“Oh, if I could still believe in this!” he thought. “My youthful beliefs are gone and what have I learned that’s new and true?… Nothing; I’ve found doubts, explanations, theories… and I’m still further from the truth than before… What good is this dissent, this philosophizing?.. Heavens! When the heat of belief does not warm the heart, is it really possible to be happy! Am I the happier?”
The service ended. Alexander came home still more bored than when he went. Anna Pavlovna did not know what to do. Once he woke up earlier than usual and heard a rustling behind the head of his bed. He looked around: some old woman was standing over him and whispering. She immediately disappeared as soon as she saw he had noticed her. Under his pillow Alexander found some kind of grass; around his neck hung an amulet.
“What does this mean?” Alexander asked his mother. “What manner of old woman was in my room?”
Anna Pavlovna was embarrassed.
“That’s Nikitishna,” she said.
“What Nikitishna?”
“Why, you see, my dear… you won’t be angry?”
“Well, what is it? Tell me.”
“She… they say, helps many people… She only whispers on water and breathes on a sleeping person–and everything goes away.”
“For the third year at the widow Sidorikha’s,” said Agrafena, “a fiery snake kept flying down the chimney at night…”
Here Anna Pavlovna spat.
“Nikitishna,” continued Agrafena, “conjured the snake; it stopped flying…”
“Well, what about Sidorikha,” asked Alexander.
“She gave birth; the child was such a skinny one and black! It died the third day.”
“Where did you get her from?” he asked
“Anton Ivanych brought her,” answered Anna Pavlovna.
“You like listening to that fool!”
“Fool! Oh, Sashenka, how can you? You should be ashamed. Anton Ivanych, a fool!
“How have you managed to say such a thing? Anton Ivanych is our benefactor, our friend! ”
“Here, dear Mama, take the amulet and give it back to our friend and benefactor. Let him hang it round his own neck.”
From that time on he began to lock his door at night.
Two or three months passed. Gradually the solitude, quiet, the domestic life and all the material benefits accompanying it helped Alexander return to health. And the laziness, freedom from care and absence of any moral shocks brought back to his soul the peace Alexander had sought in vain in Petersburg. There, imprisoned in stone walls, fleeing from the world of ideas and the arts, he had wanted to fall asleep like a toad, but agitations of envy and impotent desires constantly awakened him. Every phenomenon in the world of science and art, every new famous person made him ask, “ Why isn’t this me? Why am I not in his place? ”There at every turn he encountered people he would compare himself unfavorably to… There he would often fall, there he saw his weaknesses as in a mirror, there he had been at the mercy of his inexorable uncle who attacked his way of thinking, his laziness, and unfounded desire for fame, there in that elegant world and multitude of talents he had cut no figure. Finally, people there try to harness life to known conditions, explain its dark and mysterious places, giving no rein to feelings, passions and dreams, and thus depriving life of its poetic allure. They want to give it some kind of boring, monotonous, heavy form…
But here what ease! He was better, more intelligent than everyone! Here he was universally worshipped for several miles around. Besides, here with every step his soul was open to peaceful, soothing impressions in the face of nature. The murmur of the streams, the whisper of the leaves, the cool and sometimes the very silence of nature–everything gave birth to thought, awakened feeling. In the garden, in the field, at home recollections of childhood and youth came to him. Anna Pavlovna, sitting next him sometimes, seemed to guess his thoughts. She helped him renew his memory of little things dear to his heart from his life, or told him those things he didn’t remember at all.
“These willows here,” she said, pointing to the garden, “were planted by your father. I was carrying you. I used to sit here on the balcony and look at him. He’d work for a while, work, and look up at me, and the sweat would pour from him in floods. ‘Ah! you’re there?’ he’d say, ‘somehow I feel so gay working!’ And he’d go at it again. And there’s the puddle where you used to play with the children. You were such an angry child, always something not to your taste–and you’d cry out at the top of your lungs. Once Agashka–that’s the one married now to Kuzma–his is the third izba from the circle road–she somehow pushed you and banged your nose so it bled and your father beat and beat her; I implored him all I could.”
Alexander supplemented these recollections with others of his own… “See, here on this bench under the tree,” he thought, “I sat with Sofiya and was happy then. And see there between two lilac bushes I got my first kiss from her…” And he saw it all again… He smiled at these recollections and sat through whole hours on the balcony, greeting or saying goodbye to the sun, listening to the birds singing, the lapping of the lake and the hum of unseen insects.
“Goodness! How lovely it is here!” he said under the influence of these gentle impressions, “far away from restlessness, from that trivial life, that anthill, where man:
…in throngs, hemmed in by fences,
Tastes not the morning cool, nor senses
The vernal perfume of the downs… 20
“How you tire of living there, and how you rest your soul here in this simple, uncomplicated straightforward life! The heart is renewed here, the breast breathes freer and the mind is not tormented by trying thoughts and insoluble choices in its disputes with the heart; both are in harmony, nothing needs to be resolved. Without worry or the burden of thought, with a somnolent heart and mind and a slight excitement you let your glance slide from the grove to the pasture, from the pasture to the hill and then you look deep into the infinite blue of the sky.”
Sometimes he went over to the window which opened on the courtyard and the street into the village. There he saw another picture, reminiscent of Teniers, of a full and busy family life. Barbos, the dog, would be stretched out full length in the heat near the stable, his muzzle on his paws. A dozen hens greet the morning wildly running and clucking; the roosters would be fighting. Along the street the herd is being driven to the field. Sometimes one cow, fallen behind the herd, moos sadly as she stands in the middle of the street, looking around in all directions. Men and women with rakes and scythes on their shoulders are on their way to work. At times the wind will snatch two or three words of their talk and carry it to the window. Over there a peasant cart crosses over the little bridge with a rumble, behind it a load of hay slides along lazily. Blond, wirehaired children wander about the meadows, holding up their long shirts. In view of this picture Alexander began to understand the poetry of a gray sky, a broken fence, a garden gate, a muddy pond and the Russian stomping dance. He changed his tight elegant tailcoat for a loose robe of domestic handwork. And in every feature of this peaceful life, in every impression–morning, night, meal and rest times–the ever-watchful eye of maternal love was on him.
Her joy knew no bounds at seeing how Alexander filled out, the red came back to his cheeks, his eyes took on life with a peaceful gleam. “Only his hair doesn’t grow,” she said, “and it was like silk.”
Alexander often took walks in the neighborhood. Once he met a crowd of peasant women and girls on their way to the woods to look for mushrooms, joined them and spent the whole day. When he got home, he praised the girl Masha for her agility and skill, and Masha was taken into the house to look after the master. He drove sometimes to watch the field work and learned from experience things about which he had often written and translated for the magazine. “How often we fibbed about this,” he thought, shaking his head, and began to go into the subject deeper and more persistently.
Once in bad weather he tried working, sat down to write and wa
s pleased with the beginning of an essay. He needed some book or other for reference; he wrote to St. Petersburg and they sent the book. He started working seriously. He sent for more books. In vain Anna Pavlovna tried to persuade him not to write so as not to overstrain his lungs; he wouldn’t hear of it. She sent Anton Ivanych. Alexander wouldn’t listen to him either and went on writing. When he had not only not lost weight from writing, but after three or four months had gained some, Anna Pavlovna calmed down.
A year and a half passed this way. All would have been well, but at the end of this time Alexander again became thoughtful. He had no wishes, or whatever ones he had were easily fulfilled; they did not go beyond the limits of family life. Nothing bothered him, no cares, no doubts, but he was bored! Gradually the narrow domestic circle got on his nerves. His mother’s efforts to please began to annoy him, and Anton Ivanych disgusted him, he was even tired of his work and nature did not enchant him.
He sat silently at the window, looked indifferently at his father’s willows now, and listened with annoyance to the lapping of the lake. He began to think about the reason for this new melancholy and discovered he was homesick–for St. Petersburg! With perspective on what had passed he began to regret it. The blood was still warm in his veins, his heart beat, soul and body demanded activity… He needed something to do again, Heavens! He almost burst into tears at this discovery. He had thought his boredom would go away, that he would adapt to the country, become accustomed. No, the longer he lived there, the worse his heart ached; he again longed for the abyss he already knew.
He had made his peace with the past. It became dear to him. Hate, his dismal look, gloom, unfriendliness to people had been mitigated by solitude and thought. The past came back to him in a brighter light, and even the traitress Nadenka appeared almost in rays of light. “What am I doing here?” he asked with vexation. “Why am I wilting? Why must my talents be extinguished? Why am I not to shine with my work? I’ve become more reasonable now. How is Uncle better than I? Can I really not make my way? So I haven’t succeeded till now, I didn’t take hold–well that’s that, I’ve come to my senses now and it’s time I did! But how my departure will grieve my dear mama! Still, after all, I must go; I can’t perish here! Take this one or that one there–they all left home… And my career and my fortune?… Only I have stayed behind… and for what? Why?” He walked up and down, discontent, and didn’t know how to tell his mother of his intention to leave.
But his mother soon freed him of that difficulty: she died.
Here is what he finally wrote to his aunt and uncle in St. Petersburg.
To his aunt:
Before my departure from Petersburg, you, dear Aunt, sent me off with tears in your eyes, with precious words which are graven in my memory. You said if ever I should need warm friendship or sincere sympathy, then in your heart there would always be a space for me. That moment has come, when I’ve understood the full value of those words. Those rights over your heart, which you so magnanimously gave me, are for me the guarantee of peace, quiet, comfort, calm and perhaps the happiness of my whole life. About three months ago my dear mama died: I shan’t add another word. You know by her letters what she was for me and will understand what I have lost in her… I am now running away from here for always. But where, solitary pilgrim, should I turn if not to those places where you are?… Say one word: Shall I find in you what I left a year and a half ago? Have you not put me out of your memory? Will you agree to the boring obligation of healing my new and deep wound with your friendship, which has already often saved me. I set all my hope on you and another powerful ally–activity.
“You are surprised–aren’t you? You find it strange to hear this from me, to read these lines in a calm tone, unlike my usual. Don’t be surprised and don’t fear my return. No scatterbrain, no dreamer, no disappointed man, or country boy will come to you, but just a person like so many in Petersburg, such as I long since should have been. Especially prepare Uncle on this score. When I look at my past life, I feel embarrassed and ashamed both for others and myself. But it couldn’t be otherwise. Look when I’ve at last found myself–at thirty! The hard school I went through in Petersburg and my thinking in the country have thrown bright light on my fate. At considerable distance from Uncle’s lessons and my own experience I’ve understood them more clearly here, and I see where they long ago should have led me; I see how pitifully and unreasonably I turned away from the direct goal. I’m calm now. I don’t torture or torment myself, yet don’t boast of this. Perhaps this calm derives at present from egoism. I feel, by the way, that soon my view of life will clear to a point where I’ll discover another source of calm–a purer one. Now I still can’t help regretting that I’ve already reached that borderline where–alas!–youth ends and it becomes time to consider, verify, and analyze every excitement–the time of consciousness.
Though perhaps my opinion about people and life has changed but little, still a lot of hopes have vanished, a lot of wishes gone; in a word; illusions are lost. Consequently I need not fear being wrong or deceiving myself in many things and many people,
And that’s very comforting from one point of view! Now I see the future more clearly. The hardest part lies behind me. Emotions aren’t frightening because few are left. I’ve been through the most important and I bless them. I’m ashamed to remember how, imagining myself a martyr, I cursed my lot, life. Cursed! What pitiful childishness and ingratitude. How late I realized that sufferings cleanse the soul, that they alone make a person bearable to both himself and others, elevate him… I admit now that not to experience sufferings means not to experience the fullness of life; in suffering there are many important factors, and here, perhaps, we won’t live to see how they are resolved. I see in such disturbances the hand of Providence, which, it seems, assigns man a neverending task–to strive forward, to achieve a goal designated from on high while struggling every minute with deceptive hopes and tormenting barriers. Yes, I see how inevitable in life are this struggle and these deceptive hopes and tormenting barriers, how without them life would mean not living but standing still, sleep… If struggle ends, look–life ends too. A person was busy, loved, enjoyed, suffered, experienced crises, did his work and therefore lived!
Do you see how I reason. I’ve emerged from darkness; I see how everything I’ve been through till now was some kind of difficult preparation for my real life’s road, a complex knowledge for living. Something tells me that the rest of the way will be easier, quieter, more understandable… The dark parts have been illumined, the complicated knots have untied themselves. Life begins to seem good, not evil. Soon I shall say again how good life is, but say it not as a youth enraptured by a momentary enjoyment, but with full consciousness of its true joys and its sorrows. For that reason even death is not terrible; it presents itself not as a scarecrow but a marvelous experience. And now an unfamiliar calm has come to prevail. Childish vexations, flareups of wounded self-love, infantile irritability and a comic anger at the world and people which resembled the anger of a pug dog at an elephant–it’s as if they never were.
I’ve made friends again with people with whom I long ago fell out of friendship–with people who, as I note in passing, are the same here as in Petersburg, only harder, more blunt and ridiculous. But I don’t get angry at them here, and there I certainly shan’t either. That’s a sample of my meekness for you. The strange fellow Anton Ivanych comes to stay with us as if to share my grief; tomorrow he’ll go to my neighbor for a wedding, and then to someone else–to fulfill the obligation of a midwife. But neither grief nor joy prevents his eating four times a day at everyone’s house. I see it’s all the same to him whether a person dies, is born or gets married, and I’m not repelled or vexed to see him… I suffer him and don’t chase him away… A good sign–don’t you think, dear Aunt? What will you say to yourself after reading this word of praise?”
To his uncle:
Dearest best Uncle and along with this, Your Excellency!
With what joy I learned that your career too is successfully complete–you achieved success in wealth long ago! You are Acting Privy Councillor and Director of Chancery! I dare to remind Your Excellency of the promise you gave me upon my departure: ‘If you need work, or need an occupation or money, turn to me!’ you said. And here I am needing work and an occupation; of course, I’ll need money. A poor man from the provinces dares to ask for work and a position. What fate awaits my request? Not the one which formerly awaited the letter from Zayezzhalov when he asked help with his affair?… As for creativity, which you had the cruelty to mention in one of your letters, then… Isn’t it a sin for you to stir up long forgotten stupidities when I myself blush for them?… Oh, Uncle, oh, Your Excellency! Who hasn’t been young and somewhat stupid? Who hasn’t had some strange, so-called cherished dream which was never meant to be realized? Take my neighbor on the right: He imagined himself a hero, a giant–a hunter before the Lord… He wanted to astonish the world by his heroic deeds… and it ended with his resigning from the service with the rank of ensign, not having been in a war. He peacefully sets out potatoes and sows turnips. Another neighbor on the left dreamed of remaking the whole world and Russia according to his ideas, but after copying documents for some time in a government office, he left for here and till now hasn’t been able to rebuild his old fence. I thought creative talent had been given me from on high and wanted to disclose new undiscovered secrets to the world, not suspecting that these were no secrets and I was no prophet. We’re all ridiculous. But tell me who, without blushing for himself, would dare to expose with abusive denunciation these youthful, noble, fiery, though not altogether realistic dreams? Who hasn’t in his time nourished a fruitless wish, hasn’t made himself the hero of a glorious deed, a solemn epic, a thundering tale? Whose imagination hasn’t been carried away to fabulous, heroic times? Who hasn’t wept in sympathy with the noble and beautiful? If such a person should be found, let him throw the first stone at me–I envy him. I blush for my youthful dreams, but respect them. They’re a guarantee of purity of heart, the sign of a noble soul predisposed to the good.
An Ordinary Story Page 36
