Alexander, it seems, shared Evsei’s opinion, though he was silent. He went up to the window and saw only smokestacks and roofs and the black, dirty brick sides of houses… and he compared it with what he saw two weeks ago from the window of his house in the country. He felt sad.
He went out into the street–it was crazy. Everyone was running somewhere, preoccupied only with himself, hardly glancing at passersby, and if so, perhaps only so as not to bump into someone. He remembered his provincial city, where every encounter, no matter with whom, was somehow interesting. Ivan Ivanych is going to see Pyotr Petrovych and everyone in town knows why. Over there Marya Martynovna is driving home from a party, and Afanasy Savich is going fishing there. A policeman is galloping from the governor’s at breakneck speed in order to fetch the doctor, and everybody knows that Her Excellency is to give birth, though in the opinion of various great aunts and grandmothers it is not proper to know about this in advance. Everybody wonders, is it a girl or a boy? The ladies get out their best hats. Here comes Matvei Matveich out of his house with his heavy walking stick at six o’clock in the evening, and everyone knows that he’s going to take his evening constitutional, that without it his stomach does not digest, and that he will stop without fail at the window of the old councillor, who, as everybody knows, drinks tea at this time. You exchange a couple of words with whomever you meet, and whomever you bow to–you know who he is, where he’s going and why, and you read in his eyes, I know who you are, where you’re going and why. Finally, if people who are strangers meet, and they have never even seen each other before, then the faces of both are suddenly transformed into question marks. They stop, turn around to look back twice, and once they’re home, describe the new person’s dress and gait, and explanations and guesses go back and forth about who and from where and why. In Petersburg, though, people even push you off the sidewalk at a glance as if everybody there were an enemy.
At first Alexander looked with provincial curiosity at everyone he met and at every decently dressed person, taking some of them for government ministers or ambassadors, some for writers. “Isn’t that he?” he thought, “isn’t this the one?” But soon this bored him–ministers, writers, ambassadors came toward him at every step.
He looked at the houses–and found them even more boring. Sadness overwhelmed him when he saw these monotonous stone blockbusters, which dragged on like colossal mausoleums, one after the other, in a solid mass. “The street will end here, just another minute and the eyes will find freedom,” he thought, “either a hill, or green, or a broken-down fence.” But no, the same stone wall of identical houses with four rows of windows begins again. And when this street ends, it is obstructed by a street like it, with a new row of the same houses. Look to the right, to the left–everywhere you are surrounded as if by a troop of giants–houses, houses and houses, stone and stone, everything the same and alike… There’s no open space and no escape for the eyes: closed in on all sides–and human thoughts and feelings are likewise closed in, it seems.
The first impressions of a provincial visitor in Petersburg weigh him down. He feels sad, disturbed; nobody notices him; he is lost here; neither novelty nor variety nor the crowd excites him. His provincial pride declares war on everything he sees here and didn’t see at home. He falls into a reverie and is transported in thought to his home town. What a pleasing sight! One house with a peaked roof and a high fence with acacia. There’s an added structure on the roof, a dovecote–the business man Izyumin hunts them, that’s why he went and built a shelter for them on his roof, and mornings and evenings in nightcap and bathrobe he stands on the roof with a stick, to which a rag is fastened, and whistles, waving the stick. Another house looks exactly like a lantern: it’s all windows on all four sides and with a flat roof. Built long ago, it looks as if it will collapse any minute or burn up in spontaneous combustion; the shingles have taken on a kind of light-gray color. How awful to live in such a house, but people live there. True, the owner sometimes looks at the sagging ceiling and shakes his head, mumbling, “Will it still be standing by spring? Perhaps!” he’ll say then and go on living there, fearing not for himself, but for his pocketbook. Next to him the wild architecture of the surgeon’s house basks coquettishly, spread out in a half-circle with two wings like sentry boxes, and the whole hidden in green; it has turned its back on the street, and its fence stretches for a mile; behind the fence red apples look out from the trees, the temptation of small boys. The houses have retreated to a respectful distance from the churches, which are surrounded by grass and gravestones. Government offices–it’s obvious at once which ones they are: nobody goes near them unless he has to. But here in the capital you can’t tell them from simple houses, and there are even little stores right in some houses, disgraceful to say. In a provincial city after you’ve walked down two or three streets, you already sense open space; woven-grass fences begin, then orchards, and then, indeed, open fields with corn. And there is quiet, even stillness and boredom–and the same beneficent paralysis is found on the street and among the people! Everyone lives as he will, no one feels pressure; even the chickens and roosters wander about the streets freely, the goats and cows crop the grass, the small boys set snakes free.
But here… what sadness! The man from the provinces sighs at the wall opposite his window and the dusty, dirty street and the shaky bridge and the sign over the pub. He hates to admit that St. Isaac’s Cathedral is better and taller than the church in his provincial city, that the hall of the Nobles’ Assembly is bigger than halls there. He keeps an angry silence at comparisons of the sort, but sometimes he’ll risk saying that there you can get a better such and such material or wine for less, or that there they wouldn’t even look at those overseas delicacies, the big crabs and mollusks, or the red fish, or that, of course, you’re free to buy various materials and trinkets from foreigners here; they’ll cheat you, but you’ll be happy to be made a fool of! Yet how he suddenly rejoices when he compares and sees that the caviar in his home city is better, or there are better pears and sweet rolls. “So you call that thing a pear?” he’ll say. “Why at home even servants wouldn’t eat that!”
Still greater will be the provincial’s sorrow when he enters one of these houses with a letter from afar. He thinks they’ll throw open their arms to embrace him, they won’t know how to welcome him enough, where to seat him or how to entertain him. They will slyly find out what is his favorite food. How uneasy he’ll feel at these kindnesses, how he’ll finally cast ceremony aside, kiss his host and hostess, begin to call them familiarly “thou”, as if he’d known them for twenty years. They’ll all raise their glasses in a toast and perhaps strike up a song in chorus.
Quite the contrary! They hardly look at him, frown, excuse themselves with work. If you have a business matter, then they pick an hour when they won’t be dining, and they’re ignorant of the “admirals’ hour”–there’s neither vodka nor appetizers. The host backs away from embraces and looks somewhat strangely at the guest. In the next room glasses and spoons may clink; they should invite you then and there, but they try to show the provincial the door with clever hints… Everything locked up, everywhere little alarm bells: isn’t that wretched? And such cold, unfriendly faces. But at home in the provinces you may enter boldly. If they’ve finished dinner, they’ll dine again for the guest’s sake. The samovar is on the table morning and evening, and there aren’t any little bells in the stores. People embrace and kiss all the time, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. A neighbor there is a real neighbor; the two live hand in hand, one soul. A relative is a relative; he’ll die for his own… Alas, how sad!
Alexander found his way to Admiralty Square and was transfixed. He stood enraptured for an hour looking at the Bronze Horseman, but, unlike poor Evgeny, 1 without any bitterness in his heart. He looked at the Neva River and the buildings surrounding it–and his eyes sparkled. He was suddenly ashamed of his partiality for shaky bridges, small front gardens and ruined fences. He felt merry and lighthearte
d. The confusion and the crowd–everything he saw acquired another meaning. His hopes which had been momentarily buried by those initial sad impressions were renewed. A new life seemed to invite him into its embrace and beckon him to something unknown. His heart beat hard. He dreamed of noble work, high strivings, and he stepped out on Nevsky Prospect with an air of importance, considering himself a citizen of a new world. He returned home full of these dreams.
That evening at eleven o’clock his uncle sent for him to drink tea.
“I just got back from the theater,” said his uncle, who was lying on the sofa.
“What a pity you didn’t tell me a while ago, Uncle; I would have gone with you.”
“I was in the orchestra, where would you have sat, on my knees?” said Pyotr Ivanych. “Go alone tomorrow by yourself.”
“It’s sad being alone in a crowd, Uncle; there’s no one to share your impressions with…”
“And what for! You have to be able to feel and think, in a word, to live alone; in time you’ll have to do that. Besides, you have to dress properly for the theater.”
Alexander looked at his clothes and was amazed at his uncle’s words. “In what way am I not properly dressed,” he thought, “a dark-blue coat and dark-blue trousers…”
“Königstein has made a lot of clothes for me, Uncle,” he said. “He works for the governor of our province.”
“No matter, all the same the clothes aren’t right. One of these days I’ll take you to my tailor. But these are trifles. We have more important things to talk about. Tell me now, what have you come here for?”
“I have come… to live.”
“Live? That is, if you mean by that eat, drink, and sleep, then it wasn’t worth the trouble of traveling so far. You won’t succeed either in eating or sleeping here as you would there at home. But if you were thinking of something else, then explain…”
“To enjoy life, I meant to say,” Alexander added, turning quite red. “I was bored in the country. It was always the same…”
“So that’s it. You thought you’d rent a first-floor apartment on Nevsky Prospect, have your own carriage, make a large circle of friends, hold open house on certain days?”
“But that’s awfully expensive,” Alexander remarked naively.
“Your mother writes that she gave you a thousand rubles; that’s not enough,” said Pyotr Ivanych. “One of my friends came here, who also was bored in the country. He wanted to enjoy life, so he brought fifty thousand with him and will receive that much annually. He will enjoy life in Petersburg, but you–no! you didn’t come for that.”
“According to what you say, Uncle, it turns out that I don’t know myself why I came.”
“Almost that; that’s putting it better. There’s truth in that; only it still isn’t any good. Can it be, when you were getting ready to come here that you didn’t ask yourself, ‘Why am I coming?’ That wouldn’t have been out of order.”
“Before I asked myself that question, I already had the answer!” replied Alexander with pride.
“So why don’t you say? Come, why?”
“I was drawn by some irresistible striving, a thirst for ennobling activity. The wish surged in me to clarify and carry out…”
Pyotr Ivanych raised himself a little from the sofa, took the cigar from his mouth and pricked up his ears.
“To realize those hopes that crowded in…”
“Do you write poetry?” Pyotr Ivanich suddenly asked.
“And prose, Uncle; do you want me to bring you some?”
“No, no!… later. I was only asking!”
“So?”
“So, tell me then…”
“You mean that’s wrong?”
“No–perhaps it’s very good, only crazy.”
“Our professor of aesthetics talked that way, and he was considered our most eloquent professor,” said Alexander, becoming confused.
“About what did he talk that way?”
“About his subject.”
“Ah!”
“How am I supposed to talk, Uncle?”
“Simpler, like everybody, and not like a professor of aesthetics. Besides, that can’t be explained so quickly; you’ll see yourself later. You’re trying to say, it seems, inasmuch as I can remember university lectures and translate your words, that you came here to find a career and make your fortune–is that right?”
“Yes, Uncle, a career…”
“And a fortune,” Pyotr Ivanych added. “What kind of career is there without a fortune? It’s a good idea–only… You’ve come in vain.”
“Why? I hope you’re not saying that from your own experience?” said Alexander looking round him.
“A reply to the point. You’re right, I’ve done well, and my business is doing not badly. But, as far as I can see, you and I are altogether different.”
“I don’t by any means dare compare myself with you…”
“That’s not the point; you are perhaps ten times more intelligent and better than I… I mean you have, it seems, a character such that you do not easily submit to a new order, while the order where you come from–oh my! There you were coddled and spoiled by your mother. How are you to endure everything I endured? Probably you’re a dreamer, but there’s no time for dreams here. Our sort comes here to conduct business.”
“Perhaps I am capable of accomplishing something like that if you don’t deprive me of your advice and experience…”
“Advise you–I’m afraid. I can’t take responsibility for the character you formed in the country. Nothing sensible will come of that–you’ll begin to reproach me. But to tell you my opinion–if you will–I don’t refuse. Listen or not, as you wish. Oh no! I don’t hope to succeed. You have your view of life down there; how will you change it? You’re obsessed with love, friendship, even with the delights of life, happiness; people think that’s all there is to life–unfortunately! They weep, whimper, pay compliments, but don’t do anything… How shall I wean you away from all that?–that’s hard!”
“I’ll try, Uncle, to adjust to contemporary notions. Already today, Uncle, looking at these enormous buildings, at the ships bringing us the gifts of distant countries, I thought about the achievements of contemporary mankind, I understood the excitement of this rationally busy crowd and was ready to merge with it…”
During this monologue Pyotr Ivanych raised his eyebrows meaningfully and looked fixedly at his nephew. Alexander stopped.
“It’s a simple matter, it seems,” said the uncle. “But they get God knows what into their heads… ‘the rationally busy crowd!! ’It truly would have been better for you to stay home. You would have lived your life in honor, would have been more intelligent than everybody, had the reputation of an author and eloquent speaker, you would have believed in eternal and unchanging friendship and love, in blood ties and happiness, and you would have married, imperceptibly lived to an old age and actually have been happy in your own way. But with the ways of this place you won’t be happy; here you have to turn all these notions upside down.”
“What do you mean, Uncle; can it be that friendship and love–these sacred and elevated feelings–after falling, as it were, by chance from the heavens into the mud of earth…”
“What?”
Alexander fell silent.
“‘Love and friendship fell in the mud! ’Why, what are you chattering about now?”
“Can you say they’re not the same here as there?–that’s what I mean.”
“There are love and friendship here too–where are there not such values?–only they’re not the same as they are there. In time you will see yourself. First of all, forget these sacred, even heavenly feelings, and see the thing more simply the way it is, and indeed better; then you’ll speak more simply. However, that’s not my affair. You’ve arrived here, there’s no turning back; if you don’t find what you were looking for, reproach yourself. I’ll forewarn you of what is good in my opinion, what’s bad, and then as you will… Let’s try, perhaps we
’ll succeed in making something of you. Yes, your mother asked to keep you supplied with money. Do you know what I shall ask of you: Don’t ask me for any; that always ruins a good relationship between decent people. However, don’t think that I’m refusing you. No, if it becomes necessary so that there’s no other way out, then it can’t be helped, turn to me… It’s better to borrow from your uncle than from a stranger, at least it’ll be without interest. But, so as not to resort to this extreme, I shall find you a job as soon as possible, so that you can earn money. So, goodbye for now. Come to see me in the morning, we’ll discuss what and how to begin.”
Alexander Fyodorych started to go home.
“Listen, don’t you want a bite of supper?” Pyotr Ivanych called after him.
“Yes, Uncle… I would, please…”
“I don’t have anything.”
Alexander was silent. “Why then that obligatory invitation?” he thought.
“I don’t eat at home, and now the restaurants are closed,” continued his uncle. “This will be a lesson to you at the very start–get used to it. In the country people get up and go to bed by the sun; they eat and drink when nature commands. If it’s cold, they put on caps with ear-flaps and pay no attention. If it’s light, then it’s day; if dark, night. Your eyes are closing, but I shall sit down to work still: the books must be balanced at the end of the month. You breathe fresh air there all year round, but here that pleasure costs money–and everything is like that! The very opposite! Here people don’t eat supper, especially at their own expense or mine either. This is even beneficial: you won’t begin to moan and thrash about at night, and I have no time to make the sign of the cross over you.”
“That’s easy to become accustomed to, Uncle…”
“Good, if that’s so. But at your home everything’s still the old way. You can visit someone at night and they’ll cook supper for you right away?”
An Ordinary Story Page 6
