“You don’t have to; all the same, send it. Maybe he’ll be the wiser for it; it’ll put him on to some new ideas. Though you two have graduated, your schooling is only just beginning.”
“I can’t bring myself to do it, Uncle…”
“I never interfere in other people’s affairs, but you yourself asked me to do something for you. I’m trying to put you on the right track and make the first step easy, but you’re being stubborn. Well, as you wish. I’m only telling you my opinion but I won’t force you; I’m not your nanny.”
“Pardon me, Uncle. I’m ready to obey,” said Alexander and at once sealed the letter.
After sealing one, he began to look for the other to Sophie. He looked on the desk–it wasn’t there, under the desk–not there either, in the drawer–not there.
“What are you looking for?” said his uncle.
“I’m looking for the other letter… to Sofiya.”
His uncle began to look too.
“Where is it?” said Pyotr Ivanych. “Indeed I didn’t throw it out the window.”
“Uncle! what a thing to do–look, you lit your cigar with it!” said Alexander aggrieved, and picked up the charred remains of the letter.
“Did I really?” exclaimed the uncle, “now how did I do that?–and didn’t notice; indeed, look, I burned up such a treasure… But, by the way, do you know? It may from one point of view even be a good thing…”
“Oh, Uncle, Heaven knows, it isn’t good from any point of view…” remarked Alexander in desperation.
“Really, it is a good thing. You can’t make it to write her with this post, and by the next you’ll already, doubtless, have changed your mind. You’ll be busy with your government job; you won’t have the inclination, and so you’ll commit one stupidity less.”
“What will she think of me?”
“Whatever she wants. Yes, I think it’s good for her too. Look, you’re not going to marry her? She’ll think you’ve forgotten her, will forget you herself and will blush less before her future fiancé when she begins to assure him she’s never loved anyone but him.”
“Uncle, you’re an amazing man! For you constancy doesn’t exist, promises aren’t sacred… Life is so good, so full of delight, leisure; it’s like a smooth, beautiful lake…”
“On which yellow flowers grow, isn’t it?” interrupted his uncle.
“Like a lake,” Alexander continued. “It’s full of mysterious, alluring things, so much hiding within it…”
“Sludge, dear fellow.”
“Why bring up sludge, Uncle; why destroy and annihilate all joys, hopes, bliss… Why do you take the dark view?”
“I take a realistic view–and advise you too to do the same. You won’t be made a fool of. According to your concepts life is good in the country where they don’t know about sludge–angels live there, not people. Take Zayezzhalov, a holy man; your auntie, an exalted sensitive soul; Sofiya, I imagine, the same foolish sort as Auntie, and also…”
“Enough, Uncle!” said Alexander, furious.
“Then also such dreamers as you. They search with their nose to the wind for a scent from somewhere of inalterable friendship and love… For the hundredth time I say: You came here in vain!”
“Is she going to assure her fiancé that she hasn’t loved anyone!” Alexander said, almost speaking to himself.
“And you your own!”
“No, I’m convinced that she will at once with noble frankness give him my letters and…”
“And tokens,” said Pyotr Ivanych.
“Yes, and pledges of our relationship… and will say, ‘See, here is the first man to awaken the strings of my heart to music; this is the man at whose name they first began to sing…’”
The uncle’s brows were raised and his eyes widened. Alexander fell silent.
“And why have you stopped playing on your heart strings? Well, dear fellow, your Sofiya is truly stupid if she does a thing like that. I hope she has a mother or someone who can stop her?”
“You, Uncle, have decided to call stupid this most sacred impulse of the soul, this noble outpouring of the heart; what is one to think of you?”
“However you judge best. She will force her fiancé to suspect God knows what Perhaps the engagement will be broken, and for what? Because you picked yellow flowers together in the country. No, things are not done that way. Well, so you can write Russian. Tomorrow we’ll go to a government department. I’ve already spoken to my former colleague, the head of the department, about you. He said there is a vacancy. We mustn’t lose any time… What is this pile of papers you pulled out?”
“Those are my university notes. Here, let me read you a few pages from Ivan Semyonych’s lectures on art in Greece.”
He was already beginning quickly to turn the pages.
“Oh, have mercy, spare me!” said Pyotr Ivanych frowning. “And what are these?”
“These are my term papers. I would like to show them to my superior. There’s one project here especially that I worked on…”
“Ah! One of those projects which was carried out a thousand years ago, or which it is impossible or unnecessary to carry out.”
“What do you mean, Uncle! Why, this project was proposed to a certain person, a sponsor of enlightenment. Because of it he invited me to dinner once with the rector of the university. Here’s the beginning of another project.”
“Dine with me twice, as long as you don’t finish writing up this second project.”
“Why then?”
“For the reason that you won’t write anything well now, and it’ll take up our time.”
“What, after hearing the lectures?…”
“They’ll be useful to you in time, but for now look, read, study and do what they ask.”
“How will my superior find out my abilities then?”
“He’ll see in a flash; he’s a master at finding out. Oh, what job would you like to have?”
“I don’t know, Uncle, whatever would…”
“There are the ministers’ jobs,” said Pyotr Ivanych, “their deputies, directors, vice-directors, heads of departments, head clerks, their assistants, civil servants with special portfolio, to name but a few!”
Alexander reflected. He was lost in thought and didn’t know which to choose.
“Perhaps for the start the job of head clerk would be good,” he said.
“Yes, good!” Pyotr Ivanych repeated.
“I would watch carefully what they do, Uncle, and after a couple of months there I’d be promoted to head of the department…”
His uncle pricked up his ears.
“Of course, of course!” he said, “then three months later director, well, and after a year there, even minister, don’t you think?”
Alexander blushed and fell silent.
“The head of the department probably told you what kind of vacancy there is,” he said then.
“No,” his uncle answered, “he didn’t say, so we’d better rely on him; we’ll have trouble choosing ourselves, while he of course knows where to place you. Don’t tell him about your trouble in choosing; yes, and not a word about the projects either. You see, he might even be offended that we don’t trust him and might even frighten you with the rules; he’s a stickler. I would not advise you to mention the material tokens to young ladies here; they won’t understand, why should they! That’s too elevated for them; I hardly followed you, but they will look puzzled.”
While his uncle was speaking, Alexander was turning over some kind of rolled-up papers in his hand.
“What else do you have there?”
Alexander had been waiting for this question with impatience.
“These are… I’ve long wanted to show you… poems. You once said you were interested.”
“Somehow I don’t remember; it seems I wasn’t interested…”
“But you see, Uncle, I think the civil service is a dry occupation in which the soul has no part, but the soul thirsts to express itself, to sha
re with its neighbors the superfluity of feelings and ideas overflowing within…”
“What, how’s that?” his uncle asked with impatience. “That is, beside the government job you want to work at something else–say, perhaps translation? Well, very laudable. Translating what? Literature?”
“Yes, Uncle, I wanted to ask you, whether you are able to get something published…?”
“Are you convinced that you have talent?–without that, you see, you’ll be an outsider in art–what good’s that? Talent is another matter. You can work, accomplish much that’s good, and besides, this is capital–it’s worth your hundred serfs.”
“You measure that too in money?”
“What measurement do you recommend? The more they read you, the more they pay you money.”
“And the glory? Glory is the true reward of the poet…”
“Glory is tired of nursing poets; there are too many pretenders. In former times that glory, like a woman, would take care of any and everyone, but now, haven’t you noticed, it seems she doesn’t exist at all or has gone into hiding–yes! There’s fame, but somehow glory goes unmentioned, or she’s thought up another way to manifest herself. Whoever writes the best is best paid, who’s a worse writer needn’t complain. For all that, a decent writer also lives decently nowadays, doesn’t suffer cold and hunger in an attic, even if they don’t run after him in the streets and point at him with their fingers as if at a clown. It’s understood that a poet doesn’t live in Heaven, but is a human being, looks the same, walks about, thinks and makes stupid mistakes like others; what’s to stare at in that?…”
“Like others–how can you, Uncle! how can you say that! The poet is marked with a special brand; in him the presence of a higher force is concealed.”
“Just as it sometimes is in others–in the mathematician, the watchmaker and the likes of us, the factory owner. Newton, Gutenberg, Watt were just as much gifted with a higher power as Shakespeare, Dante and the rest. If by some process I can make from our Pargolovo clay a porcelain that is better than that from Dresden or Sèvres, then don’t you think a higher force would be present in that?”
“You’re confusing craft with art, Uncle.”
“Heaven forbid! Art is one thing, handicraft another, and creativity can be involved in both one and the other, just as indeed it may not be present at all. If it isn’t, then the craftsman is called a craftsman and not a creator, and a poet without creativity is also not a poet, but a writer. Why didn’t they give lectures on that at the university! What did you learn there?…”
The uncle was annoyed that he had gotten launched on such explanations of what he considered commonly known truths. “This is like sincere outpourings,” he thought. “Let me see, what have you there?” he asked–“poems!”
He took the roll and began to read the first page.
From where at times do grief and sadness
Fly down in a sudden cloud
And, embroiling the heart in a quarrel with life…
“Give me a light, Alexander,” and lighting his cigar, he continued:
Replace the flock of wishes there?
Why suddenly in gray bad weather
Does a gloomy dream fall upon the soul,
And disturb it suddenly
With vague unhappiness…
“You’ve said the same thing in the first four verses, and the result is water,” remarked Pyotr Ivanych, and continued reading:
Who can say why
The brow, gone pale,
Breaks out in icy tears…
“How’s that? A brow breaks out in sweat, but in tears–I’ve never seen that.”
And what is happening to us then?
The stillness of distant heavens,
At that moment horrible and terrible…
“Horrible and terrible–two of the same.”
I look up to Heaven; the moon…
“Inevitably the moon; you can’t do without it! If you have dream and maiden– that’s the end. I’m disassociating myself from you.”
I look up to Heaven; the moon
Floats, wordless, shining,
And it seems, buried within it
Lies the fateful secret of our time.
“Not bad! Give me another light… my cigar’s gone out. Where was I–oh yes!”
Hiding in the ether
Stars tremble in unsteady gleaming,
And, as if in mutual accord,
Keep a strict silence.
So in the world everything threatens misfortune,
Everything savagely forewarns of evil,
As if a deceptive calm securely
Cradles us here;
And there is no name for that sorrow…
The uncle yawned markedly and continued:
It will pass, whirling every trace away,
As the fleeting wind of the steppes
Blows the trace of beasts from the sands.
“Well, the beasts are unbelievably awful here! What are they here for? Ah! This was about sorrow, but now about joy…”
And he began to read at a rapid rate, almost to himself:
For all this, it sometimes happens
That some demon steals inside us,
Then in a living stream rapture
Powerfully forces its way into our soul…
And begins sweetly to agitate the breast… and so on.
“Not bad, not good!” he said, finishing. “By the way, others have begun worse.
Keep on trying, write, study if you want; perhaps your talent will be revealed; when is another matter.”
Alexander grew sad. He hadn’t at all expected such a criticism. It was some comfort to him that he considered his uncle a cold person, almost without a soul.
“Here’s a translation from Schiller,” he said.
“That’s enough; I see. So you know languages too?”
“I know French, German and a little English.”
“I congratulate you. You should have said that long ago–you can go far. You told me a while back about political economics, philosophy, archeology, God knows what besides, but said not a word about the most important thing–an inappropriate modesty. I’ll find you a literary job at once.”
“Really, Uncle? Then you will do me a great favor!–let me embrace you.”
“Wait till I’ve found it.”
“Won’t you show my future superior some of my writings to give him an idea?”
“No, it’s not necessary; if it is, you show them yourself, but perhaps it won’t even be necessary. Make me a gift of your projects and writings!”
“Give them to you? With pleasure, Uncle,” said Alexander, flattered by his uncle’s request. “Would you like me to make you a table of contents of all the articles in chronological order?”
“No, that’s not necessary… Thank you for the gift. Evsei! Take these papers to Vasily.”
“Why to Vasily? Rather to your study.”
“He asked me for paper to glue on something.”
“What, Uncle?” asked Alexander, horrified, and snatched back the pile.
“Look, you made the gift, so what do you care about the use I make of your gift?…”
“You spare nothing… nothing!” Alexander groaned in despair, hugging the papers with both hands to his breast.
“Listen to me, Alexander,” said his uncle, snatching the papers from him, “later you won’t blush and will thank me.”
Alexander let go his hold on the papers.
“So, take them away, Evsei,” said Pyotr Ivanych. “Now, you see, it’s nice and clean in your room, no waste papers. It will depend on you whether you fill it with trash or something useful. Let’s go to the factory, take a drive, enjoy ourselves, get a breath of fresh air and have a look at people working.”
In the morning Pyotr Ivanych drove his nephew to the government office, and while he spoke with his friend, the head of the department, Alexander became acquainted with a world that was new to him. He was still dreamin
g of projects and racking his brains about what problem of state they would ask him to solve; meanwhile he stood and looked.
“Exactly like my uncle’s factory!” he decided finally. “Just as there a master takes a piece of clay, throws it in the machine, revolves it once, twice, three times and as you look a cone, oval, then a semi-circle emerges; next he hands it over to another; that man dries it by fire; a third gilds it; a fourth does the painting; and the result is a cup or vase or saucer. Here, too, an outsider comes in with a petition, hands in his paper, makes a deep bow with a pitiful smile–a master takes it, hardly touches it with his pen, and hands it over to another; that man throws it into a pile of a thousand other papers–but it won’t be lost. Stamped with a number and a date, it will pass unhurt through twenty hands, multiplying and producing the likes of itself. A third man will take it and climb up after something or other in a cabinet, look either in a book or at another paper, say a few magic words to a fourth–who will go scratch with his pen. Having scratched a bit, he’ll hand over the parent paper with its new offspring to a fifth man–who, in turn, scratches with a pen and one more fruit is born; the fifth pretties it up and passes it on further, and so the paper goes ever on its way–never gets lost. Its producers will die, but it continues to exist for whole centuries. When century-old dust finally covers it, even then they’ll be disturbing it and consulting it. And every day, every hour, today, and tomorrow, and for a whole century, the bureaucratic machine works smoothly without pause, without rest, as if there were no people, only wheels and springs…
“Where’s the intelligence animating and moving the paper factory?” Alexander thought “In the books, in the papers themselves or in the heads of these people?”
And what faces he saw there! On the street you don’t encounter their likes–they don’t go out into the light of day. Here, it seems, is where they were born, grew up, grew into their jobs and will die. Aduyev focused his gaze for a while on the head of the section: he was the image of Jupiter the Thunderer: he opens his mouth–and there is Mercury with his bronze breastplate; he stretches out his hand with a paper and ten hands reach out to take it.
An Ordinary Story Page 8
