacquainted with natural science and therefore could never reconcile himself to the authoritative tone and learned, profound air of people who studied the feelers of ants and the legs of cockroaches, and it had always vexed him that, on the basis of feelers, legs, and some sort of protoplasm (for some reason, he always imagined it like an oyster), these people should undertake to resolve questions that embraced the origin and life of man. But he heard a ring of falseness in Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s words, and he said, only so as to contradict her:

‘‘The point is not in the bugs but in the conclusions!’’

VIII

IT WAS LATE, past ten o’clock, when they began getting into the carriages to go home. Everyone settled in, the only ones missing were Nadezhda Fyodorovna and Atchmianov, who were racing each other and laughing on the other side of the river.

‘‘Hurry up, please!’’ Samoilenko called to them.

‘‘The ladies shouldn’t have been given wine,’’ von Koren said in a low voice.

Laevsky, wearied by the picnic, by von Koren’s hatred, and by his own thoughts, went to meet Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and when, merry, joyful, feeling light as a feather, breathless and laughing, she seized him by both hands and put her head on his chest, he took a step back and said sternly:

‘‘You behave like a ... cocotte.’

This came out very rudely, so that he even felt sorry for her. On his angry, tired face she read hatred, pity, vexation with her, and she suddenly lost heart. She realized that she had overdone it, that she had behaved too casually, and, saddened, feeling heavy, fat, coarse, and drunk, she sat in the first empty carriage she found, along with Atchmianov. Laevsky sat with Kirilin, the zoologist with Samoilenko, the deacon with the ladies, and the train set off.

‘‘That’s how they are, the macaques...’ von Koren began, wrapping himself in his cloak and closing his eyes. ‘‘Did you hear, she doesn’t want to study bugs and gnats because people are suffering. That’s how all macaques judge the likes of us. A slavish, deceitful tribe, intimidated by the knout and the fist for ten generations; they tremble, they wax tender, they burn incense only before force, but let a macaque into a free area, where there’s nobody to take it by the scruff of the neck, and it loses control and shows its real face. Look how brave it is at art exhibitions, in museums, in theaters, or when it passes judgment on science: it struts, it rears up, it denounces, it criticizes... And it’s sure to criticize—that’s a feature of slaves! Just listen: people of the liberal professions are abused more often than swindlers—that’s because three-quarters of society consists of slaves, the same macaques as these. It never happens that a slave offers you his hand and thanks you sincerely for the fact that you work.’’

‘‘I don’t know what you want!’’ Samoilenko said, yawning. ‘‘The poor woman, in her simplicity, wanted to chat with you about something intelligent, and you go drawing conclusions. You’re angry with him for something, and also with her just for company. But she’s a wonderful woman!’’

‘‘Oh, come now! An ordinary kept woman, depraved and banal. Listen, Alexander Davidych, when you meet a simple woman who isn’t living with her husband and does nothing but hee-hee-hee and ha-ha-ha, you tell her to go and work. Why are you timid and afraid to tell the truth here? Only because Nadezhda Fyodorovna is kept not by a sailor but by an official?’’

‘‘What am I to do with her, then?’’ Samoilenko became angry. ‘‘Beat her or something?’’

‘‘Don’t flatter vice. We curse vice only out of earshot, but that’s like a fig in the pocket.²⁰ I’m a zoologist, or a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes us; it’s our duty to point out to it the terrible harm with which it and future generations are threatened by the existence of ladies like this Nadezhda Ivanovna.’’

‘‘Fyodorovna,’’ Samoilenko corrected. ‘‘And what should society do?’’

‘‘It? That’s its business. In my opinion, the most direct and proper way is force. She ought to be sent to her husband manu militari,⁴ and if the husband won’t have her, then send her to hard labor or some sort of correctional institution.’’

‘‘Oof !’’ sighed Samoilenko. He paused and asked softly: ‘‘The other day you said people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed... Tell me, if somehow ... suppose the state or society charged you with destroying him, would you... do it?’’

‘‘With a steady hand.’’

IX

RETURNING HOME, LAEVSKY and Nadezhda Fyodorovna went into their dark, dull, stuffy rooms. Both were silent. Laevsky lit a candle, and Nadezhda Fyodorovna sat down and, without taking off her cloak and hat, raised her sad, guilty eyes to him.

He realized that she was expecting a talk from him; but to talk would be boring, useless, and wearisome, and he felt downhearted because he had lost control and been rude to her. He chanced to feel in his pocket the letter he had been wanting to read to her every day, and he thought that if he showed her the letter now, it would turn her attention elsewhere.

‘‘It’s time to clarify our relations,’’ he thought. ‘‘I’ll give it to her, come what may.’’

He took out the letter and handed it to her.

‘‘Read it. It concerns you.’’

Having said this, he went to his study and lay down on the sofa in the darkness, without a pillow. Nadezhda Fyodorovna read the letter, and it seemed to her that the ceiling had lowered and the walls had closed in on her. It suddenly became cramped, dark, and frightening. She quickly crossed herself three times and said:

‘‘Give rest, O Lord... give rest, O Lord...’²¹

And she wept.

‘‘Vanya!’’ she called. ‘‘Ivan Andreich!’’

There was no answer. Thinking that Laevsky had come in and was standing behind her chair, she sobbed like a child and said:

‘‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier that he had died? I wouldn’t have gone on the picnic, I wouldn’t have laughed so terribly... Men were saying vulgar things to me. What sin, what sin! Save me, Vanya, save me... I’m going out of my mind... I’m lost...’

Laevsky heard her sobs. He felt unbearably suffocated, and his heart was pounding hard. In anguish, he got up, stood in the middle of the room for a while, felt in the darkness for the chair by the table, and sat down.

‘‘This is a prison...’ he thought. ‘‘I must get out... I can’t...’

It was too late to go and play cards, there were no restaurants in the town. He lay down again and stopped his ears so as not to hear the sobbing, and suddenly remembered that he could go to Samoilenko’s. To avoid walking past Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he climbed out the window to the garden, got over the fence, and went on down the street. It was dark. Some steamer had just arrived—a big passenger ship, judging by its lights... An anchor chain clanked. A small red light moved quickly from the coast to the ship: it was the customs boat.

‘‘The passengers are asleep in their cabins ...’ thought Laevsky, and he envied other people’s peace.

The windows of Samoilenko’s house were open. Laevsky looked through one of them, then another: it was dark and quiet inside.

‘‘Alexander Davidych, are you asleep?’’ he called. ‘‘Alexander Davidych!’’

Coughing was heard, and an anxious cry:

‘‘Who’s there? What the devil?’’

‘‘It’s me, Alexander Davidych. Forgive me.’’

A little later, a door opened; the soft light of an icon lamp gleamed, and the enormous Samoilenko appeared, all in white and wearing a white nightcap.

‘‘What do you want?’’ he asked, breathing heavily from being awakened and scratching himself. ‘‘Wait, I’ll open up at once.’’

‘‘Don’t bother, I’ll come in the window...’

Laevsky climbed through the window and, going up to Samoilenko, seized him by the hand.

‘‘Alexander Davidych,’’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘‘save me! I beseech you, I adjure you, understand me! My situation is tormenting. If it goes on for another day or two, I’ll strangle myself like ... like a dog!’’

‘Wait ... What exactly are you referring to?’’

‘‘Light a candle.’’

‘Ho-hum ...’ sighed Samoilenko, lighting a candle. ‘‘My God, my God... It’s already past one o’clock, brother.’’

‘‘Forgive me, but I can’t stay at home,’’ said Laevsky, feeling greatly relieved by the light and Samoilenko’s presence. ‘‘You, Alexander Davidych, are my best and only friend... All my hope lies in you. Whether you want to or not, for God’s sake, help me out. I must leave here at all costs. Lend me some money!’’

‘‘Oh, my God, my God!...’ Samoilenko sighed, scratching himself. ‘‘I’m falling asleep and I hear a whistle—a steamer has come—and then you... How much do you need?’’

‘‘At least three hundred roubles. I should leave her a hundred, and I’ll need two hundred for my trip... I already owe you about four hundred, but I’ll send you all of it ... all of it...’

Samoilenko took hold of both his side-whiskers with one hand, stood straddle-legged, and pondered.

‘So ...’ he murmured, reflecting. ‘‘Three hundred... Yes... But I haven’t got that much. I’ll have to borrow it from somebody.’’

‘‘Borrow it, for God’s sake!’’ said Laevsky, seeing by Samoilenko’s face that he wanted to give him the money and was sure to do it. ‘‘Borrow it, and I’ll be sure to pay it back. I’ll send it from Petersburg as soon as I get there. Don’t worry about that. Look, Sasha,’’ he said, reviving, ‘‘let’s have some wine!’’

‘Wine... That’s possible.’’

They both went to the dining room.

‘‘And what about Nadezhda Fyodorovna?’’ asked Samoilenko, setting three bottles and a plate of peaches on the table. ‘‘Can she be staying on?’’

‘‘I’ll arrange it all, I’ll arrange it all ...’ said Laevsky, feeling an unexpected surge of joy. ‘‘I’ll send her money afterwards, and she’ll come to me... And then we’ll clarify our relations. To your health, friend.’’

‘‘Wait,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘Drink this one first... It’s from my vineyard. This bottle is from Navaridze’s vineyard, and this one from Akhatulov’s... Try all three and tell me frankly... Mine seems to be a bit acidic. Eh? Don’t you find?’’

‘‘Yes. You’ve really comforted me, Alexander Davidych. Thank you... I’ve revived.’’

‘‘A bit acidic?’’

‘‘Devil knows, I don’t know. But you’re a splendid, wonderful man!’’

Looking at his pale, agitated, kindly face, Samoilenko remembered von Koren’s opinion that such people should be destroyed, and Laevsky seemed to him a weak, defenseless child whom anyone could offend and destroy.

‘‘And when you go, make peace with your mother,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s not nice.’’

‘‘Yes, yes, without fail.’’

They were silent for a while. When they had drunk the first bottle, Samoilenko said:

‘‘Make peace with von Koren as well. You’re both most excellent and intelligent people, but you stare at each other like two wolves.’’

‘‘Yes, he’s a most excellent and intelligent man,’’ agreed Laevsky, ready now to praise and forgive everybody. ‘‘He’s a remarkable man, but it’s impossible for me to be friends with him. No! Our natures are too different. I’m sluggish, weak, submissive by nature; I might offer him my hand at a good moment, but he’d turn away from me ... with scorn.’’

Laevsky sipped some wine, paced from corner to corner, and, stopping in the middle of the room, went on:

‘‘I understand von Koren very well. He’s firm, strong, despotic by nature. You’ve heard him talking constantly about an expedition, and they’re not empty words. He needs the desert, a moonlit night; around him in tents and under the open sky sleep his hungry and sick Cossacks, guides, porters, a doctor, a priest, worn out by the difficult marches, and he alone doesn’t sleep and, like Stanley,²² sits in his folding chair and feels himself the king of the desert and master of these people. He walks, and walks, and walks somewhere, his people groan and die one after the other, but he walks and walks, and in the end dies himself, and still remains the despot and king of the desert, because the cross on his grave can be seen by caravans from thirty or forty miles away, and it reigns over the desert. I’m sorry the man is not in military service. He’d make an excellent, brilliant general. He’d know how to drown his cavalry in the river and make bridges from the corpses, and such boldness is more necessary in war than any fortifications or tactics. Oh, I understand him very well! Tell me, why does he eat himself up here? What does he need here?’’

‘‘He’s studying marine fauna.’’

‘‘No. No, brother, no!’’ sighed Laevsky. ‘‘I was told by a scientist traveling on the steamer that the Black Sea is poor in fauna, and that organic life is impossible in the depths of it owing to the abundance of hydrogen sulfate. All serious zoologists work at biological stations in Naples or Villefranche. But von Koren is independent and stubborn: he works on the Black Sea because nobody works here; he’s broken with the university, doesn’t want to know any scientists and colleagues, because he’s first of all a despot and only then a zoologist. And you’ll see, something great will come of him. He’s already dreaming now that when he returns from the expedition, he’ll smoke out the intrigue and mediocrity in our universities and tie the scientists in knots. Despotism is as strong in science as in war. And he’s living for the second summer in this stinking little town, because it’s better to be first in a village than second in a city.²³ Here he’s a king and an eagle; he’s got all the inhabitants under his thumb and oppresses them with his authority. He’s taken everybody in hand, he interferes in other people’s affairs, he wants to be in on everything, and everybody’s afraid of him. I’m slipping out from under his paw, he senses it, and he hates me. Didn’t he tell you that I should be destroyed or sent to the public works?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ laughed Samoilenko.

Laevsky also laughed and drank some wine.

‘‘His ideals are despotic as well,’’ he said, laughing and taking a bite of peach. ‘‘Ordinary mortals, if they work for the general benefit, have their neighbor in mind—me, you, in short, a human being. But for von Koren, people are puppies and nonentities, too small to be the goal of his life. He works, he’ll go on an expedition and break his neck there, not in the name of love for his neighbor but in the name of such abstractions as mankind, future generations, an ideal race of people. He worries about the improvement of the human race, and in that respect we are merely slaves for him, cannon fodder, beasts of burden; he’d destroy some or slap them with hard labor, others he’d bind with discipline, like Arakcheev,²⁴ make them get up and lie down to the drum, set eunuchs to protect our chastity and morality, order that anyone who steps outside the circle of our narrow, conservative morality be shot at, and all that in the name of improving the human race... But what is the human race? An illusion, a mirage... Despots have always been given to illusions. I understand him very well, brother. I appreciate him and do not deny his significance; this world stands on men like him, and if the world were placed at the disposal of us alone, with all our kindness and good intentions, we’d do with it just what the flies are doing to that painting. It’s true.’’

Laevsky sat down beside Samoilenko and said with genuine enthusiasm:

‘‘I’m an empty, worthless, fallen man! The air I breathe, this wine, love, in short, life—I’ve been buying it all up to now at the price of lies, idleness, and pusillanimity. Up to now I’ve been deceiving people and myself, I’ve suffered from it, and my sufferings have been cheap and trite. I timidly bend my neck before von Koren’s hatred, because at times I, too, hate and despise myself.’’

Laevsky again paced from corner to corner in agitation and said:

‘‘I’m glad I see my shortcomings clearly and am aware of them. That will help me to resurrect and become a different man. My dear heart, if only you knew how passionately, with what anguish, I thirst for my renewal. And I swear to you, I will be a man! I will! I don’t know whether it’s the wine speaking in me, or it’s so in reality, but it seems to me that it’s long since I’ve lived through such bright, pure moments as now with you.’’

‘‘Time to sleep, brother...’ said Samoilenko.

‘‘Yes, yes... Forgive me. I’ll go at once.’’

Laevsky fussed around the furniture and windows, looking for his cap.

‘‘Thank you ...’ he murmured, sighing. ‘‘Thank you... Gentleness and a kind word are higher than alms. You’ve revived me.’’

He found his cap, stopped, and looked guiltily at Samoilenko.

‘‘Alexander Davidych!’’ he said in a pleading voice.

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Allow me, dear heart, to spend the night with you!’’

‘‘Please do ... why not?’’

Laevsky lay down to sleep on the sofa, and for a long time went on talking with the doctor.

X

SOME THREE DAYS after the picnic, Marya Konstantinovna unexpectedly came to Nadezhda Fyodorovna and, without greeting her, without taking off her hat, seized her by both hands, pressed them to her bosom, and said in great agitation:

‘‘My dear, I’m so agitated, so shocked. Our dear, sympathetic doctor told my Nikodim Alexandrych yesterday that your husband has passed away. Tell me, dear... Tell me, is it true?’’

‘‘Yes, it’s true, he died,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna answered.

‘‘My dear, it’s terrible, terrible! But there’s no bad without some good. Your husband was probably a marvelous, wonderful, holy man, and such people are more needed in heaven than on earth.’’

All the little lines and points in Marya Konstantinovna’s face trembled, as if tiny needles were leaping under her skin. She smiled an almond-butter smile and said rapturously, breathlessly:

‘‘And so you’re free, my dear. Now you can hold your head high and look people boldly in the eye. From now on, God and men will bless your union with Ivan Andreich. It’s charming. I’m trembling with joy, I can’t find words. My dear, I’ll be your sponsor... Nikodim Alexandrych and I have loved you so much, you must allow us to bless your lawful, pure union. When, when are you going to be married?’’

‘‘I haven’t even thought about it,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, freeing her hands.

‘‘That’s impossible, my dear. You have thought about it, you have!’’

‘‘By God, I haven’t,’’ laughed Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘Why should we get married? I see no need for it. We’ll live as we’ve lived.’’

‘‘What are you saying!’’ Marya Konstantinovna was horrified. ‘‘For God’s sake, what are you saying!’’

‘‘If we get married, it won’t be any better. On the contrary, even worse. We’ll lose our freedom.’’

‘‘My dear! My dear, what are you saying!’’ cried Marya Konstantinovna, stepping back and clasping her hands. ‘‘You’re being extravagant! Come to your senses! Settle down!’’

‘‘What do you mean, settle down? I haven’t lived yet, and you tell me to settle down!’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna remembered that indeed she had not lived yet. She had finished the girls’ institute and married a man she did not love, then she had taken up with Laevsky and had been living with him the whole time on that dull, deserted coast in expectation of something better. Was that life?

‘‘Yet it would be proper to get married ...’ she thought but, remembering Kirilin and Atchmianov, blushed and said:

‘‘No, it’s impossible. Even if Ivan Andreich were to beg me on his knees, even then I would refuse.’’

Marya Konstantinovna sat silently on the sofa for a moment, sad, serious, looking at a single point, then got up and said coldly:

‘‘Good-bye, my dear! Excuse me for having troubled you. Though it’s not easy for me, I must tell you that from this day on, everything is over between us, and despite my deepest respect for Ivan Andreich, the door of my house is closed to you.’’

She uttered it with solemnity and was crushed herself by her solemn tone; her face trembled again, took on a soft almond-butter expression; she held out both hands to the frightened and abashed Nadezhda Fyodorovna and said imploringly:

‘‘My dear, allow me at least for one minute to be your mother or an older sister! I’ll be open with you, like a mother.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna felt such warmth, joy, and compassion for herself in her breast, as though it really was her mother, risen from the dead, who stood before her. She embraced Marya Konstantinovna impulsively and pressed her face to her shoulder. They both wept. They sat down on the sofa and sobbed for a few minutes, not looking at each other and unable to utter a single word.

‘‘My dear, my child,’’ Marya Konstantinovna began, ‘‘I shall tell you some stern truths, without sparing you.’’

‘‘Do, do, for God’s sake!’’

‘‘Trust me, my dear. You remember, of all the local ladies, I was the only one to receive you. You horrified me from the very first day, but I was unable to treat you with scorn, like everyone else. I suffered for dear, kind Ivan Andreich as for a son. A young man in a strange land, inexperienced, weak, with no mother, and I was tormented, tormented... My husband was against making his acquaintance, but I talked him into it... I persuaded him... We began to receive Ivan Andreich, and you with him, of course, otherwise he would have been insulted. I have a daughter, a son... You understand, the tender mind of a child, the pure heart ... and whosoever shall offend one of these little ones²⁵ ... I received you and trembled for my children. Oh, when you’re a mother, you’ll understand my fear. And everyone was surprised that I received you, forgive me, as a respectable woman, people hinted to me ... well, of course, there was gossip, speculation... Deep in my soul, I condemned you, but you were unhappy, pathetic, extravagant, and I suffered out of pity.’’

‘‘But why? Why?’’ asked Nadezhda Fyodorovna, trembling all over. ‘‘What have I done to anyone?’’

‘‘You’re a terrible sinner. You broke the vow you gave your husband at the altar. You seduced an excellent young man who, if he hadn’t met you, might have taken himself a lawful life’s companion from a good family of his circle, and he would now be like everybody else. You’ve ruined his youth. Don’t speak, don’t speak, my dear! I will not believe that a man can be to blame for our sins. The women are always to blame. In everyday domestic life, men are frivolous, they live by their minds, not their hearts, there’s much they don’t understand, but a woman understands everything. Everything depends on her. Much is given her, and much will be asked of her. Oh, my dear, if she were stupider or weaker than man in this respect, God wouldn’t have entrusted her with the upbringing of little boys and girls. And then, dearest, you entered upon the path of vice, forgetting all shame; another woman in your position would have hidden herself from people, would have sat locked up at home, and people would have seen her only in God’s church, pale, dressed all in black, weeping, and each would say with sincere contrition: ‘God, this is a sinful angel returning to you again...’ But you, my dear, forgot all modesty, you lived openly, extravagantly, as if you were proud of your sin, you frolicked, you laughed, and looking at you, I trembled with horror, fearing lest a thunderbolt from heaven strike our house while you were sitting with us. My dear, don’t speak, don’t speak!’’ Marya Konstantinovna cried, noticing that Nadezhda Fyodorovna was about to speak. ‘‘Trust me, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t conceal a single truth from the eyes of your soul. Listen to me, then, dearest... God marks great sinners, and you have been marked. Remember, your dresses have always been awful!’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna, who had always had the highest opinion of her dresses, stopped crying and looked at her in astonishment.

‘‘Yes, awful!’’ Marya Konstantinovna went on. ‘‘Anyone could judge your behavior by the refinement and showiness of your clothes. Everyone chuckled and shrugged, looking at you, but I suffered, suffered... And forgive me, my dear, but you are slovenly! When I met you in the bathing cabin, you made me tremble. Your dress was still so-so, but the petticoat, the chemise ... my dear, I blush! Poor Ivan Andreich has no one to tie his necktie properly, and by the poor man’s linen and boots, one can see that no one looks after him at home. And you always keep him hungry, my darling, and indeed, if there’s no one at home to see to the coffee and the samovar, willy-nilly, one spends half one’s salary in the pavilion. And your home is simply terrible, terrible! Nobody in the whole town has flies, but you can’t get rid of them, the plates and saucers are black. On the windows and tables, just look—dust, dead flies, glasses... What are the glasses doing here? And my dear, your table still hasn’t been cleared yet. It’s a shame to go into your bedroom: underwear lying about, those various rubber things of yours hanging on the walls, certain vessels standing about... My dear! A husband should know nothing, and a wife should be as pure as a little angel before him! I wake up every morning at the first light and wash my face with cold water, so that my Nikodim Alexandrych won’t see me looking sleepy.’’

‘‘That’s all trifles,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna burst into sobs. ‘‘If only I were happy, but I’m so unhappy!’’

‘‘Yes, yes, you’re very unhappy!’’ Marya Konstantinovna sighed, barely keeping herself from crying. ‘‘And awful grief awaits you in the future! A lonely old age, illnesses, and then your answer before the dread Judgment Seat²⁶... Terrible, terrible! Now fate itself is offering you a helping hand, and you senselessly push it aside. Get married, get married quickly!’’

‘‘Yes, I must, I must,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, ‘‘but it’s impossible!’’

‘‘Why so?’’

‘‘Impossible! Oh, if you only knew!’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna was going to tell her about Kirilin, and about how she had met the young, handsome Atchmianov on the pier the previous evening, and how the crazy, funny thought had come into her head of getting rid of her three-hundred-rouble debt, she had found it very funny, and had returned home late at night, feeling irretrievably fallen and sold. She did not know how it happened herself. And now she was about to swear before Marya Konstantinovna that she would repay the debt without fail, but sobs and shame prevented her from speaking.

‘‘I’ll go away,’’ she said. ‘‘Ivan Andreich can stay, and I’ll go away.’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘To Russia.’’

‘‘But how are you going to live? You have nothing.’’

‘‘I’ll do translations or ... or open a little library...’

‘‘Don’t fantasize, my dear. You need money to start a library. Well, I’ll leave you now, and you calm down and think, and come to see me tomorrow all cheered up. That will be charming! Well, good-bye, my little angel. Let me kiss you.’’

Marya Konstantinovna kissed Nadezhda Fyodorovna on the forehead, made a cross over her, and quietly left. It was already growing dark, and Olga lit a light in the kitchen. Still weeping, Nadezhda Fyodorovna went to the bedroom and lay on the bed. She was in a high fever. She undressed lying down, crumpled her clothes towards her feet, and rolled up in a ball under the blanket. She was thirsty, and there was no one to give her a drink.

‘‘I’ll pay it back!’’ she said to herself, and in her delirium it seemed to her that she was sitting by some sick woman and in her recognized herself. ‘‘I’ll pay it back. It would be stupid to think it was for money that I... I’ll go away and send him money from Petersburg. First a hundred ... then a hundred ... and then another hundred...’

Laevsky came late at night.

‘‘First a hundred...’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna said to him, ‘‘then another hundred...’

‘‘You should take some quinine,’’ he said and thought: ‘‘Tomorrow is Wednesday, the steamer leaves, and I’m not going. That means I’ll have to live here till Saturday.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna got up on her knees in bed.

‘‘Did I say anything just now?’’ she asked, smiling and squinting because of the candle.

‘‘Nothing. We’ll have to send for the doctor tomorrow morning. Sleep.’’

He took a pillow and went to the door. Once he had finally decided to go away and abandon Nadezhda Fyodorovna, she had begun to arouse pity and a feeling of guilt in him; he was slightly ashamed in her presence, as in the presence of an old or ailing horse slated to be killed. He stopped in the doorway and turned to look at her.

‘‘I was annoyed at the picnic and said something rude to you. Forgive me, for God’s sake.’’

Having said this, he went to his study, lay down, and for a long time was unable to fall asleep.

The next morning, when Samoilenko, in full dress uniform with epaulettes and decorations on occasion of the feast day, was coming out of the bedroom after taking Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s pulse and examining her tongue, Laevsky, who was standing by the threshold, asked him worriedly:

‘‘Well, so? So?’’

His face expressed fear, extreme anxiety, and hope.

‘‘Calm down, it’s nothing dangerous,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘An ordinary fever.’’

‘‘I’m not asking about that,’’ Laevsky winced impatiently. ‘‘Did you get the money?’’

‘‘Forgive me, dear heart,’’ Samoilenko whispered, glancing back at the door and getting embarrassed. ‘‘For God’s sake, forgive me! Nobody has ready cash, and so far I’ve only collected by fives or tens—a hundred and ten roubles in all. Today I’ll talk with someone else. Be patient.’’

‘‘But Saturday’s the last day!’’ Laevsky whispered, trembling with impatience. ‘‘By all that’s holy, before Saturday! If I don’t leave on Saturday, I’ll need nothing ... nothing! I don’t understand how a doctor can have no money!’’

‘‘Thy will be done, O Lord,’’ Samoilenko whispered quickly and tensely, and something even squeaked in his throat, ‘‘they’ve taken everything I’ve got, I have seven thousand owing to me, and I’m roundly in debt. Is it my fault?’’

‘‘So you’ll get it by Saturday? Yes?’’

‘‘I’ll try.’’

‘‘I beg you, dear heart! So that the money will be in my hands Friday morning.’’

Samoilenko sat down and wrote a prescription for quinine in a solution of kalii bromati, infusion of rhubarb, and tincturae gentianae aquae foeniculi—all of it in one mixture, with the addition of rose syrup to remove the bitterness, and left.

XI

‘‘YOU LOOK AS though you’re coming to arrest me,’’ said von Koren, seeing Samoilenko coming into his room in full dress uniform.

‘‘I was passing by and thought: why don’t I pay a call on zoology?’’ said Samoilenko, sitting down by the big table the zoologist himself had knocked together out of simple planks. ‘‘Greetings, holy father!’’ he nodded to the deacon, who was sitting by the window copying something. ‘‘I’ll sit for a minute and then run home to give orders for dinner. It’s already time ... I’m not bothering you?’’

‘‘Not at all,’’ replied the zoologist, laying out scraps of paper covered with fine writing on the table. ‘‘We’re busy copying.’’

‘So... Oh, my God, my God ...’ sighed Samoilenko; he cautiously drew from the table a dusty book on which lay a dead, dry phalangid, and said: ‘‘However! Imagine some little green bug is going about his business and suddenly meets such an anathema on his way. I can picture how terrifying it is!’’

‘‘Yes, I suppose so.’’

‘‘It’s given venom to defend itself from enemies?’’

‘‘Yes, to defend itself and to attack.’’

‘‘So, so, so... And everything in nature, my dear hearts, is purposeful and explainable,’’ sighed Samoilenko. ‘‘Only here’s what I don’t understand. You’re a man of the greatest intelligence, explain it to me, please. There are these little beasts, you know, no bigger than a rat, pretty to look at but mean and immoral in the highest degree, let me tell you. Suppose such a beast is walking along through the forest; it sees a little bird, catches it, and eats it up. It goes on and sees a nest with eggs in the grass; it doesn’t want any more grub, it’s not hungry, but even so, it bites into an egg and throws the others out of the nest with its paw. Then it meets a frog and starts playing with it. It tortures the frog to death, goes on, licking its chops, and meets a beetle. Swats the beetle with its paw... And it ruins and destroys everything in its way... It crawls into other animals’ holes, digs up anthills for nothing, cracks open snail shells... It meets a rat and gets into a fight with it; it sees a snake or a mouse and has to strangle it. And this goes on all day. So tell me, what is the need for such a beast? Why was it created?’’

‘‘I don’t know what beast you’re talking about,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘probably some insectivore. Well, so what? It caught a bird because the bird was careless; it destroyed the nest of eggs because the bird wasn’t skillful, it made the nest poorly and didn’t camouflage it. The frog probably had some flaw in its coloring, otherwise it wouldn’t have seen it, and so on. Your beast destroys only the weak, the unskilled, the careless—in short, those who have flaws that nature does not find it necessary to transmit to posterity. Only the more nimble, careful, strong, and developed remain alive. Thus your little beast, without suspecting it, serves the great purposes of perfection.’’

‘‘Yes, yes, yes... By the way, brother,’’ Samoilenko said casually, ‘‘how about lending me a hundred roubles?’’

‘‘Fine. Among the insectivores, very interesting species occur. For instance, the mole. They say it’s useful because it destroys harmful insects. The story goes that a German once sent the emperor Wilhelm I a coat made of moleskins, and that the emperor supposedly reprimanded him for destroying so many of the useful animals. And yet the mole yields nothing to your little beast in cruelty, and is very harmful besides, because it does awful damage to the fields.’’

Von Koren opened a box and took out a hundred-rouble bill.

‘‘The mole has a strong chest, like the bat,’’ he went on, locking the box, ‘‘its bones and muscles are awfully well developed, its jaw is extraordinarily well equipped. If it had the dimensions of an elephant, it would be an all-destructive, invincible animal. It’s interesting that when two moles meet underground, they both begin to prepare a flat space, as if by arrangement; they need this space in order to fight more conveniently. Once they’ve made it, they start a cruel battle and struggle until the weaker one falls. Here, take the hundred roubles,’’ said von Koren, lowering his voice, ‘‘but only on condition that you’re not taking it for Laevsky.’’

‘‘And what if it is for Laevsky!’’ Samoilenko flared up. ‘‘Is that any business of yours?’’

‘‘I can’t give money for Laevsky. I know you like lending. You’d lend to the robber Kerim if he asked you, but, excuse me, in that direction I can’t help you.’’

‘‘Yes, I’m asking for Laevsky!’’ said Samoilenko, getting up and waving his right arm. ‘‘Yes! For Laevsky! And no devil or demon has the right to teach me how I should dispose of my money. You don’t want to give it to me? Eh?’’

The deacon burst out laughing.

‘‘Don’t seethe, but reason,’’ said the zoologist. ‘‘To be Mr. Laevsky’s benefactor is, in my opinion, as unintelligent as watering weeds or feeding locusts.’’

‘‘And in my opinion, it’s our duty to help our neighbors!’’ cried Samoilenko.

‘‘In that case, help this hungry Turk who’s lying by the hedge! He’s a worker and more necessary, more useful than your Laevsky. Give him this hundred roubles! Or donate me a hundred roubles for the expedition!’’

‘‘Will you lend it to me or not, I ask you?’’

‘‘Tell me frankly: what does he need the money for?’’

‘‘It’s no secret. He has to go to Petersburg on Saturday.’’

‘‘So that’s it!’’ von Koren drew out. ‘Aha... We understand. And will she be going with him, or what?’’

‘‘She remains here for the time being. He’ll settle his affairs in Petersburg and send her money, and then she’ll go.’’

‘Clever! ...’ said the zoologist and laughed a brief tenor laugh. ‘‘Clever! Smart thinking!’’

He quickly went up to Samoilenko and, planting himself face-to-face with him, looking into his eyes, asked:

‘‘Speak frankly to me: he’s fallen out of love? Right? Speak: he’s fallen out of love? Right?’’

‘‘Right,’’ Samoilenko brought out and broke into a sweat.

‘‘How loathsome!’’ said von Koren, and one could see by his face that he felt loathing. ‘‘There are two possibilities, Alexander Davidych: either you’re in conspiracy with him or, forgive me, you’re a simpleton. Don’t you understand that he’s taking you in like a little boy, in the most shameful way? It’s clear as day that he wants to get rid of her and leave her here. She’ll be left on your neck, and it’s clear as day that you’ll have to send her to Petersburg at your own expense. Has your excellent friend so bedazzled you with his merits that you don’t see even the simplest things?’’

‘‘Those are nothing but conjectures,’’ said Samoilenko, sitting down.

‘‘Conjectures? And why is he going alone and not with her? And why, ask him, shouldn’t she go on ahead and he come later? A sly beast!’’

Oppressed by sudden doubts and suspicions concerning his friend, Samoilenko suddenly weakened and lowered his tone.

‘‘But this is impossible!’’ he said, remembering the night Laevsky had spent at his place. ‘‘He suffers so!’’

‘‘What of it? Thieves and incendiaries also suffer!’’

‘‘Even supposing you’re right...’ Samoilenko said, pondering. ‘‘Let’s assume... But he’s a young man, in foreign parts ... a student, but we’ve also been students, and except for us, there’s nobody to support him.’’

‘‘To help him in his abomination only because at different points you and he were at the university and both did nothing there! What nonsense!’’

‘‘Wait, let’s reason with equanimity. It’s possible, I suppose, to arrange it like this...’ Samoilenko reasoned, twisting his fingers. ‘‘You see, I’ll give him money, but I’ll take from him his gentleman’s word of honor that he will send Nadezhda Fyodorovna money for the trip in a week.’’

‘‘And he’ll give you his word of honor, and even shed a tear and believe himself, but what is his word worth? He won’t keep it, and when, in a year or two, you meet him on Nevsky Prospect arm in arm with a new love, he’ll justify himself by saying civilization has crippled him and he’s a chip off Rudin’s block.²⁷ Drop him, for God’s sake! Walk away from this muck, and don’t rummage in it with both hands!’’

Samoilenko thought for a minute and said resolutely: ‘‘But even so, I’ll give him the money. As you like. I’m unable to refuse a man on the basis of conjectures alone.’’

‘‘Excellent. Go and kiss him.’’

‘‘So give me the hundred roubles,’’ Samoilenko asked timidly.

‘‘I won’t.’’

Silence ensued. Samoilenko went completely weak; his face acquired a guilty, ashamed, and fawning expression, and it was somehow strange to see this pitiful, childishly abashed face on a huge man wearing epaulettes and decorations.

‘‘The local bishop goes around his diocese not in a carriage but on horseback,’’ said the deacon, putting down his pen. ‘‘The sight of him riding a little horse is extremely touching. His simplicity and modesty are filled with biblical grandeur.’’

‘‘Is he a good man?’’ asked von Koren, who was glad to change the subject.

‘‘But of course. If he wasn’t good, how could he have been ordained a bishop?’’

‘‘There are some very good and gifted people among the bishops,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘Only it’s a pity that many of them have the weakness of imagining themselves statesmen. One occupies himself with Russification, another criticizes science. That’s not their business. They’d do better to stop by at the consistory more often.’’

‘‘A worldly man cannot judge a bishop.’’

‘‘Why not, Deacon? A bishop is the same sort of man as I am.’’

‘‘The same and not the same,’’ the deacon became offended and again took up his pen. ‘‘If you were the same, grace would have rested upon you, and you’d have been a bishop yourself, but since you’re not a bishop, it means you’re not the same.’’

‘‘Don’t drivel, Deacon!’’ Samoilenko said in anguish. ‘‘Listen, here’s what I’ve come up with,’’ he turned to von Koren. ‘‘Don’t give me that hundred roubles. You’re going to be my boarder for another three months before winter, so give me the money for those three months ahead of time.’’

‘‘I won’t.’’

Samoilenko blinked and turned purple, mechanically drew the book with the phalangid towards him and looked at it, then got up and took his hat. Von Koren felt sorry for him.

‘‘Just try living and having anything to do with such gentlemen!’’ said the zoologist, and he kicked some paper into the corner in indignation. ‘‘Understand that this is not kindness, not love, but pusillanimity, license, poison! What reason achieves, your flabby, worthless hearts destroy! When I was sick with typhoid as a schoolboy, my aunt, in her compassion, overfed me with pickled mushrooms, and I nearly died. Understand, you and my aunt both, that love for man should not be in your heart, not in the pit of your stomach, not in your lower back, but here!’’