The Same Old Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “How well you’ve understood me!” said Tafayeva to Alexander as they said goodbye. “No other man, not even my husband, could properly understand my character.”

  The fact is that even Alexander was pretty much like her, and that’s what made it easy for him.

  “Goodbye.”

  She gave him her hand.

  “I hope that you will find your way here, even without your uncle,” she added.

  The winter came. Alexander usually dined at his uncle’s on Fridays. But four Fridays had now gone by without him at dinner – nor did he come on the other days. Lizaveta Alexandrovna was angry, and Pyotr Ivanych grumbled that Alexander was making them wait for him for an extra half-hour – and for nothing.

  However, Alexander was by no means idle during this time: he was busy carrying out his uncle’s instructions. Surkov had long since stopped calling on Tafayeva and went round telling people that it was all over between them, and that he had “broken it off with her”. One evening – it was on a Tuesday – Alexander returned home and found two vases on his table with a note from his uncle. Pyotr Ivanych thanked him for his friendly efforts on his behalf and asked him to dinner as usual the next day. Alexander started thinking – it was as if this invitation was somehow interfering with his plans.

  The next day, however, he went to Pyotr Ivanych’s an hour before dinner.

  “What’s the matter? We never see you any more. Have you forgotten us?”

  His uncle and aunt plied him with questions.

  “Well, you did it!” said Pyotr Ivanych. “You surpassed yourself. You were too modest. ‘I can’t,’ he says, ‘I won’t succeed!’ Won’t succeed indeed! I’ve been wanting to see you, but you’re impossible to catch. Anyway, I’m really grateful! Did the vases arrive safely?”

  “Yes, they did; but I’m going to send them back to you.”

  “Why? Absolutely not! They’re yours by right.”

  “No!” said Alexander firmly. “I won’t accept your gift.”

  “Oh well, as you wish! My wife likes them; she’ll take them.”

  “I didn’t know, Alexander,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna with a mischievous smile, “that you were so skilled in these matters… I can’t tell you…”

  “It was Uncle’s idea,” Alexander responded in some embarrassment, “I didn’t really… Well, he just told me what to do…”

  “Oh yes, just listen to him; he really wasn’t capable – couldn’t do it by himself – he handled the business beautifully… I’m really very grateful. And that idiot of mine, Surkov, nearly went out of his mind. He really made me laugh. Two weeks ago he runs in to see me; he’s beside himself; I could tell why right away, but I don’t let on, and just keep on writing as if I’ve no idea what it’s all about. ‘So, tell me what’s new?’ He tries to smile, as if he’s perfectly calm… but he can hardly keep back his tears. ‘Nothing good,’ he says, ‘I have some bad news for you.’ I looked at him, pretending to be surprised. ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Well, it’s about your nephew.’ ‘Well, what is it? You’re frightening me – out with it quickly!’ I say. At this point, he can’t control himself any more and starts shouting; he’s fuming. I backed away from him in my chair. He’s reduced to spluttering. ‘You yourself complained that he does practically nothing, and yet it’s you who is training him to be idle.’ ‘Me?’ ‘Yes, you; who was it who introduced him to Julie? I want you to know that the very day after meeting that woman he starts using her pet name.’ ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with it is that now he is there with her all day…’”

  Alexander suddenly blushed.

  “You see how people lie out of sheer malice, I thought,” Pyotr Ivanych continued, watching his nephew. “Can you imagine Alexander sitting round there all day long! I didn’t ask him about that. Well?”

  Pyotr Ivanych regarded his nephew in his usual steady and expressionless manner, but Alexander felt positively scorched by his look.

  “Yes, well I do sometimes… go round…” Alexander mumbled.

  “‘Sometimes’ – that’s different,” his uncle continued, “that’s what I asked him; but not every day. I knew he was lying. I mean what could you possibly be doing there all day? You’d be bored.”

  “Not at all! She’s a very intelligent woman with, er, an excellent education… She likes music…” Alexander mumbled indistinctly and disjointedly, and started scratching his eye – although he never usually scratched – and stroking his left temple. Then he got out his handkerchief and wiped his lips.

  Lizaveta Alexandrovna gave him a stealthy but penetrating look, turned towards the window and smiled.

  “Well, so much the better,” said Pyotr Ivanych, “if you weren’t bored. I was rather afraid that I had imposed on you an unpalatable task. So, I say to Surkov, ‘Thank you, my dear fellow, for having my nephew’s interests at heart, I’m much… obliged; only, aren’t you exaggerating the problem a little? I mean it’s not so terrible after all.’ To which he replies, ‘What do you mean, ‘not so terrible’? He has nothing to keep him occupied, a young man should be working…’ So I say, ‘Yes, it’s really not so terrible, but what’s it to you, anyway?’ He says, ‘What do you mean, “what’s it to me?” He’s up to all kinds of tricks in order to frustrate me.’ ‘Oh, that’s what the problem is!’ I say in order to tease him. ‘He’s telling Yulia all kinds of things about me. He’s become thoroughly hostile to me. I’m going to teach that young milksop a lesson’ – I’m sorry, I’m just repeating his words. ‘Why’, says Surkov, ‘should he be feuding with me? And it’s nothing but slander he’s using against me. I hope you will bring him to his senses…’ ‘I’ll take it up with him, I can assure you I will. Only, that’s enough, don’t you think? What has he done to annoy you?’ Have you been giving her flowers? Is that it?” Pyotr Ivanych stopped again as if awaiting a reply. Alexander kept silent. Pyotr Ivanych continued: “‘What I’m telling you,’ he says, ‘is the truth. He brings her bouquets of flowers every day. It’s wintertime,’ he says, ‘I can’t imagine what it must cost. I know what those bouquets mean. And here’s a thought which occurred to me: you and he are related, and I know very well that family ties mean something; I mean, would you have gone to so much trouble for someone else?’ ‘Are you sure it’s every day?’ I ask him. ‘But wait, I had better ask him; for all I know you may be lying.’ Indeed, he probably was lying, wasn’t he? You couldn’t possibly?…”

  Alexander wished that the earth would swallow him up, but Pyotr Ivanych had no mercy and looked him straight in the eye, waiting for an answer.

  “Well sometimes… I did actually bring…” said Alexander, his head lowered.

  “Here we go again with ‘sometimes’. Not every day – that would really be uneconomical. In any case, tell me how much all that cost you, I don’t want to see you out of pocket on my account – in addition to all the trouble you’ve taken for me. So let me have the bill. Anyway, Surkov still had the bit between his teeth and wouldn’t let go. ‘They’re always out somewhere or other,’ he says, ‘either out on a walk or for a ride in her carriage, just the two of them, wherever there aren’t too many people around.’”

  Alexander was a little discomfited by these words; he stretched his legs out from under his chair and immediately drew them back again.

  His uncle continued. “I shook my head doubtfully. ‘Oh, yes! I can just imagine him going out for walks every day,’ I say. ‘Ask around!’ he says. ‘I’d do better to ask him,’ I said. It’s not true, is it?”

  “Well, a few times… yes… I did go for a walk with her…”

  “So, not every day; I didn’t ask about that; I knew he was lying. ‘Well, what of it?’ I tell him. ‘Why is that important? She’s a widow and she doesn’t have any men who are relatives. And Alexander is a gentlemanly character, not a rake like you. So what if she does take him? I mean, she can’t go alone?
’ He doesn’t want to hear it. ‘No,’ he says, ‘you won’t fool me! I know. He’s always with her in the theatre, and I’m the one,’ he says, ‘who manages to get the box – with God knows how much trouble at times, and there he is sitting in it next to her.’ At this I couldn’t contain myself and burst out laughing. ‘It serves you right, you fool!’ I’m thinking. ‘Good for you, Alexander! There’s a nephew for you!’ Only I feel bad about your taking all that trouble for me.”

  Alexander was in torment. Large beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead. He could hardly hear what his uncle was saying and didn’t dare to look at him or his aunt.

  Lizaveta Alexandrovna took pity on him. She shook her head at her husband, silently reproaching him for torturing his nephew. But Pyotr Ivanych persisted.

  “Out of jealousy, Surkov was anxious to convince me,” he went on, “that you were already head over heels in love with Tafayeva. ‘Now, come on,’ I say to him, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re lying; after everything that’s happened to him, he’s not going to fall in love. He understands women too well, and despises them…’ Isn’t that so?”

  Alexander nodded without looking up.

  Lizaveta Alexandrovna felt bad for him.

  “Pyotr Ivanych!” she said in an attempt to shut him up.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Some time ago a servant came with a letter from the Lukyanovs.”

  “I know, thank you. Now where was I?”

  “Once again, Pyotr Ivanych, you’ve gone and dumped your ashes on my flowers – it’s a disgrace!”

  “Don’t worry, my dear, they say that ashes promote growth in plants; now what was I going to say?…”

  “Isn’t it time for dinner, Pyotr Ivanych?”

  “All right, tell them to serve it! I’m glad you reminded me about dinner, because Surkov tells me that you, Alexander, dine there almost every day – and, he says, that’s why you’re never here on Fridays, and also, supposedly, that you spend whole days together, just the two of you, and God knows what other things he makes up. I got so fed up with him that I finally had to throw him out. And indeed it did turn out that he was lying. Today is Friday, and here you are!”

  Alexander crossed his legs and tilted his head onto his left shoulder.

  “I’m extremely, extremely grateful to you. You’ve done this favour to me both as a friend and as a member of the family!” Pyotr Ivanych stated. “Surkov is now convinced that he stands to gain nothing and has withdrawn from the fray. ‘She,’ he says, ‘imagines that I will be pining for her; she is mistaken! And to think that I wanted,’ he says, ‘to decorate the whole of the ground floor between the windows – and God knows what else I had intended to do. Probably,’ he says, ‘she didn’t even dream of what happiness was in store for her. I would,’ he says, ‘even have considered marrying her if she had succeeded in captivating me. Now, all that is over and done with. You, Pyotr Ivanych,’ he says, ‘gave me some good advice, and I’m saving both money and time.’ Now the fellow is acting all Byronic, plunged in gloom, and isn’t asking for money, and I can now say with him: ‘All over and done with!’ Your job is done, Alexander, and in masterly fashion, and I will enjoy peace of mind for a long time to come. Now you can take it easy, and you don’t have to so much as look at her any longer; I can just imagine how boring it must have been!… But please forgive me… I will make it up to you somehow. When you need money, do come to me. Liza! Tell them to serve some good wine at dinner; we’ll drink to the success of the plan.”

  Pyotr Ivanych left the room. Lizaveta Alexandrovna stole a look once or twice at Alexander out of the corner of her eye, but seeing that he wasn’t saying a word, also left to give orders to the servants.

  Alexander was sitting there as if in a trance, just gazing at his knees. Finally he raised his head and looked around him – no one else was in the room. He took a breath and looked at his watch – four o’clock. He picked up his hat immediately, waved his hand in the direction of the door through which his uncle had left the room and quietly, on tiptoe, looking warily all around him, made his way to the entrance hall, took his overcoat and rushed headlong down the stairs on his way to Tafayeva’s house.

  Surkov had not lied. Alexander was in love with Tafayeva. It was almost with horror that he had reacted to the first signs of this love. He was racked by fear and shame as if he had contracted some infection – fear that he would fall prey once again to all the caprices both of his own heart and that of the woman he loved – shame because of having to face other people, and especially his uncle. He would have given anything to be able to avoid confronting him. Why, it was hardly three months ago that he had been boasting so proudly that he had renounced love once and for all. He had even written an epitaph in verse to that unsettling emotion, which had been read by his uncle. And finally, he had publicly proclaimed his contempt for women – and suddenly here he was again prostrate at a woman’s feet! Further proof of his infantile recklessness. Good God! When would he be able to free himself from his uncle’s irresistible influence? Would his life never be free to take its own independent and unexpected course, but forever be determined by Pyotr Ivanych’s predictions?

  The thought reduced him to despair. He would have been glad to flee from this new love. But how could he? What a difference was there between his love for Nadenka and his love for Yulia! His first love was nothing but an unfortunate aberration of the heart which demanded to be fed, and at that age the heart was undiscriminating, ready to embrace whatever happened to come along. But Yulia! There’s someone who is no longer a capricious youngster, but a woman in her prime, bodily weak, but with a spirit full of energy – for love; she is – nothing but love! There is no other imperative for happiness and life itself that she recognizes. To love – a mere trifle? It’s also a gift. And in the matter of love Yulia is a genius. This was the kind of love of which he dreamt: a conscious, considered love, but at the same time powerful and oblivious to anything outside itself. “I’m not breathless with joy, like an animal,” he said to himself. “My senses do not swoon, but something is going on inside me which is more significant, of a higher order; I am conscious of my own happiness; I can contemplate it; it is fuller, although perhaps quieter… How nobly, how unreservedly, how naturally Yulia has yielded to her feelings!” It is as if she had been waiting for a man with a deep understanding of love – and that man appeared. He had proudly taken possession of this rich heritage as its rightful owner and was humbly recognized as such. “What joy, what bliss,” thought Alexander, on his way from his uncle to her, “to know that there is a being in this world which, wherever it may be, whatever it is doing, is mindful of us, and is focusing all its thoughts, endeavours and actions on one single point, one single concept: that of the beloved being! It’s as if it is our doppelgänger. Whatever this being hears, whatever it sees, whatever it passes by, whatever passes by it – all is validated by the impression of that other self. It is an impression known to both – each of them has studied the other – and the impression, then validated in this way, is embraced and confirmed in the soul by its indelible features. That other self renounces its own sensations if they cannot be shared and accepted by the other. One loves what the other loves, and hates what the other hates. They live inseparably in a single thought, a single feeling; they have a single eye, a single hearing, a single mind, a single soul…”

  “Sir, where is it on the Liteyny Prospekt?” asked the driver.

  Yulia loved Alexander even more than he loved her. She was not even aware of the strength of her love and didn’t spend time thinking about it. In the case of a first love – no problem, but there’s no falling in love just like that the second time. The trouble was that her heart had developed an almost infinite capacity, fed as it had been by novels, and was geared not just to accommodate a first love, but the kind of romance which, while it can be found in some novels, does not exist in real life, and is always doomed
to unhappiness precisely because it is not possible in practice. At the same time, Yulia’s mind had not found in novels the proper sustenance, and was left behind by her heart. She was totally unable to conceive of a love that was tranquil and straightforward, and free from episodes of turbulence and emotional excess.

  She would stop loving a man if he did not immediately “drop to her feet” when the occasion arose, if he failed to swear his allegiance “with the full force of his being”, if he had the temerity not to “burn her and consume her with fire in his embrace”, or dared to find time in his life for any other pursuit but loving her, or to drain the “cup of life” in any other way than drop by drop from her tears and kisses.

  This was the source of the dream world she had created for herself. Let the slightest thing happen in the normal world which did not conform to the laws of that dream world, and her heart rose up in outrage and she was in pain. Her woman’s organism, weak as it was by nature, was easily, even severely shaken. Her nervous system was often overwrought, and often brought to the point of total collapse. This is the reason for those inexplicable moods of despondency and depression and the gloomy outlook on life to which so many women are prone. It also explains why the harmonious, so cleverly constructed order of human existence, constantly developing according to immutable laws, makes them feel tethered by a heavy chain. That is why, in short, reality itself frightens them, and makes them invent a world like that of the Fata Morgana.*