An Ordinary Story

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An Ordinary Story Page 30

by Ivan Goncharov


  The peasant went away.

  “Blockhead!” Kostyakov cried after him. “Once a swine, always one. Laugh at your own kind, accursed devil! You’re a dumb swine, I say, peasant!”

  God forbid you should tease a hunter at a moment of bad luck!

  The third day, as they fished in silence, training their unmoving glance on the water, a rustle was heard from behind. Alexander turned and started as if bitten by a mosquito, neither more nor less. The old man and young girl were there.

  Aduyev, giving them a sideward look, hardly answered the old man’s bow, but apparently expected this visit. Usually he went fishing in very careless dress. But this time he had put on a new topcoat and coquettishly tied a blue scarf round his neck, put his hair in order, even, it seemed, curled it a bit; he’d begun to resemble an idyllic fisherman. After waiting as long as good manners required, he walked away and sat down under a tree.

  “Cela passe toute permission! ” thought Antigone, flaring up in anger.

  “Excuse us!” said Oedipus to Aduyev, “perhaps we’re bothering you?…”

  “No!” answered Aduyev. “I’m tired.”

  “Are they biting?” the old man asked Kostyakov.

  “How can they bite when people talk an arm’s length away,” answered Kostyakov angrily. “Just now some kind of gnome came through with foolish chatter–why would they bite after that? So you apparently live nearby in the neighborhood?” he asked Oedipus.

  “There’s our summer cottage, the one with the balcony,” he answered.

  “Is it expensive, pray?”

  “Five hundred rubles for the summer.”

  “It seems like a good cottage, well-managed, and there are a lot of outside sheds. Probably cost the owner some thirty thousand.”

  “Yes, about.”

  “So. And is this your daughter?”

  “She is.”

  “Yes, Sir. A splendid young lady! Are you taking a walk?”

  “Yes, we are. If you live in the country, you have to take walks.”

  “Quite so, quite so, how could you not; the weather’s good, not like last week. What weather that was, oh my, my! God prevent more of the like. We’ll be harvesting winter crops.”

  “God willing, it’ll turn nice.”

  “God willing!”

  “So, you’re not catching anything just now!”

  “I’m not, but he–see here, have a look.”

  He showed the perch.

  “I can tell you,” he continued, “it’s unusual to have his luck! Unfortunately he doesn’t have his mind on it; otherwise with his luck we’d never come home empty.”

  He sighed.

  Antigone began to listen more attentively, but Kostyakov fell silent.

  The appearance of the old man and his daughter began to be repeated more and more often. Even Aduyev deigned to notice them. Sometimes he too exchanged a word or two with the old man, but he still said nothing to the daughter. She at first felt irritated, then insulted and finally became sad. If Aduyev had spoken to her or even paid her ordinary attention, she would have forgotten him, but this way it was quite otherwise. A person’s heart, it seems, lives on contradictions; without them, he wouldn’t even have a heart.

  Antigone was about to consider some terrible plan of revenge, but then gradually abandoned it.

  Once when the old man and his daughter approached our friends, after a short wait Alexander put his rod on a bush and, as he usually did, sat down in his place and mechanically looked now at the father, now at the daughter.

  They stood in profile to him. He saw nothing special in the father. A white shirt, homespun trousers and a flat hat with broad brims faced in green velvet. But the daughter, though! How gracefully she leaned on the father’s arm! The wind now would blow her curls off her face as if intent on showing Alexander her pretty profile and white neck, then half catch up her little silk cape, showing her well-shaped waist, then play with her dress, uncovering her tiny foot. She looked pensively at the water.

  For a long while Alexander could not take his eyes off her and felt a feverish shiver run through his body. He turned away from the temptation and began whipping the tops off flowers with a stick.

  “Oh! how well I know what this is!” he thought. “Give it free rein and it will take off. Here you have love ready-made–how stupid! Uncle’s right. But animal feeling alone will not tempt me. No, I will not lower myself to that.”

  “May I fish a little?” the girl asked Kostyakov shyly.

  “You may, Miss, why not?” he answered, giving her Aduyev’s rod.

  “So there, you have a companion!” said the father to Kostyakov, and leaving his daughter, he set off to wander along the bank. “See to it, Liza, catch some fish for supper,” he added.

  Silence lasted for several minutes.

  “Why is your companion so gloomy?” Liza asked Kostyakov quietly.

  “He’s been passed by for promotion the third time, Miss.”

  “What?” she asked, frowning slightly.

  “The third time, I say, they haven’t given him the job.”

  She shook her head. “No, that can’t be!” she thought. “That isn’t it!”

  “You don’t believe me, Miss? I swear by my soul! And he let go the pike, remember, for that reason too.”

  “It’s not that, not that,” she thought, this time convinced: “I know why he let the pike go.”

  “Oh, oh,” she suddenly cried out, “look, it’s bobbing, it’s bobbing!”

  She pulled and caught nothing.

  “The fish broke away!” said Kostyakov, looking at the rod, “you see, when it got the worm. It was probably a big perch. But you don’t know how, Miss. You didn’t let him take the hook properly.”

  “Oh, do you really have to know how to do this too?”

  “As in everything,” said Alexander automatically.

  She blushed and quickly turned round, in turn dropping the rod in the water. But Alexander was already looking the other way.

  “How do you get to the point of knowing how?” she said with a slight tremble in her voice.

  “Practice more often,” answered Alexander.

  “So that’s it!” she thought with a shock of pleasure, “that is, come here more often–I understand! Good, but I’ll torment you, Mr. Barbarian, for all your arrogance…”

  That’s the translation of Alexander’s answer which her coquetry gave her. But he said nothing more that day.

  “She’ll think, if you please, God knows what!” he said to himself, “she will begin to put on airs, play the coquette… that’s stupid!”

  From that day on the old man and his daughter came by every day. Sometimes Liza came without the old man and with her nurse. She brought work and books with her and sat under the tree; she was quite indifferent to Alexander’s presence.

  She thought in this way to touch his pride and, as she said, torment him. Out loud she chatted with her nurse about the house and housekeeping to show that she didn’t even see Aduyev. And he sometimes really did not see her, once he had caught sight of her and dryly bowed–and he said not a word.

  Noting that this ordinary maneuver was unsuccessful, she changed her plan of attack and would herself now and then start talking to him; sometimes she borrowed his rod. Gradually Alexander became more communicative with her, but he was very careful and did not allow any openness. Was it calculation on his part or still his former wounds for which there was no cure after all, as he said? Anyway, he was quite cold with her, even in conversation.

  One day the old man had a samovar brought out on the bank. Liza poured tea. Alexander stubbornly refused, saying he didn’t drink tea in the evening.

  “All this tea drinking leads to greater intimacy… acquaintance… I don’t want it!” he thought.

  “What are you saying? Why yesterday you drank four glasses!” said Kostyakov.

  “I don’t drink outdoors,” Alexander hastened to add.

  “You’re missing something!
” said Kostyakov. “It’s wonderful tea, aromatic, I’d say around fifteen rubles a pound. Please, some more, Miss; indeed with rum it would be good!”

  They even brought rum.

  The old man urged Alexander, who abruptly refused. When Liza heard the refusal, she pouted. She began trying to get out of him reasons for his unfriendliness. However slyly she guided the conversation to that subject, Alexander still more slyly turned it away.

  This secrecy only stimulated her curiosity and perhaps even a different feeling in Liza. On her face, till then clear as the summer sky, there appeared a cloud of disturbance, thoughtfulness. She often looked sadly at Alexander, turned her eyes away with a sigh, lowered her gaze to the ground, and for her part thought, it seemed: “You’re unhappy! perhaps disappointed in love… Oh, how I would know how to make you happy! How I would take care of you, how love you… I would defend you from fate itself. I would…” and so on.

  Great numbers of women think this way and great numbers deceive those who believe this song of the sirens. Alexander seemed to notice nothing. He talked with her as he would talk with a friend, with his uncle–not a trace of that tenderness which unintentionally creeps into the friendship of a man and a woman and makes their relations different from friendship. For this reason they say that there isn’t and cannot be friendship between a man and a woman, that what is called friendship between them is nothing but the beginning or the remains of love, or, indeed, love itself. Yet, looking at Aduyev’s manner with Liza, one could believe that such friendship exists.

  Once only he partly showed or wanted to show her his manner of thinking. He took from the bench the book she had brought and opened it. It was Childe Harolde in a French translation. Alexander shook his head, sighed, and silently put the book back in its place.

  “You don’t like Byron? You’re against Byron?” she said. “Byron is such a great poet–and you don’t like him!”

  “I haven’t said anything, and you’ve already attacked me,” he answered.

  “Why did you shake your head?”

  “True. I’m sorry this book fell into your hands.”

  “Sorry for what, the book or me?”

  Alexander was silent.

  “Why shouldn’t I read Byron?” she asked.

  “For two reasons,” said Alexander after a moment’s silence. He laid his hand on hers, whether the better to persuade her, or because she had a soft, white little hand. He began to speak softly, measuredly, letting his eyes move now over her curls, now her neck, now her waist. In time with these movements his voice gradually rose.

  “First,” he said, “because you’re reading Byron in French, and therefore, the beauty and power of the poet’s language are lost for you! Look, what a pale, colorless pitiful language this is! It’s the ashes of the great poet; it’s as if his ideas had floated away in water. Second, because I would not advise you to read Byron, because… he perhaps will awaken in your soul vibrations that otherwise would not resound as long as you live…”

  Here he pressed her hand strongly and expressively, as if by this he wanted to give weight to his words.

  “Why should you read Byron?” he continued. “Perhaps your life will flow quietly like this stream. You see how small, slight it is. It reflects neither the whole sky nor the clouds. On its banks there are neither cliffs nor sharp slopes. It flows playfully. Ripples just barely mark its surface. It reflects only the green of the banks, a shred of sky, a tiny cloud… Probably your life would flow thus, but you’re bringing on yourself vain agitations, storms. You want to look at life and people through a dark glass… Let it be, don’t read it! Look at everything with a smile, don’t look into the distance, live day by day, don’t consider the dark sides of life and people, otherwise…”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Nothing!” said Alexander, as if coming to.

  “No, tell me: you’ve probably experienced something or other?”

  “Where’s my rod? Allow me, it’s time for me to go now.”

  He seemed disturbed that he had spoken out so incautiously.

  “No, one more word,” Liza began. “Admit that a poet should make the reader feel with him. Byron is a great poet. Why don’t you want me to feel with him? Do you think me so stupid, trivial that I shan’t understand?…”

  She was offended.

  “Not quite that. Feel with what is peculiar to your feminine heart; seek what’s in tune with it, otherwise terrible cacophony can result… in both head and heart.” Here he shook his head as if hinting that he himself was the victim of such.

  “One person will show you a flower,” he said, “and make you enjoy its fragrance and beauty, while another will point out only the poisonous sap in the calyx… then both beauty and fragrance will be lost for you… He’ll make you deplore the fact that the sap is there, and you’ll forget that the fragrance is there also… There’s a difference between these two people and between sympathy for them. Don’t look for poison, don’t get to the bottom of everything that happens to us and around us; don’t seek unnecessary experience; that’s not what leads to happiness.”

  He fell silent. She listened to him trustingly and thoughtfully.

  “Talk to me, talk to me,” she said with childlike submission. “I’m ready to listen to you for days on end, to obey you in everything…”

  “Me?” said Alexander coldly. “I beg you! What right have I to tell you what to do?… Excuse me for letting myself make a suggestion. Read what you want… Childe Harolde is a very good book, Byron, a great poet!”

  “No, don’t pretend! Don’t talk like that. Tell me what I should read.”

  With pedantic solemnity he tried to suggest several historical and travel books to her, but she said they had bored her at school. Then he recommended Walter Scott, Cooper, several French and English writers–men and women–and two or three of the Russians, trying the while, as if unintentionally, to show off his literary taste and fine feeling. After that there wasn’t any conversation of the sort between them.

  Alexander kept wanting to run away. “What are women to me!” he said. “I can’t love, I’ve had it with them…”

  “All right, all right!” Kostyakov objected to this. “So get married, then you’ll see. I myself only wanted to play around with young girls and women, but when the time came for the ceremony, I could think of nothing else–someone pushed me so to get married!”

  And Alexander did not run away either. All his former dreams began to stir in him. His heart began to beat faster. Liza’s waist would flash before his eyes, or her small foot, or her curls, and his life grew somewhat brighter again. Kostyakov hadn’t called him for some three days; instead, he dragged Kostyakov fishing himself. “Again! Again the same thing!” said Alexander, “but I shall be firm!”–and meanwhile he hurried to the stream.

  Each time Liza would be impatiently awaiting the arrival of the friends. Each evening the cup of aromatic tea with rum would be made for Kostyakov–and perhaps Liza owed it to this lure that they did not fail to come even a single evening. If they were late, Liza and her father would be coming to meet them. When bad weather kept the friends at home, there’d be no end to reproaching them and the weather.

  Alexander thought and thought and decided to stop his trips there for a time, Heaven knows why–he didn’t know why himself, and he didn’t go fishing for a whole week. Neither did Kostyakov. At last they set out.

  A whole mile before the spot where they fished, they met Liza and her nurse. She cried out when she caught sight of them, then became suddenly embarrassed and blushed. Aduyev bowed coldly. Kostyakov launched into conversation.

  “So here we are,” he said. “You weren’t expecting us? Hee, hee, hee! I see you weren’t, even the samovar isn’t here! What a long time, Miss, what a long time since you’ve seen us! Are they biting? I kept wanting to come, but I couldn’t persuade Alexander Fyodorych here; he sat at home… or no, that is, he lay on his back the whole time.”

  She glanced
reproachfully at Aduyev.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t come for a whole week?”

  “Yes; I haven’t been here for a week, it seems.”

  “Why then?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to…”

  “Didn’t want to!” she said with astonishment.

  “Yes, why?”

  She was silent, but seemed to be thinking. “How could you not want to come here? I wanted to send Papa to the city to see you,” she said, “but I didn’t know where you live.”

  “To the city to see me? What for?”

  “A fine question!” she said, insulted. “What for? To find out whether something had happened to you, were you sick?…”

  “Why do you care?…”

  “Why do I care? Heavens!”

  “Heavens what?”

  “Why do you ask ‘what! ’Why, you see… I have your books…” She grew embarrassed. “Not to come for a week!” she added.

  “Do you suppose I have to be here every day without fail?”

  “Without fail!”

  “Why?”

  “Why, why!” She looked at him sadly and repeated, “why, why!”

  He looked at her. What was this? Tears, dismay and joy and reproaches? She was pale, had grown somewhat thin, her eyes had reddened.

  “So here we have it! Already!” thought Alexander. “I didn’t expect it so soon!” Then he laughed loudly.

  “‘Why?’ you say. Listen…,” she continued. A kind of resolve gleamed in her eyes. She obviously had prepared herself to say something important, but at that moment her father came up to them.

  “Till tomorrow,” she said, “tomorrow I must have a talk with you. I can’t today. My heart is too full… Tomorrow you’ll come? Yes, do you hear? You won’t forget us? Won’t abandon us?…”

  And she ran away without waiting for an answer.

  Her father looked fixedly at her, then at Aduyev and shook his head; Alexander looked after her in silence. He apparently pitied her and was vexed with himself that without noticing he had brought her to this state; blood did not rush to his heart, but to his head.

  “She loves me,” thought Alexander on the way home. “Heavens, how boring! How annoying! Now we mustn’t even come here, yet the fish bite wonderfully at this spot… it’s a shame!”

 

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