“Only one negative comfort indeed is left me, that I did not deceive or betray anyone in love or friendship…”
“They weren’t capable of esteeming you,” said his aunt, “but be sure, you’ll find a heart that will; I’ll guarantee you. You’re still so young. Forget all this, get back to work–you have talent; write… Are you writing anything now?”
“No.”
“Write something.”
“I’m afraid, dear Aunt…”
“Don’t listen to Pyotr Ivanych. Discuss politics, agronomics, whatever you will with him, only not poetry. He’ll never tell you the truth about that. The public will esteem you–you’ll see… So you will write?”
“All right.”
“You’ll begin soon?”
“As soon as I can. This is the only hope left me now.”
Pyotr Ivanych, quite rested, joined them, fully dressed with his hat in his hands. He too advised Alexander to get back to his civil service work and his articles on agriculture for the magazine.
“I shall try, Uncle,” answered Alexander, “but, look, I promised Aunt…”
Lizaveta Alexandrovna signaled to him not to tell, but Pyotr Ivanych noticed.
“What? What did you promise?” he asked.
“To bring some new music,” she answered.
“No, not so. What is it, Alexander?”
“To write a story, or something like that…”
“You haven’t yet given up belles-lettres?” said Pyotr Ivanych, picking lint from his clothes. “And you, Liza, are leading him astray–to no purpose!”
“I don’t have the right to give it up,” remarked Alexander.
“And who forbids you?”
“Why should I arbitrarily and ungratefully cast aside the honorable destiny to which I’ve been called? One bright hope has remained for me in life and should I destroy that too? If I annihilate what is given to me from on high, then I annihilate myself as well…”
“So what sort of thing has been given to you; explain, please?”
“That, Uncle, I can’t explain to you. You have to understand yourself. Has the hair of your head been made to stand on end by anything but a comb?”
“No!” said Pyotr Ivanych.
“Well, so you see. Have passions raged in you, has your imagination stormed and created elegant spirits who begged to be incarnate? Has your heart beat in a special rhythm?”
“Barbarous, barbarous! So, what then?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“Why this, that it’s impossible to explain to someone to whom this has never happened why one wants to write when some restless spirit insists both day and night, both sleeping and waking: write, write…”
“But look, you’re not able to write.”
“Enough, Pyotr Ivanych. You can’t write, but why prevent others?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“Pardon me, Uncle, if I remark that you’re no judge of this matter.”
“Who is a judge? She?” Pyotr Ivanych pointed to his wife. “Her advice is slanted toward a purpose, and you believe her,” he added.
“Yes, and you yourself, when I first came here, advised me to write, to try out my potential…”
“So, what then. You tried–since nothing came of it, you should give it up.”
“You mean you never found in my work either a viable idea or a successful verse?”
“Of course I found some! You’re not stupid. How is one not to find a successful idea in several pounds of work by a person who is not stupid? That’s not talent, though, that’s intelligence.”
“Oh, dear!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, vexedly turning around on her chair.
“But the beating of the heart, the storm, the sweet languor and other experiences of the sort–who hasn’t had them?”
“Yes, first of all, not you, I think!” remarked his wife.
“Well, indeed! Don’t you remember, I formerly used to be enthusiastic…”
“About what? I don’t remember.”
“Everyone experiences these things,” Pyotr Ivanych continued, turning to his nephew. “Who is not touched by the quiet or then by the darkness of the night, or perhaps the rustle of leaves in a grove, by a garden, a pond, the sea? If only artists felt this, then there’d be no one to understand them. But to express all these sensations in one’s work–that’s another business. Talent is needed and that, it seems, you don’t have. One doesn’t hide that; it shines in every line, in every stroke of the brush…”
“Pyotr Ivanych! It’s time for you to be on your way,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“Right away… You want to distinguish yourself,” he continued. “You have what it takes to distinguish yourself. The magazine editor praises you, says your articles on agriculture are excellently worked up; there is thought in them–everything shows, he says, the learned creator, not the mere craftsman. I was glad; ‘Indeed!’ I thought, ‘all Aduyevs apparently are not without a good head!’–you see, I too have my self-esteem! You can distinguish yourself in the civil service and acquire the renown of a writer…”
“Fine renown, a writer about manure.”
“Everyone to his own taste. One is destined to soar in space, and another to dig in manure and find treasure there. I don’t understand why one should neglect a modest destiny? It too has its poetry. If you had completed your term of service, you’d have acquired money by your labor, have married advantageously like most people… I don’t understand, what more do you want? One’s duty done, one’s life lived with honor, industriously–here’s the stuff of happiness, in my opinion, that is. Here am I a privy councillor by rank, a factory owner by craft; if you were to offer me in exchange the title of poet laureate, by God, I wouldn’t take it!”
“Listen, Pyotr Ivanych, really you’ll be late! ”interrupted Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “it’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Indeed, it’s time. Well, goodbye. And so they consider themselves, God knows why, unusual people,” muttered Pyotr Ivanych in parting.
II
When Alexander got back home from his uncle’s, he sat down in an armchair and began to think. He recalled the whole conversation with his uncle and aunt and held a strict accounting with himself.
How had he let himself at his age hate and scorn people, how had he examined and condemned their worthlessness, triviality, weakness, picked over each and every one of his friends, yet forgotten to go over himself. What blindness! And his uncle had given him a lesson like a schoolboy, gone over him with a fine-tooth comb–and in front of a woman as well–so that he might take a thorough look at himsel f! How his uncle must have grown that evening in his wife’s eyes! That’s nothing, perhaps, that’s the way it should be; only he had gained at Alexander’s expense. His uncle indisputably had the upper hand over him everywhere and in everything.
“What good, then,” he thought, “is superiority of youth, freshness, fire of mind and feelings, when a man of only a bit of experience, with a hard heart and without energy, destroys you at every turn–so effortlessly, in passing. When would the contest be equal and when would the advantage finally be on his side? Yet on his side, it seems, he had both talent and a superfluity of spiritual strength… still his uncle appeared a giant alongside him. With what assurance he argues, how easily he pushes aside every counterargument, and makes his point, joking, with a yawn, laughing at feeling, at heartfelt outpourings of friendship and love, laughing, in a word, at everything which the elderly are accustomed to envy in the young.”
Going over all this in his mind, Alexander blushed for shame. He vowed to watch himself severely and at the first chance, destroy his uncle, prove to him that no experience can replace gifts from above, that, however he, Pyotr Ivanych, might predict, from this minute on not one of his cold methodical prophecies would come true. Alexander himself would find his way and walk it, no longer with hesitant, but with firm and measured steps. He was not the same as he had been three years ago. He had penetrated at a glance hidden secrets of the heart, analyzed
the play of passions, acquired for himself the secret of life, of course, not without sufferings, but in return he had steeled himself forever against their recurrence. The future was clear to him. He got up, inspired to move boldly ahead–he wasn’t a child but a grown man! His uncle would see and consequently take his turn in the role of pitiful schoolboy before Alexander, the experienced master. He would realize to his surprise that there is another life, other distinctions, another happiness beside the pitiful career he had chosen for himself and which he was foisting on Alexander, perhaps out of envy! Just one more, one more noble effort–and an end to their contest!
Alexander brightened. He began again to create a special world, a little more mature than the first. His aunt supported this inclination in him, but in secret, when Pyotr Ivanych slept, or was away at his factory or the English Club.
She questioned Alexander about his work. And how even this pleased him. He told her the plan of his literary efforts and sometimes, as if requesting advice, asked her approval.
She often argued with him, but more often agreed.
Alexander clung to this work as to a last hope. “Beyond this,” he said to his aunt, “there is, you see, nothing; then there’s the naked steppe without water or green, only darkness, desert–what will life be then? Nothing but to lie down in the grave!” And he worked untiringly.
Sometimes he recalled his dead love; he would get excited–reach for his pen and write a touching elegy. Another time bile would flood his heart and raise from the depths the hatred and contempt for people which had of late raged there–lo, and some energetic verse would be born. At the same time he was planning and writing a story. He expended on it much thought, feeling, material labor and about half a year’s time. Then at last the story was ready, proofread, and the final copy made. His aunt was enthusiastic.
The action in this story did not occur in America this time, but somewhere in a small town in Tambov. The characters were ordinary people: gossips, liars, and all kinds of tyrants in dress coats–and traitresses in corsets and hats. Everything was correct and proper.
“I think, dear Aunt, I can show this to Uncle, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied. “But, then again… wouldn’t it be better to send it to be published now without showing it to him? He’s always against these things, he’ll say something… You know, it will seem childish to him.”
“No, it’s better to show him!” answered Alexander. “With your favorable opinion and my own confidence I fear no one, and meanwhile let him see…”
They showed it. Upon seeing the copybook, Pyotr Ivanych frowned a little and shook his head. “What’s this, did you both write it?” he asked. “There’s certainly a lot here. And in such a small hand, why do you write so much!”
“Wait with your headshaking,” his wife answered, “and listen first. Read it to us, Alexander. And you listen attentively, don’t doze off and then give us your condemnation. It’s easy to find blemishes everywhere if you want to look for them. Be considerate.”
“No, what for? Only be just,” interrupted Alexander.
“There’s nothing else to do, I’ll hear you out,” said Pyotr Ivanych with a sigh.
“Only on the condition, first, that you don’t read right after dinner, in which case I don’t guarantee I won’t fall asleep. Don’t take that to be your fault, Alexander; no matter what might be read after dinner, I’m always sleepy. My second condition is that if it’s something viable, I shall speak my mind, and if not, I shall only be silent, and you do then as you wish.”
The reading began. Pyotr Ivanych didn’t doze even once, but listened without averting his gaze from Alexander, he even hardly blinked and twice nodded his head approvingly.
“You see!” his wife said half-aloud to her husband, “I told you so.”
He nodded to her too.
They read on two successive evenings. The first evening after the reading Pyotr Ivanych to his wife’s amazement foretold how everything in the story would develop.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“That’s easy! The idea isn’t new–it’s been done a thousand times. No need to read further, but let’s see how it’s developed in his version.”
The next evening when Alexander was reading the last page, Pyotr Ivanych rang and the servant entered.
“Help me dress,” he said. “Pardon me for interrupting, Alexander. I’m in a hurry. I shall be late for whist at the club.”
Alexander finished. Pyotr Ivanych quickly got up to go.
“Well, goodbye!” he said to his wife and Alexander. “I shan’t come back here before going out.”
“Stop! Stop!” called his wife. “Won’t you say anything about the story?”
“By agreement I mustn’t!” he answered and wanted to go.
“That’s obstinacy,” she said. “Oh, he’s obstinate–I know him. Pay no attention, Alexander.”
“This is ill will!” thought Alexander. “He wants to trample me in the mud, drag me down into his world. All the same, he’s an intelligent civil servant and industrialist, but nothing more, while I’m a poet…”
“This is too much, Pyotr Ivanych!” his wife began, almost in tears. Please say something. I saw you nodding your head in approval; therefore you liked it. You don’t want to admit it only out of obstinacy. How hard it is to admit that you like the story! We’re too intelligent for that. Admit that it’s good.”
“I nodded my head because from this story too you can see that Alexander is intelligent, but he didn’t act intelligently in writing it.”
“But, Uncle, a judgment of this sort…”
“Listen, you won’t believe me, no use arguing. Let’s choose an intermediary. Look what I’ll even do so as to finish this between us once and for all. I’ll name myself the author of this story and send it off to my friend, editor of a magazine; let us see what he’ll say. You know him and doubtless will trust his judgment. He’s an experienced person.”
Pyotr Ivanych sat down at the table and quickly wrote several lines, then handed the letter over to Alexander: “In my old age I’m having a try at being an author,” he wrote. “What’s to be done; the desire to be famous comes over you–and there you are–you’ve gone crazy! So I’ve turned out the story herewith enclosed. Look through it, and if it’s any good, then publish it in your magazine, of course for money; you know I don’t like to work for nothing. You’ll be surprised and not believe me, but I’m allowing you even to sign it with my last name; therefore, I’m not lying.”
Confident of a favorable reaction to the story, Alexander calmly awaited the answer. He was even glad his uncle had mentioned money in his note. “Very, very wise,” he thought. “Mama complains that grain is selling cheap; I daresay she won’t be sending money soon. So it will be nice to get a thousand or so.”
Nonetheless, some three weeks passed, all the time without an answer. Then finally one morning a big package and a letter came for Pyotr Ivanych.
“Ah! They’ve sent it back!” he said, slyly glancing at his wife.
He did not open the note and did not show it to his wife, no matter how she begged. That same day in the evening before going to the club, he set off for his nephew’s. The door was not closed. He entered. Evsei was snoring, stretched out diagonally on the floor in the vestibule. The wick was in terrible need of snuffing; it hung down from the candleholder. He looked into the other room; it was dark.
“Oh, country life!” muttered Pyotr Ivanych.
He poked Evsei awake, pointed to the door and the candle and threatened with his stick. In the third room Alexander was sitting at his desk, his arms on the desk, his head on his arms and he, too, asleep. A piece of paper lay in front of him. Pyotr Ivanych glanced at it–verse. He took the paper and read:
“Beautiful springtime has passed.
The magic moment of love is gone forever.
In the sleep of the grave love slumbers
And does not race like flame through the
blood!
On its orphaned altar
I long ago raised up another idol,
To him I pray… but…”
“And he’s gone to sleep himself. Pray, dear fellow, don’t be lazy!” Pyotr Ivanych said aloud. “Have your own verses worn you out! Why do you want another opinion? You have pronounced judgment on yourself.”
“Ah!” said Alexander, stretching, “You’re still against my writings! Tell me frankly, Uncle, what makes you so persistently persecute talent when you can’t help admitting…”
“Yes, it’s envy, Alexander. Judge for yourself: You will acquire fame, honor, even immortality, but I shall remain an obscure fellow and will have to be content with the name of a useful, hardworking person. But, look, I too am an Aduyev! Say what you will, it’s hard to take! What am I? I’ve lived my life quietly, inconspicuously, only done my duty and have been, indeed, proud and happy with that. Isn’t that a pitiful fate? When I die, that is, when I stop feeling and knowing, the prophetic strings of the bards will not tell of me; distant centuries, posterity, the world will not be filled with my name, people won’t know that there once lived in the world the State Councillor Pyotr Ivanych Aduyev, and I will not be comforted by this in my coffin, if the coffin and I somehow come down to posterity intact. How different for you, when, spreading your whirring wings, you will fly to the clouds, and I’ll have to comfort myself only with the knowledge that in the mass of human labors there is a drop of my mead too, as your favorite author says.”
“Leave him out of this for Heaven’s sake–what do you mean favorite author! He only ridicules his neighbors.”
“Ah! ridicules! Isn’t it since you found your own portrait in Krylov that you’ve stopped loving him? By the way! Do you know that your future fame and immortality is in my pocket? But I’d wish rather your money were there; that’s more like it.”
“What fame?”
“Why the answer to my note.”
“Oh dear! Let me have it right away for Heaven’s sake. What does he say?”
“I haven’t read it; read it yourself and aloud.”
An Ordinary Story Page 22
