Who was it who had striven to bend Yulia’s heart so badly out of shape, and so prematurely, while neglecting to develop her mind? Who could it be? Well, it was that classical trio of pedagogues who, at the behest of her parents, had come and taken her young mind under their tutelage in order to reveal to it the “workings and causes of all things”* and rip aside the veil of the past and show that under us, over us and within us there lies… an onerous duty! However, there are three nations to whose lot has fallen the task of performing this feat. Her parents themselves renounced all responsibility for her education in the belief that their work had ended, when, relying on the recommendations of their good friends, they recruited a Frenchman, Poulet, to teach their daughter French literature and other subjects, and also a German, Schmidt – because that was the thing to do – for her to learn German, although without actually mastering it; and finally Ivan Ivanych, the Russian teacher.
“But they’re all so unkempt,” said the mother, “and always so badly dressed – even worse than our servants by the look of them, and sometimes they even smell of wine…”
“But how can we possibly do without a Russian teacher? Absolutely not!” the father decided. “But don’t worry, I’ll find some who are more presentable.”
The Frenchman started work. Both father and mother danced attendance upon him. They invited him to the house as a guest and treated him with the greatest courtesy; he was “our dear Frenchman”.
Teaching Yulia was easy for him. Thanks to her governess she could already chatter in French, and read and write French almost faultlessly. It remained for Monsieur Poulet only to set her compositions. He gave her a variety of subjects: “Description of the Rising Sun”, “The Definition of Love and Friendship”, “A Letter of Congratulation to Her Parents” or “An Expression of Sorrow on Parting with a Friend”.
But through her window Yulia could only see the sun setting behind the house of Gurin, the merchant, and had never had occasion to part with a friend; as for love and friendship, this was her first inkling of these feelings. She would have to find out about them some time.
Having exhausted his repertoire of subjects, Poulet decided to start his pupil on one of those cherished slim exercise books, the front cover of which bore in capital letters the title: “Cours de littérature française”. None of us will ever forget that exercise book. Yulia learnt French literature by heart – or at least the contents of that slim exercise book, although after three years she had forgotten it all; but pernicious traces of it remained. She knew who Voltaire was and foisted on him Les martyrs, and to Chateaubriand she misattributed the Dictionnaire philosophique.* She called Montaigne “Monsieur de Montaigne” and referred to him in connection with Hugo. She spoke at times of Molière as still “writing” for the theatre, and she had learnt the famous speech of Racine, “À peine nous sortions des portes de Trézène”.*
In mythology she particularly liked the comedy played out between Vulcan, Mars and Venus.* She was tempted to take Vulcan’s side, but when she learnt that he had a limp and was clumsy and was only a blacksmith, she transferred her support to Mars. She also liked the fable of Semele and Jupiter, and also the banishment of Apollo and his earthly escapades, and understood all of this in precisely the terms in which it was written, without suspecting that any other meaning was hidden in these tales. Whether her French tutor himself had any suspicion – God knows! In response to her questions about the religion of the ancients, he would wrinkle his brow and respond complacently, “Des bêtises! Mais cette bête de Vulcan devait avoir une drôle de mine… écoutez,” and then added, patting her hand, “Que feriez-vous à la place de Venus?”* She didn’t answer, but for the first time in her life she found herself blushing for no apparent reason.
The French teacher finally concluded Yulia’s education by introducing her no longer theoretically, but practically to the new school of French literature, and giving her to read works which at one time had caused a sensation: Le Manuscrit vert, Les Sept Péchés capitaux, L’ne mort* and a whole slew of books sweeping France and Europe at that time.
The poor girl hurled herself greedily into that boundless ocean. What heroes she discovered there – Janin, Balzac, Drouineau and a whole succession of great men! How paltry the tale of Vulcan now seemed compared with these divine images! Venus was reduced to innocence itself by these new towering figures. She greedily devoured this new school, and no doubt reads them to this very day.
While the Frenchman was moving so far ahead, the stolid German hadn’t even finished teaching grammar, solemnly making up tables of declensions, conjugations and working out ingenious ways of remembering case endings, like telling his pupil that the particle zu always comes at the end of the Russian word for “end” – kontzu – and so on and so forth.
But when he was asked to teach literature, the poor fellow took fright. When he was shown the Frenchman’s workbook, he shook his head and said that that couldn’t be taught in German, but that there was Aller’s reader, which contained the names of all the writers and their works. But he didn’t get away with that, and the parents insisted that he introduce Yulia to various writers, as Monsieur Poulet had done.
The German finally promised, and returned home deep in thought. He opened the cupboard, or rather pulled off one of its doors entirely, and leant it against the wall, because the cupboard had long ago lost its hinges and its lock, and took out an old pair of boots, half a head of sugar, a bottle of snuff, a carafe of vodka and a crust of black bread, followed by a broken coffee grinder, a razor with a sliver of soap stuck to it and a brush in a jar of pomade, an old pair of braces, an oilstone for sharpening penknives and a number of other such odds and ends. Finally a book made its appearance, followed by a second, a third, a fourth – and, yes, a fifth, making up the whole set. He slapped them against one another, raising a cloud of dust as black as smoke, which gently settled on the pedagogue’s head.
The first book was The Idylls of Gessner.* “Gut!” said the German and eagerly read the idyll of the broken jug. He opened the second book, The Gothic Calendar for 1804. He leafed through it; it contained the dynasties of the European monarchs and pictures of various castles and waterfalls. “Sehr gut!” said the German. The third was the Bible, which he put aside. “Nein!” he muttered piously. The fourth was the Night Thoughts of Young;* he shook his head and muttered “Nein!” The fifth was Weisse,* and the German smiled triumphantly: “Da habe ich’s,”* he said. When he was asked: “What about Schiller, Goethe and the rest?” he just shook his head and replied with an emphatic “Nein!”
Yulia yawned as soon as the German started translating the first page of Weisse, and then stopped listening altogether. The only thing that remained in her memory from her German tutor was that the particle always came at the end, as in kontzu.
As for the Russian tutor, he was almost reduced to tears when he tried to explain to Yulia that a “substantive noun” or a “verb” was such and such a part of speech, and that a “preposition” was a different part of speech, but finally managed to get her to trust him and to learn the definitions of all the parts of speech by heart. She could recite all the prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs without stopping, and when the teacher asked her portentously, “What are the interjections which express ‘surprise’ and ‘fear’?” she promptly, and without stopping to take a breath, listed six or seven of them. Her tutor was delighted.
She also knew some of the principles of syntax, but was never able to put them into practice, and was dogged by faults of grammar all her life.
In history, she knew of Alexander of Macedon, and that he had fought many wars and was supremely brave – and, of course, supremely handsome – but when it came to his historical significance, and that of his period, it never occurred to either her or her teacher even to wonder – nor, for that matter, did Kaydanov* have much to say about that.
When the parents raised the question of literature
with the teacher, he brought in a heap of old and battered books. Among the authors were Kantemir, Sumarokov, as well as Lomonosov, Derzhavin and Ozerov.* Everyone was surprised; they carefully opened up one book, sniffed it and threw it out, and demanded something a little newer. The teacher brought in Karamzin. But who would think of reading Karamzin after the new French school! Yulia read Poor Liza and a few pages of Travels,* but gave it back.
The intervals between these classes for the poor pupil were numerous, and failed to provide any improving or healthy nourishment for the mind! Her mind began to go to sleep, while her heart began to sound the alarm. One day an obliging cousin turned up, and happened to bring with her a few chapters of Onegin and The Captive in the Caucasus,* among other books, and the young lady got her first taste of the charm of Russian verse. Onegin was learnt by heart and never left Yulia’s night table. But the cousin was no better able to explain the significance and the merits of that work than her other teachers. Yulia took Tatyana as her model and mentally repeated to her own imaginary ideal the passionate lines of Tatyana’s letter to Onegin, and her heartbeat ached and throbbed to the rhythm of those lines. Her imagination sought here an Onegin, or there some hero from the pages of the masters of the new school – pale, melancholy and disillusioned.
An Italian and another Frenchman were brought in to round off her education, and they lent harmonious dimensions to her voice and movements – that is to say that they taught her to dance, sing and play – or rather to dabble – at the piano, until marriage came along, but they didn’t teach her music. So there she was at the age of eighteen, already with that constant pensive expression, an attractive pallor, a slender waist, small feet, and starting to be seen in society.
She was noticed by Tafayev, a man with all the attributes of the perfect match: a respectable rank, a sizeable fortune, and wearing a cross on his neck – in short, a man of substance with a promising career. He could not be described as a simple and amiable man – not by a long chalk! He was not easily taken advantage of, and was a forthright critic of the current state of Russia and of its economic and industrial shortcomings, and in his circle he was known as a man to be reckoned with.
The pale, pensive girl, because of her striking contrast with his solid temperament, made a strong impression on him. At social gatherings, he would leave the card table plunged in thought, most unusually for him, watching that almost ethereal wraith flit past him. When her languorous gaze happened to fall on him, something which never happened by design, he, a nimble gladiator in the arena of social conversation, was intimidated in the presence of this timorous young girl and, although anxious to say something to her, found himself tongue-tied. He found this vexing, and made up his mind to take more positive action through the intercession of older ladies.
The information which had reached him about her dowry was satisfactory. “A good match!” he thought to himself. “I’m only forty-five, and she is eighteen; with our combined fortunes more than just the two of us could live very comfortably. As for appearance, well, she is more than averagely pretty, and I am what is known as a fine figure of a man. People say she is educated. But so what? I too have had my share of education: I studied Latin and Roman history, and I still remember some. There was that consul… what was he called?… Well, to hell with it! I also remember learning about the Reformation… There were those lines of poetry: ‘Beatus ille…’* Now, what comes next? ‘Puer, pueri, puero’* – no, that’s wrong; what the devil! I’ve forgotten everything. By God, it’s true, we learn only to forget! I don’t care what anyone says, take any one of these important, intelligent people: not a single one of them will be able to tell you who that consul was… or in what year the Olympic Games were held. So that really the only reason for learning things is for form’s sake. So that people can tell by your look that you’ve been educated. Of course you’re going to forget; I mean, later on, out in the world, no one is ever going to talk about these things, and if anyone should happen to do so, I think they would simply be shown the door. No, we’re a good match.”
So that’s how it happened that, on taking her first step after her childhood, Yulia had stumbled into that grimmest of realities, your run-of-the-mill husband. He couldn’t have been more different from those heroes conjured up in her imagination by the poets!
After spending five years in that loveless marriage, which she thought of as a tedious dream, suddenly she found freedom and love. She smiled, invited him into her passionate embrace, abandoned herself to her passion in the same way that a horse rider abandons himself to a fast gallop. He is carried away by the momentum of his powerful steed, oblivious to the ground he is covering. It’s breathtaking; objects flash past him, the fresh wind smacks him in the face, his breast swells fit to burst from the heady feeling… Or like someone paddling a canoe, abandoning himself to the speeding current of his will: the sun warms him, he glimpses the green banks of the river flashing by, a wave slaps playfully at the side of the boat, whispering gently as it passes, and beckoning him farther and farther on, showing the way to the boundless expanse ahead. And he follows in its wake. No time to stop and consider what lies at the end. Will his mount race over a precipice, will that wave smash him against a rock? The wind effaces thought, the eyes close, the spell is overpowering… In just the same way, she was in thrall to that spell, and was just carried along farther and farther. At last she was able to savour life’s poetic moments; she cherished the alternating delight and torment of her heart in turmoil, and freely sought the excitement of those moments, even devising her own moments of torment and delight. She craved love as people crave opium, and greedily swallowed the draught that was poisoning her heart.
Yulia was anxiously waiting. She was standing at the window, her impatience mounting with every moment. She was plucking the petals from a hibiscus and angrily flinging them onto the floor, her heart sinking – a moment of sheer pain. She was playing a mental game of question and answer: “Will he or won’t he come?” She was summoning all her energy to concentrate exclusively on solving that riddle. When the answer came up “yes”, she smiled; if “no”, she went pale.
When Alexander approached, her face went pale and she sank into an armchair, in a state of nervous exhaustion. When he entered, it was impossible to describe the look she gave him, or the joy which irradiated all her features, as if they had been parted for a year, when they had seen each other only the day before. She pointed silently to the wall clock, but barely had he opened his mouth to apologize when, without even giving him time to utter a word, she believed him, forgave him and forgot all about the pain that the waiting had caused her, and gave him her hand. They both sat down on the divan and talked for a long time, sat silent for a long time, and looked at each other for a long time. If a servant hadn’t appeared, they would have forgotten to eat.
What delight! Alexander had never even dreamt of such an abundance of “sincere, heartfelt outpourings”. In the summer, when they left the town to walk together in the country, while the crowd were diverted by the sound of music or fireworks, the two of them could be seen in the distance, passing through the trees arm in arm. In the winter, Alexander came to dinner, and afterwards they would sit together by the fire long into the night. Sometimes they would order a sleigh to be harnessed and, after speeding through the dark streets, hurried back to continue their unending conversation beside the samovar. Everything happening around them, every passing thought and reaction was registered and shared between them.
Alexander was as scared of encountering his uncle as he would have been to put his hand in the fire. He sometimes went to see Lizaveta Alexandrovna, but she never succeeded in getting him to open up to her. He was always on edge because of the possibility that his uncle might catch him there and make another scene – and that is why he always cut his visits short.
Was he happy? With anyone else in similar circumstances one might have answered: “Yes and no.” But with him, it was: “N
o.” In his case, love always began with suffering. At those moments when he succeeded in forgetting the past, he could believe in the possibility of happiness, in Yulia and in her love. But at other times, in the heat of those “heartfelt outpourings” he always began to feel uncomfortable and, when he listened to her passionate and rapturous declarations, even felt afraid. He felt that at any moment she would change, or that another unexpected “blow of fate” would strike him and instantly destroy his wonderful world of bliss. For every minute of joy that he tasted, he knew that he would have to pay with suffering, and gloom would overwhelm him.
However, the winter passed, summer arrived, and love continued uninterrupted. Yulia’s attachment to him grew ever stronger. She had not changed, and no “blow of fate” had been dealt; what happened was something quite unexpected. The expression in his eyes was brighter. He had grown accustomed to the idea that in love, lasting commitment was possible. “Only, this love is not so passionate,” he thought to himself once when he was looking at Yulia, “although it’s lasting, maybe even eternal. Yes, there’s no doubt. Finally, Fate, I understand you! You are trying to reward me for my past sufferings, and steer me, after long wanderings, into a peaceful harbour. And that safe haven of happiness… is Yulia,” he exclaimed aloud.
The Same Old Story Page 27
