An Ordinary Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “But perhaps they’d wait dinner for him,” remarked Alexander’s aunt. “Good manners didn’t allow…”

  “Good manners and friendship? Yes, there’s another thing; I’ll tell you a better one. He shoved his address into my hand, said that he’d expect me the next evening at his place–and disappeared. This is my childhood friend, the friend of my youth!–a fine friend! But then I thought again, that perhaps he had put off everything till the evening and would then devote time to a sincere, soulful conversation. ‘Well and good,’ I thought; ‘I’ll go.’ I appeared. Ten people were there. He held out his hand more cordially than the day before–true. But for all that, without a word he then gestured for me to sit down and play cards. I said I didn’t play and sat down alone on the sofa, assuming he’d quit the game and come over to me. ‘You don’t play?’ he said with surprise. ‘How do you spend your time?’ A fine question! So I wait an hour, two hours; he doesn’t come near me; I lose patience. He offers me a cigar, then a pipe, regrets that I don’t play, am having a boring time, tries to interest me–guess how!–by constantly talking to me about his every successful and unsuccessful move. Finally, I’d had enough and went up to him and asked whether he intended to spare any time that evening for me. And my heart was in such turmoil that my voice trembled. This apparently surprised him. He looked at me strangely. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘just let us finish this rubber.’ As soon as he told me that, I picked up my hat and wanted to leave, but he noticed this and stopped me. ‘The rubber is ending,’ he said. ‘We’ll have supper right away.’ At last they finished. He sat down beside me and yawned; that’s how our friendly chat began. ‘You wanted to say something to me?’ he asked. This was uttered in such a monotone and so without feeling that I only looked at him with a sad smile and said nothing. Thereupon he suddenly came alive, so to speak, and began to shower me with questions. ‘How goes it with you? Do you need anything? Perhaps I can be of use to you at the office?…’ and so on. I shook my head and told him I wanted to talk to him not about the office, not about material advantages, but about what was closer to his heart, about the golden days of childhood, about our pranks… Oh, imagine! He didn’t even let me finish. ‘You’re still,’ he said, ‘the same dreamer! ’ Then he suddenly changed the subject, as if he thought it empty and began seriously to question me about my affairs, my hopes for the future, my career, like Uncle. I was surprised, I didn’t believe a man’s heart could coarsen so. I wanted to test it one last time, and taking up his question about my affairs, I began to tell how they had treated me. ‘Listen to what people did to me…’ I was about to begin. ‘What?’ he interrupted at once, frightened, ‘really, you were robbed?’ He thought I was talking about the lackeys. Like Uncle, he knows no other sorrow; a man can turn to stone to such a degree! ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘people plundered my soul…’ Here I started to speak of my love, my sufferings, my emotional emptiness… I began to dare being carried away and thought the story of my sufferings would melt his icy sheath, that the tears in his eyes had not quite dried… When suddenly–he burst out laughing. I look–he is holding a handkerchief in his hands. He had restrained himself during my account and finally could not stand it… In horror I stopped.

  “‘Enough, enough,’ he said. ‘Better have a drink of vodka; yes, and we’ll have supper… there’s some splendid roast… ha, ha, ha!… roast beef…’

  “He was going to take my arm, but I pulled loose and fled from this monster. That’s the way people are, Aunt!” concluded Alexander, then waved his arm and left.

  Lizaveta Alexandrovna began to be sorry for Alexander, sorry for his fiery but misdirected heart. She saw that with a different upbringing and proper outlook on life he could be happy and could make someone else happy. But now he was the victim of his own blindness and his heart’s most tormenting delusions. He had made his life a martyrdom. How could she point his heart in the right direction? Where was the compass of salvation? She felt that only a tender, friendly hand could care for this flower.

  She had already succeeded once in taming the agitated impulses of her nephew’s heart, but that was in a matter of love. In that case she knew how to handle a wounded heart. Like an artful diplomat, she first heaped reproaches on Nadenka, presented her behavior in the worst light, debased her in Alexander’s eyes and successfully proved her unworthy of his love. Thus she tore the tormenting pain out of Alexander’s heart, replacing it with a calm, though not altogether justified feeling–contempt. Pyotr Ivanych, on the contrary, tried to justify Nadenka and in so doing not only did not calm Alexander but further agitated his torment, making him think that his successor had been more worthy.

  But friendship is another matter. Lizaveta Alexandrovna saw that Alexander’s friend was in the wrong in his eyes and right in the eyes of the crowd. Try to explain that to Alexander! She hadn’t the courage to attempt this herself and resorted to her husband, assuming not without reason that he would not lack for arguments against friendship.

  “Pyotr Ivanych!” she said to him once in a caressing tone, “I’ve come to ask a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Guess.”

  “Just say what; you know there’s no refusing you a favor. As for the summer place in Peterhof, it’s still early for that, you know…”

  “Not that!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  “What then? You said you’re afraid of our horses, wanted some quieter ones…”

  “No!”

  “So, new furniture?…”

  She shook her head.

  “I give up, I don’t know,” said Pyotr Ivanych. “Here, take instead this I.O.U. and use it for whatever you need; I won it last night at cards…”

  He was about to pull out his wallet.

  “No, don’t bother, put the money back,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “This favor will not cost you a penny.”

  “Not to take money when it’s offered!” said Pyotr Ivanych, putting away his wallet. “It’s unbelievable! What do you want then?”

  “I want only a little good will…”

  “As much as you wish.”

  “Well, you see, the day before yesterday Alexander came to see me…”

  “Oh, I fear the worst!” interrupted Pyotr Ivanych. “So?”

  “He’s so gloomy,” Lizaveta Alexandrovna went on. “I’m afraid all this may lead Alexander to a point where…”

  “So what’s the matter with him now? Has he been betrayed in love again perhaps?”

  “No, in friendship.”

  “In friendship! From bad to worse! How in friendship? That’s curious; tell me, please.”

  “Here’s how.”

  Lizaveta Alexandrovna then told him everything she had heard from her nephew. Pyotr Ivanych shrugged his shoulders expressively.

  “What do you want me to do? You see what sort he is!”

  “Show him some sympathy; ask him how he feels…”

  “No, it’s better you ask.”

  “Talk to him a bit… how shall I say?… more gently and not as you always talk… don’t laugh at his feeling…”

  “You’re not demanding that I cry, are you?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “What’s the good of that for him?”

  “A lot… and not only for him…” remarked Lizaveta Alexandrovna half-aloud.

  “What?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.

  She was silent.

  “Oh, this Alexander really; I’ve had him up to here!” said Pyotr Ivanych, pointing to his neck.

  “What makes you think he’s such a burden to you?”

  “How can you ask! I’ve been fussing over him for six years. Sometimes he’ll burst into tears and I have to comfort him, and then I correspond with his mother too.

  “Indeed, you poor thing. How could this burden fall upon you! What a terrible chore–once a month you get a letter from an old lady and throw it, unread, into the waste basket, and you must have talks with your nephew. ‘But,’ you say, ‘it distracts me from my
game of whist!’ Men, men! If there’s a good dinner, a bottle of gold-label Lafitte and cards–that’s enough; they don’t need any further contact. And if, in addition, they have occasion to act important and show off their wisdom–then they’re really happy.”

  “Just as you women need to play the coquette,” remarked Pyotr Ivanych. “To each his own, my dear! What more do you want?”

  “What more! Have a heart! But we never even mention that.”

  “That again!”

  “We women are very wise; why should we busy ourselves with such trifles? We spin the fates of men. They look to see what a man has in his pocket or what awards in his buttonhole and don’t care about the rest. And they want everyone to be like that. If a single feeling man turns up among them, capable of loving and making others love him…”

  “He did a marvelous job of making this girl… what’s her name?… love him. Verochka, was it?” remarked Pyotr Ivanych.

  “He found someone to treat as an equal! It’s fate’s cruel joke. Fate, as if on purpose, always puts a tender, feeling person together with some cold creature! Poor Alexander! His mind doesn’t run an even race with his heart, so he’s faulted by those for whom mind has too much taken the lead, who would be ruled by reason alone in all things…”

  “Agree, though, that it’s the important thing; otherwise…”

  “I don’t agree, not for anything will I agree; it’s the important thing there at the factory maybe, but you forget that a person also has feelings…”

  “Five of them,” said Aduyev. “I learned that with the alphabet way back.”

  “That’s both vexing and sad!” whispered Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  “Come, come, don’t be angry. I’ll do everything you say, just tell me how!” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “Then please give him an easy lesson…”

  “Scold him?–fine, I’m good at that.”

  “Well, a reprimand if you must. Explain to him very affectionately what one may ask and expect of friends today; tell him his friend is not so much to blame as he thinks… But is it for me to instruct you? You’re so wise… you dissemble so well…” added Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  At her last word Pyotr Ivanych frowned a little.

  “Didn’t you two have enough sincere outpourings,” he said angrily. “They whispered and whispered to each other, whispering and still didn’t whisper everything about friendship and love; now they’re involving me…”

  “But then it’ll be the last time,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “I hope that after this he’ll be comforted for good.”

  Pyotr Ivanych shook his head skeptically.

  “Does he have money?” he asked, “maybe not and for that reason he…”

  “You have only money on your mind. He was ready to give away all his money for one cordial word from his friend.”

  “Some day he may indeed do that. Once he gave money away to a colleague in his department because of the man’s sincere outpourings… There, someone rang. Isn’t it he? What must I do? Tell me again. I’m to give him a scolding… What else? Money?”

  “What scolding! You’ll only make it worse. I asked you to talk to him a bit about friendship, about the heart and be very affectionate, very attentive.”

  Alexander bowed in silence and in silence ate a great deal at dinner, and in the pauses rolled little balls of his bread and looked, frowning, at the wine bottle and the water caraffe. After dinner he was about to look for his hat.

  “Where are you going?” asked Pyotr Ivanych. “Sit for a while with us.”

  Alexander obeyed in silence. Pyotr Ivanych thought about how to approach his task the more affectionately and skillfully and suddenly stated quite rapidly: “Alexander, I heard your friend somehow behaved meanly toward you.”

  At these unexpected words Alexander jerked his head as if wounded and gave a look full of reproach at his aunt. She, too, did not expect so abrupt an approach to the matter and at first bowed her head to her work, and then she too looked reproachfully at her husband. But he was under the double influence of digestion and sleepiness and therefore did not notice the rebound of these glances.

  Alexander answered his uncle’s question with a barely audible sigh.

  “Indeed, how insidious,” Pyotr Ivanych continued. “What a friend! He hasn’t seen you for five years and has grown so cold that upon meeting you he didn’t smother his friend in embraces, but invited him to his house to a party, tried to sit him down to play cards… and fed him… But then–treacherous fellow!–noticed the sour look on his friend’s face and started asking about his affairs, circumstances, needs–what odious curiosity! And further–oh! height of treachery-dared offer his services… help… perhaps money! And no sincere outpourings! Horrible, horrible! Show me this monster, please; bring him to dinner Friday!… What card game does he play?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexander said, angrily. “Have your laugh, Uncle; you’re right, it’s all my fault. To trust people, seek sympathy–from whom? Strew pearls–before whom? All around baseness, lack of courage, pettiness, while I’ve still kept my youthful belief in goodness, heroism, constancy…”

  Pyotr Ivanych began repeatedly and regularly to nod his head.

  “Pyotr Ivanych!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna in a whisper, pulling at his sleeve, “Are you asleep?”

  “What!” said Pyotr Ivanych, waking up. “I heard everything: ‘heroism, constancy’; what do you mean ‘sleep’?”

  “Don’t bother Uncle, dear Aunt!” reproved Alexander. “If he didn’t fall asleep, his digestion would be disturbed and Heaven knows what would come of it. Man is the master of this earth, but he’s also the slave of his stomach.”

  With this he wanted, it seems, to smile bitterly, but the smile was somehow sour.

  “Tell me what you wanted from your friend? Sacrifice of some sort perhaps, that he climb a wall or throw himself out a window? How do you understand friendship, what do you mean by it?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.

  “By now I don’t ask any sacrifice–don’t worry. Thanks to people I’ve settled on a pitiful understanding of friendship too, as of love… I was always carrying with me those lines which seemed to me the truest definition of those two feelings as I understand them and as they ought to be, but now I see that it’s a lie, a slander of people or a pitiful ignorance of their heart… People aren’t capable of such feelings. Away with these treacherous words!…”

  He took his wallet out of his pocket and out of the wallet two octavo pages covered with writing.

  “What’s that?” asked his uncle. “Let us see.”

  “It’s not worth it!” said Alexander, wanting to tear up the pieces of paper.

  “Read it aloud, read it aloud!” Lizaveta Alexandrovna began to request.

  “This is how two of the latest French novelists define true friendship and love, and I agreed with them, thinking I’d meet such creatures in life and find in them… Find what!” He contemptuously waved his hand and began to read. “‘To love, not with that false half-hearted friendship to be found in our gilded halls of government, which does not withstand a handful of gold and fears any ambiguity, but to love with that powerful friendship which gives blood for blood, proves itself in battle and bloodshed, to the cannons’ roar, beneath the howl of storms when friends kiss with mouths blackened by gunpowder and embrace with bloodied arms. And if Pylades is fatally wounded, Orestes, while energetically bidding him farewell, will end his tortures with a sure blow of his dagger, will swear a terrible oath of vengeance and keep it, then wipe away a tear and be at peace…’”

  Pyotr Ivanych began to laugh in his measured quiet way.

  “Whom are you laughing at, Uncle?” asked Alexander.

  “At the author, if he says that sincerely and not as a joke, and then at you if you have truly understood friendship in this way.”

  “Is this really only laughable?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  “Only that. No, I’m wrong; it’s laughable and pitiful. Moreove
r, Alexander agrees with this too and made bold to laugh. He just now admitted that such a friendship is a lie and a slander against people. That’s already an important step forward.”

  “It’s a lie because people are incapable of rising to this conception of friendship as it ought to be…”

  “If people are incapable of it, then it oughtn’t to be such…” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “But there have been examples…”

  “Those are exceptions and exceptions are almost always no good. ‘Bloodied embraces, a terrible oath, a blow of the dagger!…’” and he laughed again. “Please read the page about love. My sleepiness is gone.”

  “If this can give you occasion to laugh again–gladly!” said Alexander and began to read the following: ‘“To love means not to belong to oneself, to stop living for oneself, to enter into the existence of another, to concentrate on one object all human feelings, hopes, fears, sorrows, enjoyments. To love means to live in the infinite…’”

  “The devil knows what that is!” interrupted Pyotr Ivanych. “What verbiage!”

  “No, it’s very good! I like it,” remarked Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “Go on, Alexander.”

  ‘“To know no limit to feeling, to devote oneself to a single being,’” Alexander went on reading, “‘and live and think only for his happiness, find greatness in humiliation, enjoyment in melancholy and melancholy in enjoyment, surrender to all sorts of contradictions, except love and hate. To love means to live in an ideal world…’”

  Pyotr Ivanych shook his head during this.

  “‘In the ideal world,’” Alexander continued, “‘all splendor and magnificence is superb splendor and magnificence. In that world the sky seems purer and nature more luxurious. Life and time are divided into two parts–presence and absence, into two times of year–spring and winter. Spring corresponds to presence, winter to absence, because, no matter how beautiful the flowers and pure the azure of the sky, the charm of both is darkened by absence; to love is to see only one being and the universe is contained in this being… Finally, to love means to watch every glance of the beloved, as a Bedouin guards every drop of dew in order to refresh his lips which are parched by the desert heat; it means to be overcome by a swarm of thoughts in the absence of the beloved, but to be unable to express a single one in his presence; it means striving to outdo the other in sacrifices…’”