So he never did learn, and he was sorry later that he had not, why his father had abandoned his mother.
Her portrait hung in his father’s study, always, to the final days. Had he loved her?
Life was in full flow at Krutovrag, there was a lot of card playing, but his father was glum. But if he loved her, why did he leave her?
Why did his father leave his mother?
Why had so much suffering, so many bitter days and nights, become her lot?
Unwittingly to these sad shores …
“The devil!” Sergei Sergeyevich would shrug it off, recalling the former Krutovrag.
After graduation, he went to St. Petersburg and joined a regiment.
Life was easy for him. He never needed money: his father did not begrudge him money and sent it frequently and regularly. His father cared very much about him and did everything to make him happy. He could not complain about a thing. With his connections and money, a most enviable and happy future awaited him.
He led a life that was customary in his society: he played cards, participated in sprees and binges, danced at balls, told jokes, made witticisms, flirted with ladies, got involved in the details of regimental intrigues, worried, argued—and everything went smoothly and very much like the day before. If anything did occur that seemed exceptional and extraordinary, it still did not go beyond the generally accepted and possible in his society: so once he lost a lot of money at cards, but who hasn’t lost a lot once? All the other exceptions were in the same vein, no more, no less.
St. Petersburg life flowed smoothly, with insignificant jumps.
It seemed that there was nothing for Versenev to remember out of his successful, easy St. Petersburg life, with such big promise, but smoothness.
There was only one memory that was always there.
Of course, it wasn’t anything special and the incident was the most ordinary.
But is there much in the world that is extraordinary?
Later, back in Krutovrag, Sergei Sergeyevich often thought about it and asking himself, alone with himself, judged and decided himself.
He had understood long ago that the whole point lay not in the uniqueness of the incident, startling and way outside the acceptable and usual, that often what remains in the soul is completely unnoticeable—like crumbs, like leftovers.
“A comet flies by, a star falls, an earthquake destroys an entire city—and it will be forgotten, pass by, devalue like yesterday’s snow, while some little light, beneath a bridge shining from somewhere, winking at you, or some stupid looming lamppost—a kerosene torch smack outside your window on the street—trifles, but they stay with you all your life.”
Yes, he thought about it a lot, judging himself and deciding, he looked into the darkness, into the murk of his soul.
But how much can you see?
And even if you do see, how much can you make out?
And if you do make it out, will you be able to communicate it?
And if you can, will you have the courage?
“Killing or deceiving, slandering and betraying, what could be worse?—they are crimes, a great sin, punished by all kinds of laws. But if you check it, what then? Why the murderer … he doesn’t care a fig about murder—so, he killed someone, and it’s like water off a duck’s back—and his story, his pain, punishment and reward, everything that he will bear to the last minute of his life, everything that will be meaningful whether he’s killing or saving himself, it doesn’t matter, it will not be the murder but the fact that a day, a week, a month, a year, maybe ten years before the murder, walking down the street he pushed some beggar girl who was making a pest of herself—these beggar girls hustled around the streets with soiled cards: buy a fortune!—and not because he pushed that beggar offering him a fortune, but because the beggar, a frozen girl, gave him a look then, a look he would remember his whole life.”
“The devil!” Just briefly recalling his St. Petersburg incident and his reflections, Sergei Sergeyevich shrugged it off.
One of his comrades had a bride: he was from a very important family, while she came from a very unimportant and poor one. The groom’s relatives were against the relationship and interfered in the wedding.
Sergei Sergeyevich, who took his comrade’s story to heart, visited him constantly, sincerely wishing every happiness for him and his bride.
And when, at last, after trouble and fuss, everything was settled and the wedding day set, everything suddenly ended unexpectedly sadly, and the wedding was off:
The bride refused the groom.
Versenev remembers the evening, a St. Petersburg autumnal evening with piercing damp wind and streetlamps blurred by drizzle, remembers her room somewhere on Ruzovskaya Street near the barracks. She asked him to come see her because of the dissolved engagement. He believed her but when he came to her, she revealed the truth …
He remembers her face, how she turned pale—the way his mother did when he ran into her corner room: “Papa is coming!”
She opened up to him, she had fallen in love with him, she loved him, she loved only him.
But he did not love her at all. Had he ever given her reason to think so? He was attentive to her as the future wife of his friend; he sincerely wanted to help them: her and him. But he never loved her and did not love her at all.
He remembers how she stood—she stood by the window, moved into the corner by the window, and in the window there was rain—the rained tapped, without cease, evenly: drop by drop, rivulet by rivulet.
He remembers how she looked at him, without blinking, with downcast mouth, and the eyes that followed him out, not moving, as if turning to stone—for all the blood of her body, all the strength of her soul, all the hope of her heart he had taken away with him:
Just like that, took them and out the door!
The next evening, he met her again, quite accidentally, by Kokushkin Bridge.
It was she; he wasn’t mistaken. He recognized her right away by her gaze—she looked at him the same way as the night before, without blinking.
And then he heard something plop into the nasty viscous water—into the black canal. But he did not even look back, he went his own way.
Had he pushed her head into the canal—into the nasty viscous water?
“The devil!” Just briefly recalling his St. Petersburg incident, Sergei Sergeyevich shrugged it off.
Soon after his incident he was called back to Krutovrag and left St. Petersburg: his father was dying.
Old Versenev, Sergei Petrovich, was dying alone, permitting no one near him—not the doctor, not the priest. Only in extreme cases, one animal—the valet Zinovy—came to him. The old man refused food and did not sleep at night.
No one in the house slept at night.
It was eerie in the house, and they were afraid to speak, afraid to whisper.
The lights were on in all the rooms, all the doors were open wide, and they were tightly shut only in the old man’s study.
Sergei Sergeyevich arrived late at night and in order not to disturb his father, wanted to see him in the morning. But his father guessed and through Zinovy called him into his study.
The old man was in an armchair, hidden in the corner by the cupboard beneath an old astronomical globe, terribly emaciated—what kept his soul together!
The old man gasped for air, as if someone were squeezing his throat, and his eyes were dead—the pupils dark, dead, only the iris shining with an unpleasant harsh shine.
The son took the old man’s hand and bent over—the old man’s hand was cold.
Bent over to kiss his cheek, he felt an overwhelming revulsion and disgust and kissed him in the air.
They said hello.
The old man kissed his son—his lips were so cold, colder than his hands.
The son, after a moment, bent down again:
“Well, how are you doing?”
“The devils are coming,” hissing, the old man said through clenched teeth.
“What
kind, little ones with a tail?” the son tried to turn his father’s response into a joke: he knew how to get along with old people and how to talk to them.
“Not at all, real … devils!” his father hissed, and his eyes grew even darker.
Versenev remembers those eyes, completely dead, with dark dead pupils and the harsh living irises and how the harsh living irises narrowed and suddenly glinted with a red flame.
He grabbed his hat and stepped away from the old man.
“Real ones,” the old man hissed and scratched at his chest and suddenly jumped up in his armchair with a screech and landed with his nose in the carpet.
So this was the person about whom he thought so much once and awaited so impatiently!
But what was tormenting his father?
Whom did he see?
Who came to him?
Who was real?
What real person with the last of his conscience, the last of his will, with his final word put his hand on his heart?
Who was he?
“The devil!” Sergei Sergeyevich shrugged it off, recalling the death of his father, whom he thought about so much once and awaited so impatiently.
By the new year Versenev retired and moved from St. Petersburg to Krutovrag for good, took up running the estate and got married.
Why he married he no longer remembered clearly: he must have taken a fancy to Elizaveta Nikolayevna then—she was so quiet and meek—a quiet angel.
And he was bored alone in the old house.
Sergei Sergeyevich did not run things for long. He tried serving in the Zemstvo assembly, but that didn’t work out and he dropped out. All over silly trifles. Gradually, completely imperceptibly, he estranged himself from everything.
A responsible and reliable manager, a Latvian nicknamed The Mule locally for his grimness, plus Elizaveta Nikolayevna, who managed to fill the old house with endless noise and merry guests—all the business was on them and so was the entire Versenev destiny.
3
Gorik and Buba were good students and graduated from the gymnasium with medals. Gorik went to the university, Buba to a women’s college.
The last summer passed with even more noise and fun and daring.
The Krutovrag boys, both the bullied ones—Whale Whisker, Horse Hair, Shovel—and the wild ones—Igonka, Igoshka, Enka, Ezhka, Ermoshka—under Gorik’s leadership played expropriation and played the raid so realistically that the neighboring Ingush from the Beloyarov estate practically shot the ataman.
Rockets and Indian fireworks sparkled over the house, bonfires sent up smoke in the garden, and there were fires all around sending ferocious red light to dissolve in the black nights.
When it was time to go to St. Petersburg, Elizaveta Nikolayevna also began packing.
The children left with their mother and they never returned to their merry Krutovrag.
Elizaveta Nikolayevna told her husband so, that she would never return to Krutovrag nor would the children.
There was no slyness, no mischief in her words; it was clear that she had made up her mind firmly and irrevocably.
Sergei Sergeyevich did not understand at first, refused to understand—he was hurt and saddened, he did not want to be separated, it was hard to start life anew, to learn to give up what he was used to, get used to something else, he simply could not imagine a different life—the Versenevs had been together for eighteen years!
He tried to argue with his wife, and each time he merely waved his hand: all his arguments boiled down to a tortured squeak that rose somewhere in his throat followed by the usual devil.
Nothing came of it.
Finally they pulled out the bristle from him, as Nanny Solomovna put it—they remove “the bristle” from cranky children in the banya, the steam bath, so they stop screaming!—he agreed to everything and signed the necessary papers.
The money matters were resolved easily and simply.
The Latvian manager, presenting the situation of the Versenev affairs clearly and sensibly, took it upon himself to send all accounts to St. Petersburg to Elizaveta Nikolayevna.
Krutovrag emptied.
The Versenev event flew over the Krutovrag fields and down the high road, turning left and right from estate to estate.
For some reason no one was particularly surprised by it, no one was particularly upset, as if they had long expected it and had said nothing; it was only to spare him, the way a hopelessly ill patient is spared news of his coming death.
The family disagreement to which they ascribed Verseneva’s departure and severe decision, or the family dis-ass-agreement as their neighbor retired general Beloyarov put it, enjoying a picturesque style, interested only the district ladies who took delight now in their secret suspicions.
“It’s perfectly clear that there has to have been an affair, obviously, a real one, and even though there was no mention of the secret sweetheart, obviously there was one, otherwise why the disagreement?”
This was the ladies’ thinking.
But no one wanted to get into it, there was no desire to get involved in someone else’s problems—none of my business, it was easier that way.
Unquiet lay the fields and the golden autumn forest rustled, unquiet were the stars—the dim little Krutovrag stars shone rather anxiously over the Versenev house.
The house was emptied and even a loaf of bread couldn’t lure them back.
However, at first three ladies showed up—friends of Elizaveta Nikolayevna.
Unable to resist, they came to Krutovrag to sniff the air, as they later explained it.
The ladies besieged Versenev and rattled in his ears so that he couldn’t even let loose his devil for all the rattling.
Even though Solomovna explained in plain Russian as she saw off the guests that “the master’s illness stuck in the mistress’s back like a tooth” and that’s why it happened, the ladies could not accept that and having gone back to their houses insisted that there was a sweetheart somewhere.
This, they say, is when retired General Beloyarov, at a party at the home of one of the ladies, expressed himself about the Versenev disagreement in his own way—picturesquely, and then added a softener: “Everything has weight and measure.”
The affair ended with that.
Of the neighbors, the Zemstvo leader Pustoroslev came to visit, bringing along the agronomist Ratseyev, whom he introduced as a famous St. Petersburg orator with cartilage instead of bones.
Ratseyev in fact kept twisting no less than a sturgeon, but he did not utter a word. However, Pustoroslev gabbed all evening, going over events from his well-known unmatched forgetfulness.
He told the story of his infamous trip abroad on some special assignment both before and after dinner.
Sergei Sergeyevich had heard the story several times: sent by the ministry to France, Pustoroslev went to Spain from France, and from Spain to Italy, and from Italy somewhere in Algiers, and demanding support all the time and spending tons of state money, he only remembered upon his return to Russia why he had in fact been sent abroad.
“Oblivion is the fate of the gods!” Pustoroslev said, drawling out his deign to see and winking with his white, seemingly sightless eyes, hinting apparently at the disagreement.
The shopkeeper Khabin came just once to have tea.
In the empty house, Versenev was very pleased to see even Khabin.
Khabin stayed a long time. Over tea in the low-ceilinged long dining room, starting conversations unrelated to anything over some remote objects and swearing for the thousandth time to give up his vile habit, he got stuck in his as they say, while Sergei Sergeyevich, staring at his confused guest, waved his hand and released his devil.
“Habit, as they say, is second nature!” babbled the shopkeeper, all red, soaked in sweat, and tormented, unable to find the door anymore.
It was only the priest Astriozov, who never gave up his primordial idea of finding the connecting link, not the ordinary one, but iron, kept looking in on Versenev
.
The priest, not the boldest of men, left alone with Sergei Sergeyevich grew even shyer, and having developed a taste for cigars, chewed on a cigar and sent into Versenev’s devil his short link, stronger than the sign of the cross.
“Link,” the priest repeated, flicking off ash when it was needed and when it wasn’t, both from the Mexican leaves and the Brazilian.
In the empty house, Versenev was very happy to see the priest.
Otherwise he was all alone, entire days alone.
Sergei Sergeyevich stopped going to church—he couldn’t restrain his devil even in church during the service, which led to great temptation of the congregation.
There was even an unpleasantness: the churchwarden Goloveshkin during a royal service tried to box the freemason’s ear. Sergei Sergeyevich stopped attending church.
In a white flannel jacket, with a cigar, Versenev wandered through the empty house.
The red cigar fire made a red flame flicker in his sunken, dulled eyes and turned his strong gray mustache green.
He had nothing to occupy his time. And how to occupy it? He couldn’t play with toys!
He had become so accustomed to the noise and continual guests, to his wife and children—the Versenevs had spent eighteen years together!
Many a time he spent hours at the balcony door, counting crows—the crows circled the leafless naked linden trees, screaming … so many of them and what were they screaming about?
Or he’d go upstairs to the corner room where his mother Fedosya Alexeyevna used to sit and sit down like his mother staring at the road—where did the road lead and did it have an end?
Or he listened to the trees rustling in front of the house—poplars … what were they rustling about all the time?
Or he’d sit in his father’s armchair beneath the enormous astronomical globe and stare at a point, perhaps the very point from which real devils without forks and tails came out to his father, and fall asleep there.
“The devil!” was repeated day and night, awake and asleep, echoing through the empty house.
With the cold weather, they put in windows and the balcony door, filling the cracks with fresh putty and smoothing it.
The Little Devil and Other Stories Page 12
