The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91

Verochka

Ivan Alekseyevich Ognyov remembers how the French windows rattled as he opened them that August evening and went out onto the verandah. Then he was wearing a light cape¹ and the broad-brimmed straw hat that now lay under his bed gathering dust with his topboots. In one hand he held a large bundle of books and notebooks, in the other a stout, knotty walking-stick.

In the doorway, lighting the way with a lamp, stood Kuznetsov his host, a bald old man with a long grey beard and wearing a snow-white piqué jacket. The old man was smiling and nodding benevolently.

‘Goodbye, old chap!’ Ognyov shouted to him.

Kuznetsov put the lamp on a small table and came out onto the verandah. Two long narrow shadows swept down the steps towards the flowerbeds, swayed for a moment and bumped their heads against the trunks of the lime trees.

‘Goodbye – and thanks again, my dear fellow!’ Ivan Alekseyevich said. ‘Thanks for your generosity, your kindness, your affection… I shan’t forget your hospitality as long as I live. You’re such a good person, your daughter’s so nice, everyone here’s so kind, cheerful, generous… Really, such wonderful people that I’m lost for words!’

Carried away by his feelings and the effects of the home-made liqueurs he had just drunk, Ognyov spoke in a singing voice, like a theology student, and he was so touched that he expressed his emotions not so much in words as by blinking his eyes and twitching his shoulders. Kuznetsov, who was also slightly tipsy and overcome with emotion, leaned towards the young man and kissed him.

‘I’ve become so used to you – it’s as if I were your gun-dog!’ Ognyov continued. ‘I’ve been coming here nearly every day and stayed overnight a dozen times. I’ve drunk so much of your liqueurs it doesn’t bear thinking about! But what I have to thank you for most of all, Gavriil Petrovich, is for your help and cooperation. Without you I would have been busy with my statistics here until October. And that’s just what I’m going to put in my preface: “It is my duty to express my gratitude to Kuznetsov, President of N— District Council for his kind assistance.” Statistics has a brill-i-ant future!² My profound respects to Vera Gavrilovna and please tell the doctors, the two magistrates and your secretary that I shall never forget their help. And now, old friend, let’s embrace and kiss for the last time!’

Limp with emotion, Ognyov kissed the old man again and started going down the steps. On the bottom step he turned round.

‘Shall we ever meet again?’

‘God knows!’ the old man replied. ‘Probably not!’

‘Yes, that’s true. Nothing will induce you to go to St Petersburg and it’s hardly likely I’ll ever come back to this district. Well – goodbye!’

‘Why don’t you leave your books here?’ Kuznetsov shouted after him. ‘Why drag all that weight around? I could send them over tomorrow with one of the servants.’

But Ognyov was listening no longer and he quickly walked away from the house. Warmed by the liqueurs, at heart he felt glowing, cheerful – and sad. On the way he thought how often in life one chances to meet splendid people and what a pity it was that all that is left of these encounters is memories. It is the same when one glimpses some cranes on the horizon and a gentle gust of wind carries their mournfully exultant cries towards you. But a moment later, however eagerly you peer into the blue distance, you cannot see one speck or hear one sound – so people’s faces and voices flash through our lives and are swallowed up by the past, leaving nothing but worthless scraps of memories. Having lived since early spring in N— district and visited the amiable Kuznetsovs almost every day, Ivan Ognyov had come to look upon the old man, his daughter, the servants as his own family; he had become familiar with every little detail of that house, the cosy verandah, the winding garden paths, the silhouettes of the trees over the kitchen and the bath-house. But the moment he passed through the garden gate all this would become but a memory, losing for him its meaning as part of reality for ever, and after one or two years all these cherished images would grow dim in his mind and fade together with the fruits and fancies of his imagination.

‘Nothing in life is as precious as people!’ thought Ognyov, deeply moved as he strode along the path towards the gate. ‘Nothing!’

It was still and warm in the garden. A scent of still-blossoming mignonette, tobacco plant and heliotrope wafted from the flowerbeds. The spaces between the shrubs and tree trunks were filled with delicate, filmy mist saturated with moonlight; what Ognyov remembered for long afterwards were the spectral wisps of mist which were slowly but perceptibly following each other across the paths. The moon stood high above the garden and beneath it transparent patches of mist were hurrying eastwards. The whole world seemed to consist solely of black silhouettes and wandering white shadows. Seeing the mist on a moonlit August night almost for the first time in his life, Ognyov thought that it was not nature that he was witnessing but a stage set, where some clumsy pyrotechnists, intending to illumine the garden with Bengal lights, had concealed themselves in the shrubs and were discharging clouds of white smoke together with their flares.

As Ognyov approached the garden gate a dark shadow moved away from the low fence to meet him.

‘Vera Gavrilovna!’ he joyfully exclaimed. ‘It’s you! I’ve been looking for you everywhere… I wanted to say goodbye… Well, goodbye then, I’m leaving.’

‘So early? It’s only eleven o’clock.’

‘Well, it’s time I went. I’ve a three-mile walk and I haven’t even packed yet. I have to be up early tomorrow.’

Before Ognyov stood Kuznetsov’s daughter Vera, a girl of twenty-one, sad-faced as usual, carelessly dressed and most attractive. Young women who daydream a great deal and who spend days lying around lazily reading whatever comes to hand, who are bored and melancholy, generally tend to dress carelessly. To those of them whom nature has endowed with taste and a feeling for beauty this slight carelessness lends its own special charm. At least, when Ognyov later recalled pretty Verochka, he couldn’t picture her without that loose-fitting blouse that hung creased in deep folds at the waist without touching her body, or that curl which had come loose from her piled-up hair onto her brow, or that red knitted shawl with the shaggy bobbles at the edges that was sadly draped over Verochka’s shoulders in the evenings like a flag in calm weather, lying crumpled up during the day in the hall near the men’s caps or on the chest in the dining-room and unceremoniously slept on by the old cat. That shawl and those creases in her blouse conveyed a feeling of idle ease, domesticity and placidity. Perhaps it was because he liked Vera that he saw in every button and frill something warm, cosy and innocent, something fine and poetic – just what was lacking in cold, insincere women with no feeling for beauty.

Verochka had a good figure, a regular profile and pretty, curly hair. Ognyov, who hadn’t seen many women in his lifetime, thought she was beautiful.

‘Well, I’m leaving,’ he said, bidding her farewell at the gate. ‘Think kindly of me! Thanks for everything!’

In that same singing, theology student’s voice in which he had talked to the old man, blinking and twitching his shoulders again, he started to thank Verochka for her kindness, hospitality and cordiality.

‘I mentioned you in every letter to my mother,’ he said. ‘If everyone were like you and your papa life would be a bed of roses. You’re such wonderful people. So unpretentious, so friendly and sincere!’

‘Where are you going now?’ Verochka asked.

‘First to my mother’s at Oryol for a couple of weeks, then back to my work in St Petersburg.’

‘And after that?’

‘After that? I’ll be working all winter and come spring it’s back to somewhere in the provinces to collect material. Well, be happy, live a hundred years… Think kindly of me. We shan’t meet again.’

Ognyov stooped and kissed Verochka’s hand. And then, in mute emotion, he straightened his cape and rearranged his bundle of books.

‘The mist’s really come down tonight!’ he said after a short pause.

‘Yes. You haven’t left anything at our place have you?’

‘No, I don’t think so…’

Ognyov stood for several seconds in silence, then he turned awkwardly towards the gate and walked out of the garden.

‘Just a moment,’ Verochka said, following him. ‘I’ll come with you as far as the wood.’

They set off along the path. Now there were no trees to obscure the view and one could see the sky and into the far distance. The whole of nature seemed to be hiding behind a gauzy, transparent haze, through which she gaily peered in all her beauty. Where the mist was thicker and whiter it lay unevenly near the ricks and bushes, or floated wispily across the path, clinging close to the earth as if trying not to spoil the view. Through the haze the whole path was visible as far as the wood, with dark ditches along its sides where thin bushes grew, trapping vagrant patches of mist. About a quarter of a mile from the gate they could see the dark strip of the Kuznetsovs’ wood.

‘Why has she come with me?’ thought Ognyov. ‘Now I’ll have to see her back.’ But after glancing at Verochka’s profile he smiled warmly and said, ‘I don’t really feel like leaving in such wonderful weather. A truly romantic night – with the moon, silence – all the trimmings! Do you know what, Verochka? I’m twenty-nine, but I’ve never had a single love affair. Not one romantic episode in my whole life, so I know of lovers’ trysts, paths of sighs and kisses only at second-hand. It’s not normal! When you’re cooped up in your room in town you don’t realize what you’re missing, but out here in the fresh country air you’re very conscious of it. Somehow it’s rather annoying.’

‘Why are you like this?’

‘I don’t know. Probably because I’ve never had the time, but perhaps it’s simply because I’ve never happened to meet the kind of women who… In fact, I don’t have many friends and I never go out.’

For about three hundred paces the young pair walked in silence. Ognyov kept glancing at Verochka’s bare head and her shawl and one after the other the memories of those spring and summer days came flooding back. That was when, far from his dreary Petersburg room, taking such delight in the kind attentions of fine people, in nature and in the work he loved that he failed to notice how dawn passed into sunset glow and how, presaging summer’s end, first the nightingale, then the quail and soon afterwards the corncrake ceased their song… Time had flown past unnoticed and that meant life had been so good, so easy. He began to recall aloud how reluctantly he, a young man of modest means, unaccustomed to society and travel, had come at the end of April to N— district, how he had been expecting to find boredom, solitude and an indifference to statistics³ which he considered now queen of the sciences. Arriving one April morning at the little provincial town of N— he had put up at the inn kept by the Old Believer⁴ Ryabukhin, where for twenty copecks a day they had provided a bright clean room, with the restriction that he should smoke out of doors. After a short rest and after discovering who was president of the rural council, he at once set off on foot to see Gavriil Petrovich Kuznetsov. The walk took him through two miles of lush meadows and young woodland. Beneath the clouds, filling the air with their silvery notes, skylarks hovered, whilst rooks circled over cornfields that were turning green, sedately and decorously flapping their wings.

‘Heavens!’ Ognyov had thought in surprise. ‘Do they always breathe air like this here or does it smell like this just for today, in honour of my arrival?’

Expecting a cold, formal reception, he had entered the Kuznetsovs’ house timidly, looking around distrustfully and shyly tugging his beard. At first the old man had frowned and failed to understand how the rural council could be of use to that young man with his statistics, but when Ognyov explained at length what statistical material was and where it was collected, Kuznetsov brightened up, smiled and began to examine his notebooks with childish curiosity. That same evening Ognyov was already dining with the Kuznetsovs, the potent liqueurs rapidly went to his head, and as he glanced at those placid faces and the lazy movements of his new friends, his body was filled with that delicious, drowsy indolence which makes one want to sleep, stretch oneself out and smile. And his new friends looked at him benignly, inquiring whether his father and mother were still alive, how much he earned a month and how often he went to the theatre.

Ognyov recalled his journeys through the neighbouring districts, the picnics, the fishing parties and the group excursion to the convent to see Mother Superior Martha, who gave each of the visitors a bead purse. He recalled those heated, endless, typically Russian arguments when the disputants, spluttering and banging their fists on the table, misunderstand and interrupt each other, contradict themselves with every sentence without even noticing, constantly change the subject and after arguing for two or three hours burst into loud laughter and exclaim: ‘God alone knows what we’ve been arguing about! We began on a cheerful note and finished on a sad one!’

‘Do you remember when you and I and the doctor rode over to Shestovo?’ Ognyov asked Verochka as they approached the wood. ‘That was when I met the holy fool.⁵ I gave him five copecks and he crossed himself three times and flung it into the rye. Heavens, I’ll be taking so many impressions away with me that if I could gather them into a solid mass they’d make a sizeable gold ingot! I don’t understand why clever, sensitive people should herd together in St Petersburg and Moscow and not come out here. Is there really more breathing space on Nevsky Avenue and in those huge damp houses than here? Honestly, that existence in furnished rooms, packed from top to bottom with artists, academics and journalists, has always struck me as a complete sham!’

Twenty paces from the wood the path was crossed by a little narrow bridge with small pillars at the corners. This bridge always served as a brief stopping-place for the Kuznetsovs and their guests during their evening walks. From here, those who were so inclined could draw echoes from the wood and one could see the path disappearing into a dark cutting.

‘Well, here’s the bridge!’ Ognyov said. ‘You should turn back now.’

Verochka stopped and drew a deep breath.

‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ she said, sitting on one of the pillars. ‘Everyone usually sits here to say goodbye before they leave.’

Ognyov settled himself beside her on his pile of books and carried on talking. Vera was breathing heavily from the walk and she wasn’t looking at Ognyov, but to one side, so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘And suppose we suddenly meet in ten years’ time?’ he said. ‘What shall we be like then? By then you’ll be the respected mother of a family and I’ll be the author of some respected, totally useless collection of statistical articles⁶ as fat as forty thousand others. We shall meet and talk over the old days… Now we’re more conscious of the present, it absorbs and excites us, but when we meet ten years from now we shan’t remember the date or the month or even the year when we last met on this bridge. Most likely you will have changed by then. Do you think you’ll have changed?’

Vera shuddered and turned her face to him.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I was just asking…’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying.’

Only then did Ognyov notice the change that had come over Vera. She was pale and breathing erratically, and her tremulous breathing communicated itself to her hands, lips and head; two curls instead of the customary one came loose and fell onto her forehead… She was evidently trying to avoid looking him in the eye and in an effort to conceal her agitation she kept adjusting her collar as if it were cutting into her neck and shifting her red shawl from one shoulder to the other.

‘You must be cold,’ Ognyov said. ‘Sitting in the mist isn’t very healthy. Let me see you nach Hause.’⁷

Vera said nothing.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ognyov asked, smiling. ‘You’re so quiet, you don’t answer my questions. Aren’t you well – or are you cross?’

Vera pressed the palm of her hand firmly to the cheek that was turned towards him and immediately jerked it away.

‘It’s too awful,’ she whispered with a look of intense pain. ‘Too awful!’

‘What’s awful?’ asked Ognyov, shrugging his shoulders and making no attempt to conceal his surprise. ‘What’s the matter?’

Still breathing heavily and twitching her shoulders Vera turned her back to him and gazed up at the sky for half a minute.

‘I must speak to you, Ivan Alekseyevich,’ she said.

‘I’m listening.’

‘It may seem strange to you… you’ll be surprised, but I really don’t care.’

Ognyov shrugged his shoulders again and prepared to listen.

‘You see,’ Verochka began, bowing her head and fingering a bobble on her shawl, ‘this is what… I wanted to tell you… it will seem strange and… silly… but… I can’t bear it any longer!’

Vera’s words turned into an indistinct mumble and suddenly dissolved in sobs. The girl hid her face in her shawl, bowed her head even lower and wept bitterly. Ivan Alekseyevich cleared his throat in his confusion and, not knowing what to say or do, looked around in despair. Unaccustomed to sobbing and tears he felt that his own eyes were beginning to smart.

‘Well really!’ he stammered in dismay. ‘Vera Gavrilovna! I’m asking you – whatever’s the matter? Aren’t you well, my dear? Or has someone upset you? If you tell me then perhaps I can… help.’

And when, in his efforts to console her, he allowed himself carefully to take her hands from her face, she smiled at him through her tears.

‘I… I love you!’ she said.

These words, so simple and ordinary, were spoken in simple, human language, but Ognyov turned away from Verochka in utter confusion and stood up – and his confusion was followed by panic.

That sad, glowing feeling and the sentimental mood induced by fond farewells and liqueurs suddenly evaporated and gave way to an acutely unpleasant sensation of awkwardness. As though his feelings had suffered an upheaval, he cast a sidelong glance at Verochka – and now that she had declared her love for him and shed that inaccessibility which is so attractive in a woman, she struck him as somehow shorter, plainer, darker.

‘What’s happening to me?’ he asked himself in horror. ‘Now… really… do I love her… or don’t I? That’s the problem!’

And now that the most important and difficult thing had finally been said, Vera breathed easily and freely again. She too stood up, looked Ognyov straight in the eye and started speaking quickly, passionately, irrepressibly.

Just as someone suddenly startled cannot recall afterwards the exact sequence of sounds that accompanied the catastrophe which stunned him, Ognyov cannot remember Verochka’s words or phrases. All he remembers is the general drift of what she said, Verochka herself and the feelings that her words aroused. He remembers that voice, stifled and somewhat hoarse with emotion, and the rare music and passion of her intonation. Weeping and laughing, tears glistening on her eyelashes, she confessed that from the very first days of their friendship she had been struck by his originality, his intellect, his kind, clever eyes, by his aspirations and his aims in life; that she had fallen in love with him passionately, madly, deeply; that whenever she went from the garden into the house during the summer and saw his cape in the hall or heard his voice in the distance, her heart would thrill in anticipation of happiness. Even his weakest jokes made her laugh, in every figure in his notebooks she saw something exceptionally wise, majestic – and his knotty walking-stick seemed more beautiful than the trees themselves.

The wood, the wisps of mist and the dark ditches on the sides of the path seemed hushed as they listened to her. But in Ognyov’s heart something strange and unpleasant was happening. When she declared her love Verochka had been enchantingly appealing, had spoken nobly and passionately; but now, instead of the pleasure and rejoicing in life that he would have liked to have felt, he experienced nothing but pity for her, pain, and regret that such a fine person should be suffering because of him. Heaven alone knew whether he was motivated by cold logic or if that incurable habit of remaining coolly detached which so often prevents people from living life to the full was manifesting itself, but Verochka’s rapture and suffering struck him as cloying, trivial. And at the same time a feeling rebelled within him, whispering that all he was seeing and hearing now, as far as nature and personal happiness were concerned, was more serious than any statistics, books, eternal verities… And he was angry and reproached himself, although he did not understand where exactly he was to blame.

And to compound his embarrassment he had absolutely no idea what to say – yet speak he must. To tell her bluntly, ‘I don’t love you’ was beyond him, nor could he bring himself to say ‘Yes’, since for all his soul-searching he could not find one spark of feeling within him…

He remained silent while she told him that for her there could be no greater happiness than to see him, to follow him wherever he wanted, there and then, to be his wife and helper, and that if he left her she would die of grief.

‘I can’t live here any more!’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘I’m sick of this house, these woods and the air. I cannot bear this perpetual peace, this aimless life. I cannot stand all these colourless, dull people – so alike you can’t tell one from the other! They’re all so well-meaning and good-natured only because they’re well fed and because they don’t have to suffer or struggle. But it’s just to those great damp houses where people suffer, where drudgery and poverty make them bitter, that I do want to go!’

This too struck Ognyov as affected and frivolous. When Verochka had finished he still had no idea what to say, but silence was impossible, so he mumbled, “Vera Gavrilovna, I’m most grateful to you, although I do feel that I’ve done nothing to deserve such feelings on your part. Secondly, as a man of honour, I ought to tell you that happiness is based on… reciprocity… that is… when both parties love equally…’

But Ognyov immediately felt ashamed of his mumbling and stopped. He sensed at that moment that his expression was stupid, guilty, lifeless, that it was strained and false. Vera must have read the truth in his face because suddenly she became serious, turned pale and bowed her head.

‘Please forgive me,’ Ognyov muttered, unable to bear the silence. ‘I have so much respect for you that this really hurts me!’

Vera turned sharply away and rapidly walked towards the house. Ognyov followed her.

‘No, don’t bother!’ Vera said, waving him away. ‘Don’t come with me, I can go by myself…’

‘But… I must see you home… after all…’

Everything he said, to the very last word, struck Ognyov as flat and loathsome. His feeling of guilt increased with every step he took. He fumed, clenched his fists and cursed his coldness and clumsiness with women. In an attempt to stir some measure of feeling he glanced at Verochka’s pretty figure, at her hair and the traces left by her tiny feet on the dusty path; he recalled her words and tears, but all this merely moved him: it did not excite him.

‘Ah well, you can’t force yourself to fall in love!’ he assured himself – and at the same time he thought, ‘but when shall I ever fall in love without forcing myself? After all, I’m nearly thirty! I’ve never met anyone better than Verochka and I never shall… Oh, this wretched old age! Old age at thirty!’

Verochka walked ahead of him, quickening her steps and without looking back, her head bowed. It seemed that in her grief she had grown thinner and narrower in the shoulders…

‘I can imagine what’s going on inside her now,’ he thought as he looked at her back. ‘She must be feeling so ashamed and miserable that she wishes she were dead! Heavens, there’s enough life, poetry and meaning in all this to melt a stone… But I’m… I’m stupid, ridiculous!’

At the gate Vera glanced back at him for an instant, wrapped her shawl more tightly around her hunched shoulders and hurried down the path.

Ognyov was left alone. As he went back to the wood he walked slowly, constantly stopping to look round at the gate and his whole bearing seemed to express utter disbelief in what he had done. He searched for Verochka’s footprints along the path and could not believe that a young woman whom he liked so much had just declared her love and that he had so clumsily and boorishly ‘spurned’ her. For the first time in his life he had learnt from experience how little of what we do depends on our goodwill and he found himself in the position of a decent, sincere man who had brought cruel, undeserved suffering upon his neighbour despite himself.

His conscience troubled him and when Verochka disappeared from view it began to dawn on him that he had lost something very precious and close that he would never find again. He felt that with Verochka part of his youth had slipped away and that those moments he had lived through so fruitlessly would never be repeated.

When he reached the bridge he stopped and reflected. He wanted to find the reason for his strange coldness. It did not lie outside, but within him – that was clear. He frankly admitted to himself that it was not the cool detachment of which clever people boast so often, or that of a self-centred fool, but simply spiritual impotence, a lack of any deep appreciation of beauty, premature ageing brought on by his upbringing, his frantic struggle to earn a living, his bachelor existence in rented rooms.

From the bridge he walked slowly, reluctantly as it were, into the wood. Here, where in places sharply outlined patches of moonlight appeared against the impenetrable darkness and where he was aware of nothing but his own thoughts, he longed passionately to recapture what he had lost.

And Ognyov remembers going back to the house. Spurring himself on with memories, forcing himself to conjure up Verochka’s image, he swiftly strode towards the garden. By now the mist had vanished from the path and the garden, and the bright moon looked down as if newly washed; only the sky in the east was hazy and overcast… Ognyov remembers his cautious steps, those dark windows, the heavy scent of heliotrope and mignonette. The familiar Karo, amicably wagging his tail, came up and sniffed his hand. This was the only living creature that saw Ognyov walk twice around the house, pause beneath Verochka’s dark window and leave the garden with a deep sigh and gesture of despair.

An hour later he was in the town. Weary and despondent, he leaned his body and burning face against the inn gates and banged the knocker. Somewhere in the town a waking dog barked and as though in response to his knocking the watchman struck his iron plate near the church.

‘Gadding about at night again…?’ grumbled the Old Believer innkeeper as he opened the gates in a long shirt resembling a woman’s nightdress. ‘Better be saying your prayers than gadding around like this…’

Ognyov went into his room, sank onto the bed and gazed at the lamp for a long, long time. Then he shook his head and started packing…