We kept talking and when we came to the subject of manual labour, I expressed the following opinion: ‘The strong should not enslave the weak, the minority must not be parasites on the majority, or leeches, forever sucking their lifeblood. By that I mean – and without exception – everyone, strong or weak, rich or poor, should play his part in the struggle for existence. In this respect there’s no better leveller than physical work, with everyone being forced to do some.’
‘So you think that absolutely everyone must do physical work?’ asked the doctor.
‘Yes.’
‘All right, but supposing everyone, including the cream of humanity – the thinkers and great scholars – played his part in the struggle for existence and wasted his time breaking stones or painting roofs. Wouldn’t that be a serious threat to progress?’
‘But where’s the danger?’ I asked. ‘Surely progress is all about good deeds and obeying the moral law. If you don’t enslave anyone, if you aren’t a burden to anyone, what more progress do you need?’
‘Look here!’ Blagovo said, suddenly flying into a rage and leaping to his feet. ‘Really! If a snail in its shell passes its time trying to perfect itself, messing around with moral laws – would you call that progress?’
‘Why messing around?’ I said, taking offence. ‘If you stop compelling your neighbour to feed, clothe you, to transport you from place to place, to protect you from your enemies, isn’t that progress, in the context of a life founded on slavery? In my opinion, that’s progress and perhaps the only kind possible for man, the only kind that is really necessary.’
‘There’s no limit to the progress that man can make, and this applies all over the world. Any talk of “possible” progress, limited by our needs or short-term considerations, is strange, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘If progress has no limits, as you put it, then its aims are bound to be vague,’ I said. ‘Imagine living without knowing what for!’
‘All right! But this “not knowing” isn’t as boring as your “knowing”. I climb a ladder called progress, civilization, culture. I keep climbing, not knowing precisely where I’m going, but in fact this wonderful ladder alone makes life worth living. But you know why you are living – so that some people stop enslaving others, so that the artist and the man who mixes his colours both have the same food to eat. But this vulgar, sordid, grey side of life – aren’t you revolted, living for that alone? If some insects enslave others, then to hell with them! Let them gobble each other up! But it’s not them we should be talking about; they will die and rot anyway, however hard you try to save them from slavery. The Great Unknown which awaits all mankind in the remote future – that’s what we should be thinking about.’
Blagovo argued heatedly, but I could see that something else was worrying him. ‘I don’t think your sister’s coming,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘When she was with us yesterday she said she’d come out here to see you. You keep on and on about slavery…’ he continued. ‘But that’s a particular case, isn’t it, and mankind solves such problems gradually, as it goes along.’
We talked about gradual development. I said, ‘The question whether to do good or evil is decided by each person by himself, without waiting for mankind to solve the problem gradually. What’s more, gradual development cuts two ways. Side by side with the gradual development of humane ideas we can observe the gradual growth of quite different ideas. Serfdom has been abolished,6 but capitalism flourishes. Notions of freedom are all the rage now, but the majority still feeds, clothes and defends the minority, just as in the times of the Tatars, while it starves, goes naked and unprotected itself. This state of affairs fits in beautifully with any trend or current of opinion you like, since the art of enslavement is also being gradually refined. We don’t flog our servants in the stables any more, but we develop refined forms of slavery – at least, we are very good at finding justification for it in isolated instances. Ideas are all right, but if now, at the end of the nineteenth century, it became possible for us to lumber working men with all our more unpleasant bodily functions, then lumber them we would. And then of course we would try and justify ourselves by saying that if the élite – the thinkers and great scholars – wasted their priceless time on these functions, then progress would be seriously jeopardized.’
Just then my sister arrived. Seeing the doctor, she fidgeted nervously, grew flustered and immediately said it was time to go home to Father.
‘Now, Cleopatra,’ Blagovo urged her, pressing both hands to his heart. ‘What can possibly happen to your dear Papa if you stay just half an hour with me and your brother?’
He was quite open with us and was able to infect others with his high spirits. After a moment’s deliberation my sister burst out laughing and suddenly cheered up, as she had done on the picnic. We went out into the fields, lay down on the grass and continued our conversation, looking at the town, where every window facing west seemed to have turned bright gold from the setting sun.
Every time my sister subsequently came to see me, Blagovo would turn up, and they greeted each other as if they had met accidentally in my room. As I argued with the doctor, my sister would listen, and her face would take on an ecstatic, deeply affected, inquisitive look. I had the impression that another world was gradually opening up before her, one that she had never even dreamt of and whose meaning she was now trying to fathom. Without the doctor there she was quiet and sad, and if she sometimes cried when she sat on my bed she never told me the reason.
In August Radish ordered us to leave for the railway line. Two days before we had received the command to ‘get going’ out of that town. Father came to see me. He sat down and wiped his red face without hurrying or looking at me. Then he took a local Herald out of his pocket and proceeded to read slowly, emphasizing every word, about how someone – the same age as me – the son of the manager of the State Bank, had been appointed departmental director in a provincial revenue office.
‘Just look at yourself now!’ he said, folding the paper. ‘Beggar! Tramp! Ruffian! Even the working classes and peasants are educated, so they can take their place in life. And you, a Poloznev, for all your distinguished, noble ancestors, are heading straight for the rubbish dump. But I didn’t come here to talk to you. I’ve already given you up as a bad job,’ he went on in a subdued voice as he stood up. ‘I’ve come to find out where your sister is, you scoundrel. She left the house after dinner, it’s getting on for eight and she’s still not back. She’s started going out fairly often now without telling me. She hasn’t the same respect for me – there I can see your evil, rotten influence. Where is she?’
He was holding that umbrella I knew so well and I was at my wits’ end. Expecting a beating, I stood to attention. But he saw me glance at the umbrella and this probably put him off.
‘Do what you like!’ he said. ‘You won’t have my blessing!’
‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ Nanny muttered behind the door. ‘You poor, stupid wretch. I feel deep down that there’s trouble brewing. I can feel it!’
I started work on the railway line. For the whole of August it rained non-stop and it was damp and cold. They could not get the crops in from the fields, and on the big farms, where they used harvesting-machines, the wheat was lying in heaps instead of sheaves – I can remember those miserable heaps growing darker with every day that passed, the wheat germinating in them. It was hard to do any sort of work. The heavy rain ruined everything we tried to do. We weren’t allowed to live or sleep in the station buildings, so we took shelter in filthy, damp dug-outs where the navvies had lived during the summer, and I could not sleep at night for the cold and the woodlice crawling across my face and arms. When we were working near the bridges, a whole gang of navvies turned up in the evenings just to give the painters a thrashing – this was a form of sport for them. They beat us, stole our brushes and – to provoke us to a fight – they smeared the railway huts with green paint. To cap it all, Radish started paying us extremely irregula
rly. All the painting in this section was handed over to some contractor who passed it on to someone else, who handed it on to Radish for a twenty per cent commission. We weren’t paid much for the work – and there was that incessant rain. Time was wasted, we were unable to work, but Radish was obliged to pay the men daily. The hungry painters came near to beating him up, called him a swindler, bloodsucker, Judas, while the poor man sighed, held up his hands to heaven in desperation and went time and again to Mrs Cheprakov for money.
VII
A rainy, muddy, dark autumn set in. There was no work around and I would sit at home for days on end without anything to do. Or I would take on different jobs not connected with painting – shifting earth for foundations and getting twenty copecks a day for it. Dr Blagovo had gone to St Petersburg, my sister did not come any more, Radish was at home ill in bed, expecting to die any day.
And the general mood was autumnal. Perhaps it was because I was a working man now that I saw only the seamy side of town life and therefore I could not avoid making discoveries nearly every day that drove me to despair. My fellow citizens, of whom I already had a low opinion, or who appeared to be perfectly decent, now turned out to be contemptible, cruel people, capable of the meanest trick. They swindled simple working men like us, cheated us out of our money, made us wait hours on end in freezing entrance-halls or kitchens, insulted us and treated us very roughly. During the autumn I papered the reading-room and two other rooms at the club. I was paid seven copecks a roll, but I was told to sign for twelve, and when I refused, a handsome gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles (most probably one of the senior members) told me, ‘Just one more word from you and I’ll bash your face in, you swine!’
And when a waiter whispered to him that I was the son of Poloznev the architect, he blushed with embarrassment, but immediately recovered and said ‘To hell with him!’
At the local shops we workmen were fobbed off with rotten meat, stale flour and weak tea. In church we were shoved around by the police; in hospital we were robbed by junior staff and nurses, and if we didn’t have the money to bribe them with, they took revenge by giving us our food on filthy plates. The most junior post office clerk thought he had the right to address us as if we were animals, yelling roughly and insolently: ‘Hey, you there, wait! Where do you think you’re going?’ Even house dogs were hostile and attacked us particularly viciously. However, what startled me more than anything in my new job was the complete lack of fair play – precisely what the common people mean when they say that someone has become a ‘lost soul’. Hardly a day passed without some kind of swindle. The merchants who sold us mixing oils, the main contractors, workmen, even customers – they all tried it on. Of course, there was no question of our having any rights, and we always had to beg for the money we had earned as we stood cap in hand at the back door.
I was papering one of the rooms next to the club reading-room. One evening as I was about to leave, the engineer Dolzhikov’s daughter came in carrying a pile of books. I bowed.
‘Oh, hullo!’ she said, immediately recognizing me and holding out her hand. ‘So glad to see you.’
She smiled and gave my smock, bucket of paste, the rolls of paper scattered over the floor an inquisitive, puzzled look. I was embarrassed and she felt the same.
‘Please forgive me for staring at you,’ she said. ‘People have told me so much about you, especially Dr Blagovo. He’s simply crazy about you. And I’ve met your sister. She’s a charming, likeable girl, but I was unable to convince her that there’s nothing terrible about the simple life you’re leading. On the contrary, you’re the most fascinating man in town now.’
She glanced once again at the bucket of paste and the wallpaper and went on: ‘I’ve asked Dr Blagovo to help us to get to know each other better, but he’s obviously forgotten or was too busy. At any rate, we already know each other and I’d be extremely obliged if you dropped in to see me some time. I’m really longing to have a talk with you! I’m a straightforward sort of person,’ she continued, holding out her hand to me, ‘and I hope you won’t feel shy at my place. Father’s away in St Petersburg.’
Her dress rustled as she entered the reading-room. It took me a long time to get to sleep after I was home.
During that gloomy autumn some kind soul, who obviously wanted to make my life a little easier, sent me tea, lemons, cakes and roast grouse from time to time. Karpovna said that a soldier always brought the food, but she didn’t know who the sender was. The soldier would ask if I was well, if I had a hot meal every day and if I had warm clothes. When the frosts set in, the soldier came over as before, while I was out, with a soft woollen scarf. It had a delicate, very faint smell of perfume and I guessed who my good fairy was. The perfume was lily-of-the-valley, Anyuta Blagovo’s favourite.
Towards winter there was more work about and everything cheered up. Radish recovered once more and together we worked in the cemetery chapel, cleaning the iconostasis and scraping it with palette knives before the gilding. It was clean, relaxing work – money for jam, as the lads put it. In one day we could get through a lot of work and besides that the time flew past imperceptibly. There was no swearing, laughter or noisy conversation. The very place encouraged us to be quiet and well-behaved and inspired us with calm, serious thoughts. Immersed in our work, we would stand or sit, as motionless as statues. There was the deathly silence befitting a cemetery and if someone dropped his tool or if the icon-lamp sputtered there was a sharp, resonant, echoing sound, which made us all look round. After a long silence we would hear a humming, just like a swarm of bees – they were reading burial prayers at the porch for an infant, in unhurried, hushed voices. Or the artist who was painting a dove surrounded by stars on a cupola would start softly whistling, then suddenly stop, remembering where he was. Or Radish would answer his own thoughts and sigh ‘Anything’s possible! Anything!’ Or bells would toll slowly and mournfully above our heads and the painters would say that they must be burying some rich man.
I spent the days in that silence, in the church twilight, and on long evenings played billards or sat in the theatre gallery wearing the new woollen suit that I had bought with my wages. The performances and concerts had already started at the Azhogins’. Radish painted the scenery by himself now. He told me the plots of the plays and tableaux vivants which he had managed to see at the Azhogins’, and I listened enviously. I had a strong urge to go to rehearsals, but I could not bring myself to go to the Azhogins’.
Dr Blagovo arrived a week before Christmas. Once again we argued and in the evenings we played billiards. During the games he would take off his jacket, unbutton his shirt at the front, and for some reason he was always trying to look like some inveterate rake. He did not drink very much, but became very rowdy when he did have a drop, managing to part with twenty roubles in an evening in a low pub like the Volga.
Once again my sister began visiting me. Both she and the doctor seemed surprised every time they happened to meet, but it was obvious from her joyful, guilty face that these meetings were not accidental. One evening the doctor asked me, when we were playing billiards, ‘Listen, why don’t you call on Mariya Viktorovna? You don’t know how clever and charming she is, such a simple, kind soul.’
I told him about the reception I had got from her father in the spring.
‘But it’s stupid to talk like that!’ the doctor laughed. ‘There’s a world of difference between the father and her! Now, my dear boy, don’t offend her, try and call on her some time. What if we both went along tomorrow evening, together? Would you like that?’
He persuaded me. The following evening I put on my new woollen suit and set off, full of apprehension, to see Mariya Viktorovna. The footman didn’t seem so snooty and intimidating as before, nor did the furniture look so luxurious as on that morning when I came to ask for a job. Mariya Viktorovna was expecting me and welcomed me like an old friend, shaking my hand firmly and warmly. She was wearing a grey, full-sleeved dress and her hair was done in the s
tyle that was called ‘dogs’ ears’ a year later, when it became fashionable in town: it was combed back from the temple, over the ears, which made her face seem broader, and on this occasion she struck me as very like her father, who had a broad red face and an expression rather like a coachman’s. She looked beautiful and elegant, but not young – about thirty perhaps, although she was in fact no more than twenty-five.
‘That dear doctor, I’m so grateful to him!’ she said, asking me to sit down. ‘You wouldn’t have come to see me if it hadn’t been for him. I’m bored to death! Father’s gone away and left me alone, and I don’t know what to do with myself in this town.’
Then she began questioning me as to where I was working, what my wages were, where I lived.
‘Do you earn enough to live on?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You lucky man!’ she sighed. ‘I think all the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, from nothing to exercise your mind on, and that’s inevitable when you’re used to living off others. Please don’t get the idea that I’m just trying to impress. I mean this sincerely. It’s not very interesting or pleasant being rich. They say “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness”7 because there’s no such thing as honest wealth and there never can be.’
The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 Page 22
