An Ordinary Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “Well, what is your response?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  “I don’t want to speak to that,” replied her husband. “How shall I respond to such nonsense? Am I to blame that when he came here, Alexander imagined everything was yellow flowers, love, and friendship; that all people do here is write verse or listen to it, though sometimes for variety’s sake they try prose?… I proved to you that a man must work, in general everywhere and here especially, and work a lot, even to the point of pain in his back… that there are no yellow flowers. There’s rank and money, and that’s much better! That’s what I wanted to prove to you! I did not doubt that you’d finally understand what life is, especially as it’s understood nowadays. Indeed, you did understand, but even when you saw there aren’t many yellow flowers or verses in life, and when you realized what life is–still it’s a big mistake to think that with this realization you have the right to be downcast; others don’t notice it and therefore live and sing for joy. Well, what are you complaining about? What do you want? Another man in your place would bless his fate. Neither need nor illness nor real grief has touched you. What do you lack? Love perhaps? Haven’t you had enough? You’ve loved twice and been loved. You’ve been betrayed, you’ve called it quits. We decided you do have friends such as others seldom have, not false friends. True, they don’t throw themselves into water for you or crawl up on a burning pyre, and they don’t much care for embraces either, for those are extremely stupid, after all–just understand that at last! But, for all that, you’ll always get advice, help, and even money from your friends. And isn’t that what friends are? In time you’ll get married. You have a career ahead of you. Just get busy, and with that you’ll make your fortune. Do everything like others–and fate will not pass you by; you’ll come into your own. It’s ridiculous to imagine you’re a special great man, when you were not created such! So what are you grieving about?”

  “I’m not blaming you, Uncle; on the contrary, I can respect your intentions and truly thank you for them. It can’t be helped that they weren’t successful. And likewise don’t blame me. We did not understand each other–that was our misfortune. What can please and suit you, or someone else, or a third person–doesn’t please me…”

  “Please me, another, or a third person! You’re not speaking to the point, dear fellow! Am I really alone in thinking and acting as I was teaching you to think and act? Look around, look at most people–the crowd,as you call it. Not the people in the country; they won’t get there for a long while, but consider the modern, educated, thinking and working mass. What do they want and what are they striving for? How do they think? You’ll see it’s just what I was teaching you. It’s what I was demanding of you–I didn’t invent all this.”

  “Who did then?” asked Liza Alexandrovna.

  “Our time.”

  “So you must without fail follow all the ideas that are thought up in your time?” she asked. “Are they all sacred and true?”

  “They’re all sacred!” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “What! Is it true that one must reason more than feel? Not give free rein to the heart, restrain the impulses of feeling, not yield or believe in sincere outpourings?”

  “Yes,” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “Act at every moment according to a system rather than trust people, consider everything unreliable and live only for yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s sacred truth that love is not the main thing in life, that one must love one’s work more than a beloved person, on whose devotion one mustn’t count either, and believe that love will necessarily end in coldness, betrayal, or habit; that friendship is habit? Is all this true?”

  “It has always been true,” answered Pyotr Ivanych. “Only formerly they didn’t want to believe it, but now it has become a generally known truth.”

  “Is it also a sacred truth that everything must be examined, calculated, and considered, that one mustn’t let oneself dream and delight in something known to be an illusion just so as to be happy this way?…”

  “That’s sacred because it’s reasonable,” said Pyotr Ivanych.

  “Is it true too,” continued Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “that one must act reasonably even toward those close to one’s heart… for example, toward one’s wife?…”

  “My back has never before hurt this much… Ouch!” said Pyotr Ivanych, writhing in his chair.

  “Your back indeed! A wonderful time we live in! I have to admit.”

  “Very wonderful, my dear. Nothing gets done by caprice. Everywhere reason, cause, experience, gradual progress, and, therefore, success. Everything moves toward perfection and the common good.”

  “Perhaps, Uncle, there’s truth in your words,” said Alexander, “but it doesn’t comfort me. I know everything according to your theory, look at things with your eyes. I’m a pupil of your school, but meanwhile I find life boring, difficult, unendurable… Why is that?”

  “Why, for not being accustomed to the new order. You’re not alone in that; there are others who haven’t caught up. They’re all martyrs. It’s really too bad about them, but what can you do. You can’t keep back a whole people for a handful of them. For everything you accuse me of,” said Pyotr Ivanych after a moment’s consideration, “I have a single and main justification. Do you remember when you arrived here, after a five-minute conversation with you, I advised you to go back? You didn’t obey. Why do you now attack me? I told you in advance that you’d not get accustomed to the real order of things, but you counted on my guidance, asked for my advice… talked in high-flown language about modern achievements of the mind, about the strivings of mankind… about the practical tendencies of this century–so here you have it! It was impossible for me to be your nursemaid from morning till night, or make the sign of the cross over you. I talked business to you because you asked me to, and what came of that doesn’t concern me. You’re not a child and not stupid. You can judge yourself… Instead of doing your business, you now groan over some girl’s betrayal, now suffer from a spiritual void, now from superfluity of emotions–what sort of life is that? Why, it’s torture! Look at today’s youth: what fine fellows! How everything hums with intellectual activity and energy, how easily and skillfully they manage with all that nonsense called palpitations, sufferings… and the Devil knows what else in your old language!”

  “How easily you judge!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “and aren’t you sorry for Alexander?”

  “No. Now if his back hurt, I’d feel sorry. That’s no invention, no dream, no poetry, but real grief… Ouch!”

  “At least instruct me, Uncle, what I’m to do now. With your mind, how would you solve this problem?”

  “What to do? Why, go to the country.”

  “To the country!” repeated Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “Are you in your right mind, Pyotr Ivanych? What will he do there?”

  “To the country!” repeated Alexander, and they both looked at Pyotr Ivanych.

  “Yes, to the country. You’ll see your mother there and comfort her. You say you’re looking for a calm life. Here, right now, everything agitates you, but where is it calmer than on the lake with your auntie… Really, go. And who knows? perhaps you’ll even… Ouch!” He seized his back.

  Two weeks later Alexander resigned from the civil service and came to say goodbye to his aunt and uncle. Alexander and his aunt were sad and silent. Lizaveta Alexandrovna had tears in her eyes. Pyotr Ivanych alone spoke.

  “Neither career, nor fortune!” he said, shaking his head. “Was it worth coming here; you’ve shamed the Aduyev family!”

  “That’s enough, Pyotr Ivanych,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “you’ve overdone it with your career talk.”

  “How, indeed, my dear, can one do nothing for eight years!”

  “Farewell, Uncle,” said Alexander. “I thank you for everything…”

  “You’re welcome. Farewell, Alexander! Won’t you need money for the road?”

  “No, thank you. I have some.”
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  “What is this, he never takes any! To refuse again is the last straw! Well, go with God, with God.”

  “And aren’t you sorry to part with him?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna.

  “Mm!” roared Pyotr Ivanych. “I’ve grown accustomed to him. Remember, Alexander, that you have an uncle and a friend–do you hear? And if you need a government or other job and the contemptible metal, dare to ask me; you’ll always find both the one and the other and the third.”

  “And if you wish sympathy,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “comfort in grief, warm reliable friendship!”

  “And sincere outpourings,” added Pyotr Ivanych.

  “… so, remember,” continued Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “that you have an aunt and a friend.”

  “Now that, my dear, won’t preoccupy him in the country. He’ll have everything: flowers and love and outpourings and even an aunt.”

  Alexander was deeply moved; he couldn’t say a word. Saying goodbye to his uncle, he was about to embrace him, though not so energetically as eight years before. Lizaveta Alexandrovna was bathed in tears.

  “Oof! it’s as if a mountain had been lifted from my shoulders!” said Pyotr Ivanych, when Alexander was gone, “as if even my back had gotten better!”

  “What did he do to you?” said his wife through her tears.

  “What? Simply a torment, worse than the factory people. If they begin fooling around, then you give them a beating, but with Alexander what are you going to do?”

  Alexander’s aunt spent the whole day weeping, and when Pyotr Ivanych asked about dinner, he was told none had been prepared. The mistress had locked herself up in her study and had not received the cook.

  “Still trouble with Alexander!” said Pyotr Ivanych. “What a martyrdom with him!”

  He muttered and muttered, then went to the English Club for dinner.

  The stage coach slowly dragged itself out of town in the early morning, taking Alexander and Evsei with it.

  Alexander had stuck his head out of the carriage window and was trying by all means to put himself in a melancholy mood; finally, he poured out his feelings in internal monologue.

  They drove past barbers, dentists, dressmakers, gentlemen’s mansions. “Farewell,” he said, nodding his head and holding on to his thinning hair, “farewell, oh city of false hair, false teeth, cotton imitations of natural things, round hats, city of polite snubs, artificial feelings, lifeless boredom! Farewell, grandiose morgue of the soul’s deep, strong, tender, and warm emotions. Here I faced up to contemporary life for eight years, but with my back to nature, which turned away from me. I expended my life forces and grew old at twenty-nine, but there was a time…

  “Farewell, farewell, oh city,

  Where once I loved, where now I weep,

  And where my heart is buried deep! 18

  “I stretch out my arms to embrace you, wide fields, beneficent fields and meadows of my homeland; take me to your bosom; I shall revive and my soul shall arise!”

  Here he read the poem by Pushkin which begins, “A vandal artist…,” wiped his moist eyes, and hid in the depth of the carriage. 19

  VI

  The morning was a beautiful one. A light ripple barely flecked the surface of the lake, familiar to the reader, in the village of Grachi. One’s eyes involuntarily squinted from the blinding gleam of the sun’s rays, which ignited diamond and emerald sparks in the water. The weeping birches bathed their branches in the lake, and here and there the banks were overgrown with sedge in which large yellow flowers were hidden, resting on broad floating leaves. Sometimes light clouds moved across the sun, as if suddenly it had turned away from Grachi. Then the lake, the grove and the village all grew dark for a moment; only the distance glowed brightly. The cloud would pass, and again the lake would shine and the meadows would be truly flooded with gold.

  Since five in the morning Anna Pavlovna had been sitting on the balcony. What brought her out, the sunrise, the fresh air or the singing of the lark? No, she has kept her eyes fixed on the road that goes through the grove. Agrafena came to ask for the keys, and Anna Pavlovna gave them up without taking her eyes off the road, and didn’t even ask what for. The cook appeared; without looking at him either, she gave him a lot of orders. She had ordered dinner for ten people on the following day.

  Again Anna Pavlovna was alone. Suddenly her eyes sparkled, all the strength of her body and soul was concentrated on seeing. Something black had come into view on the road. Something was moving, but calmly, slowly. Oh dear! This load was going downhill. Anna Pavlovna frowned.

  “Here comes someone in a heavy wagon!” she muttered. “No, let them go around, everyone cuts through here.”

  Irritated, she again sat down in her chair and again with quivering expectation trained her gaze on the orchard, not noticing anything around her. But around her there was something to notice; the background began to change significantly. The noon air, heated by the rays of the sun, became oppressive and heavy. Now even the sun hid. It became quite dark. The wood and the distant villages and the grass–all were clothed in a neutral, somehow foreboding color.

  Anna Pavlovna came to and looked up. Goodness! From the west a black shapeless patch tinged with copper at the edges was drifting toward her like a live monster and moving quickly toward the village and the grove, spreading what looked like enormous wings to the sides. Everything in nature grew distressed.

  The cows hung their heads; the horses switched their tails, blew through their nostrils and snorted, shaking their manes. The dust under their hooves did not rise, but, heavy like sand, was strewn under the wheels. The cloud approached threateningly. Soon a distant, loud, hollow sound was rolling slowly nearer.

  Everything turned quiet, as if awaiting something unknown. Where had those birds gone which had so playfully soared upward and sung when the sun was shining? Where were the insects which buzzed so variously in the grass? Everything hid and was silent; even the inanimate objects, it seemed, shared the sinister foreboding. The trees stopped swaying and banging each other with their branches. They straightened up and only rarely bowed with their tops among themselves, as if mutually forewarning of a nearby danger in a whisper. The cloud had already encircled the horizon and formed a kind of leaden impenetrable vault. In the village everyone was trying to get home in time. A minute of solemn, general silence set in. Then a fresh little breeze swept through from the wood, like an advance messenger; it blew coolness into the face of the voyager, made a rustle in the leaves, banged shut the gates of a village house in passing, and then, after whirling up a circle of dust on the street, died down in the bushes. Right after it a violent windstorm advanced, slowly pushing a pillar of dust along the road; it soon broke into the village, ripped off several rotten boards from the fence, carried away a thatched roof, twisted up the skirt of a peasant girl carrying water, and chased roosters and hens down the street, fanning out their tails.

  It passed. Again quiet. Everything is running about and hiding. Only a stupid ram has no sense of what’s coming; indifferent, he chews his cud, standing in the middle of the street, and looks in one direction without understanding the general alarm. A little feather and a straw are circling along the road, trying to follow close after the wind.

  Two or three big drops of rain fell–and suddenly lightning flashed. An old man got up from his resting place and hurriedly led his grandchildren inside; his old woman, crossing herself, hastily closed the window.

  A thunderclap resounded, and swallowing human noises, triumphantly, majestically rolled away in the air. A frightened horse tore itself loose from the horse hitch and ran about, rope attached, in the field while a peasant vainly pursued him. And the rain sprinkled, even lashed, ever faster and faster, and drummed on roofs and windows harder and harder. A small white hand fearfully shoved out on the balcony an object of her tender care–flowers.

  At the first bolt of thunder Anna Pavlovna crossed herself and left the balcony.

  “No, obviously one can’t h
ope for anything today. He’s probably stopped somewhere because of the storm, perhaps for the night.”

  Suddenly the noise of wheels was heard, only not from the grove, but from the other side. Someone drove into the courtyard. Aduyeva’s heart stopped beating.

  “Why from there?” she thought. “Surely he didn’t want to arrive secretly? Really now, there’s no road there.”

  She did not know what to think, but soon everything became clear. The next minute Anton Ivanych entered. His hair had turned silver and he himself had grown fat; his cheeks were puffed from doing nothing and overeating. He was wearing the same frock coat and wide pants.

  “I was waiting and waiting for you, Anton Ivanych,” began Anna Pavlovna. “I thought you wouldn’t come. I was about to despair.”

  “How could you think that! To whom else, dear lady. True! I’m not to be lured to visit everyone… only not to visit you… I was delayed, not by my fault. You see, I’m making my rounds with a single horse now.”

  “How’s that?” asked Anna Pavlovna absentmindedly, moving toward the window.

  “This is how, dear lady; since the christening at Pavel Savich’s the piebald has been lame. Their coachman had the crazy idea of laying an old barn door over the ditch. Poor people, you see! Didn’t have a new board. But there was a nail or hook on the door, whatever–Devil knows! The horse, treading on this, shied so to the side she almost broke my neck… such rascals! So, since that time she’s been lame… You see such misers there! You won’t believe, dear lady, how it is in their house; in some almshouses they keep the paupers better. Yet in Moscow in stores on Kuznetsky Most, people go through about ten thousand in a year!”

  Anna Pavlovna listened to him absentmindedly and slightly shook her head when he finished. “But look, I got a letter from Sashenka, Anton Ivanych!” she interrupted. “He writes he’ll be here around the twentieth. So I’ve been beside myself for joy!”