You, I know, will not be persuaded by these arguments. You need a positive, practical argument. Here it is: Tell me how talents would be recognized and refined if young people repressed in themselves these early inclinations, if they did not give free rein and space to their dreams, but slavishly followed the indicated direction without trying out their strengths? After all, isn’t it a law of nature that youth must be unruly, fiery, sometimes crazy and stupid, and that everyone’s dreams are mitigated with time, as mine are now. Was your own youth really free of these sins? Recall, dig deep in your memory. I see you from here with your calm, never agitated gaze shaking your head and saying: no, nothing! Allow me to expose you, for example, at least in love… Do you deny it? Don’t, for the evidence is in my hands… Remember that I could research the matter at the place of action. The scene of your love suit is before my eyes–it’s the lake. Yellow flowers still grow on it. One, which I’ve pressed, I have the honor to present to Your Excellency enclosed as a sweet reminder. But there is a more terrible weapon against your persecutions of love in general and mine in particular–it’s a document… You frown? And what a document!!! You’ve grown pale? I stole the precious antique from my old auntie, from her no less ancient breast and shall bring it with me as an eternal piece of evidence against you and a defense for myself. Tremble, Uncle! That’s not all; I know in detail the whole history of your love. My auntie tells me every day at breakfast and supper and before bedtime, and I enter all these precious materials in a special memoir. I shall not fail to hand it to you personally, along with my essays on agriculture, which I’ve been working on here for a year now. For my part, I consider it my duty to assure my auntie of the immutability of your emotions toward her, as she says. When I am favored to receive from Your Excellency an answer assenting to my request, I shall have the honor of making my appearance, bringing dried raspberries and honey and presenting several letters which the neighbors promise to provide me with concerning their needs, with the exception of Zayezzhalov, who has died before the settlement of his lawsuit.
EPILOGUE
Here is what happened to the principal characters of this novel four years after Alexander’s second arrival in Petersburg.
One morning Pyotr Ivanych was walking back and forth in his study. He was no longer the once hearty, robust, well-built Pyotr Ivanych with ever the same calm gaze, head held proudly high, and erect posture. Whether from years or circumstances he seemed to have drooped. His movements were not so hale and hearty, his gaze not so firm and self-assured. Many gray hairs gleamed in his sideburns and on his temples. It was obvious that he had celebrated the fifty-year jubilee of his life. He walked slightly bent. It was especially strange to see on the face of this imperturbable calm man–such as we have known him till now–not so much a worried as a melancholy expression, which, nevertheless, still had something characteristic of Pyotr Ivanych.
He seemed to be in a quandary. He would take two steps and suddenly stop in the middle of the room, or with rapid paces he’d measure off two or three times the distance from one corner to the other; apparently an unaccustomed thought had struck him.
In the armchair next to the table sat a short, stout man with an honorary medal round his neck, wearing a frock coat buttoned clear to the top, and one leg crossed over the other. He lacked only the cane with a big gold knob, that classic cane by which the reader at once used to recognize a doctor in novels and stories. Perhaps a doctor needs this stick, with which, for want of something to do, he goes walking and for whole hours sits with his patients, comforts them and often combines in his person two or three roles– physician, practical philosopher, friend of the house, and so on. But this is all well and good where people live spread out with room to spare, are seldom ill and where a doctor is more a luxury than a necessity. But Pyotr Ivanych’s doctor was a Petersburg doctor. He didn’t know what it meant to walk on foot, although, indeed, he prescribed exercise for his patients. He was a member of some council or other, secretary of some association or other, and professor and physician for several government institutions and for the poor; he was unfailingly present at consultations; he also had an enormous practice. He did not even take off his left glove and wouldn’t have taken off the right if it hadn’t been necessary to feel a pulse; he never unbuttoned his frock coat and almost never sat down. From impatience the doctor had already often recrossed his legs several times. It had long been time for him to go, but Pyotr Ivanych had still said nothing. At last:
“What is to be done, Doctor?” asked Pyotr Ivanych, suddenly stopping in front of him.
“Go to Kissingen,” answered the doctor. “It’s the only way. The attacks have begun to recur too often in your case…”
“Oh dear! You’re always talking about me!” interrupted Pyotr Ivanych. “I’m talking about my wife. I’m past fifty, but she’s in the full flower of life. She must live, and if her health is beginning to fail at this time…”
“Here you’re already foreseeing her end!” remarked the doctor. “I told you only my fears for the future, and for now there’s still nothing… I only wanted to say that her health… or her poor health, and so she’s… seemingly not quite normal…”
“Isn’t it all the same? You made your remark in passing, yes and forgot it. But ever since, I’ve been watching her constantly and every day I discover new, disquieting changes in her–and it’s been three months now that I’ve known no peace. Why didn’t I notice earlier–I don’t understand! My position and my business rob me of time and my health… and look, now, indeed, that of my wife too.”
He again started pacing around the room. “Did you question her today?” he asked after a moment’s silence.
“Yes, but she doesn’t notice anything in herself. At first I assumed a physiological cause; she had no children… but, it seems, no! Perhaps the cause is purely psychological…”
“Still easier!” Pyotr Ivanych remarked.
“But perhaps, indeed, there’s nothing. There are decidedly no suspicious symptoms! It’s this way… You’ve sat too long here in this swamp climate. Go to the south. Breathe fresh air. Gather new impressions and see what happens. Spend the summer in Kissingen; take the cure of the waters. Then the autumn in Italy, the winter in Paris. I assure you that the accumulation of mucus, of irritation… will completely disappear!”
Pyotr Ivanych almost didn’t listen to him.
“Psychological cause!” he said half aloud and shaking his head.
“That is, do you see why I say psychological,” said the doctor. “A person who didn’t know you could suspect some kind of worries here… or not worries… but suppressed desires… sometimes there is a need, a lack… I wanted to bring you to the notion…”
“Need, desires!” interrupted Pyotr Ivanych. “Her every wish is anticipated; I know her taste, habits. And need… Hm! You see our house, know how we live.”
“A fine house, a wonderful house,” said the doctor. “A marvelous cook and what cigars! And what of that friend of yours who lives in London… Has he stopped sending you sherry? I haven’t seen it this year at your house…”
“How cunning fate is, Doctor! Have I really not been careful with her?” Pyotr Ivanych began with a fervor not characteristic of him. “I’ve weighed, it seems, every step… No, something went wrong… and when at the height of success, of such a career… Alas!” He waved his hand and went on walking.
“Why are you getting so excited?” said the doctor. “There’s decidedly nothing dangerous. I repeat to you what I said the first time, that is, that her organism is unaffected; there are no destructive symptoms. Anemia, some decline in strength… That’s all!”
“A trifle!” said Pyotr Ivanych.
“Her failing health is negative and not positive,” the doctor continued. “Do you think she’s the only one? Look at all the non-natives here; what are they like? Leave, leave here. But if you can’t go, distract her, don’t let her sit. Please her, take her out. More movement for body and spirit; t
he one and the other are part of her unnatural falling asleep. Of course, in time it can attack the lungs or…”
“Goodbye, Doctor! I shall go to her,” said Pyotr Ivanych, and went with rapid steps to his wife’s study. He stopped at the door, quietly moved aside the door hanging and fixed on his wife his worried gaze.
She… What did the doctor notice in her that was special? Anyone seeing her for the first time would find in her a woman like many in Petersburg. True, she was pale, her gaze dull, her blouse spread freely and evenly over her flat shoulders and smooth chest, her movements slow, almost limp… But you can’t say red cheeks, bright eyes and fiery movements distinctively characterize our beauties, can you? Nor charm of body shape… Neither Phidias nor Praxiteles would find a Venus here for their chisel.
No, you mustn’t look for plastic beauty in our northern belles. They’re not statues; the poses of antiquity in which the beauty of Greek women has been immortalized doesn’t come naturally to them. Indeed, there’s nothing on which to build those poses. We don’t have those impeccably correct contours of the body… Sensuality doesn’t pour from northern eyes in liquid rays; that naive-lustful smile such as burns on a southern woman’s mouth does not melt on their half-open lips. Our women receive as their portion a different, higher beauty. The chisel cannot capture the gleam of thought in the features of their faces, the struggle of the will with passion, the play of emotional movements, inexpressible in language, along with innumerable fine nuances of cunning, seeming naiveté, anger and kindness, hidden joys and sufferings, all those transient lightning flashes breaking forth from the core of the soul…
However that might be, a person seeing Lizaveta Alexandrovna for the first time would not have noticed anything wrong with her. Only one who had known her before, who remembered the freshness of her face, the brightness of her shining glances in which it used to be hard to distinguish the color of her eyes–they drowned so deeply in the luxurious, trembling waves of light–only one who remembered her magnificent shoulders and shapely bust, such a one would look at her now with painful surprise; his heart would contract with pity, if he was close to her, as Pyotr Ivanych’s heart now doubtless contracted, though he feared to admit it to himself.
He quietly entered her study and sat down beside her. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Why I’m going through our expense book,” she answered. “Imagine, Pyotr Ivanych, last month around fifteen hundred rubles went for food alone. That’s unheard of!”
He took the book from her without saying a word and put it on the table.
“Listen,” he began, “the doctor says that my illness may get worse here; he advises taking the waters abroad. What do you say?”
“What should I say? In this, I think, the doctor’s opinion is more important than mine. We must go if he so advises.”
“But you? Would you want to take this trip?”
“If you want to.”
“But perhaps you’d rather stay here a while?”
“Good, I’ll stay.”
“Which of the two?” asked Pyotr Ivanych with some impatience.
“Dispose for yourself and of me as you will,” she answered with limp indifference. “If you say so, I’ll go; if not, I’ll stay here…”
“It’s impossible to stay here,” remarked Pyotr Ivanych. “The doctor says your health too has somewhat suffered… from the climate.”
“Where did he get that idea?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “I’m healthy; I don’t feel anything wrong.”
“A long journey,” said Pyotr Ivanych, “also can be tiring for you. Don’t you want to stay a while with your aunt in Moscow while I’m abroad?”
“Good, I’ll go to Moscow if you please.”
“Or shouldn’t we both go to the Crimea for the summer?”
“Good, to the Crimea then.”
Pyotr Ivanych couldn’t stand it. He got up from the sofa and began, as in his own study, to walk about the room. “Is it all the same to you wherever you are?” he asked.
“All the same,” she answered.
“Why?”
Without answering anything to this, she picked up again the expense book from the table. “It’s up to you, Pyotr Ivanych,” she started to say. “We must cut expenses. Fifteen hundred rubles for food alone…”
He took the notebook from her and threw it under the table. “Why are you so preoccupied with this?” he asked. “Or do you begrudge the money?”
“How can I not be preoccupied? After all, I’m your wife! You yourself taught me… and now you reproach me for my concern… I’m doing my work! ”
“Listen, Liza!” said Pyotr Ivanych after a brief silence, “you’re trying to transform your nature, overrule your will… That’s no good. I never forced you. Don’t tell me these trifling things” (he pointed to the notebook) “could preoccupy you? I’ve given you complete freedom…”
“Heavens! What do I need freedom for?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “What shall I do with it? Till now you have so well, so reasonably disposed for both me and yourself that I’ve lost the habit of having my way. Continue to do so in the future, and I don’t need freedom.”
Both fell silent.
“For a long time,” Pyotr Ivanych began again, “I haven’t heard any kind of request from you, any wish or capricious fancy.”
“I don’t need anything,” she remarked.
“You have no kind of special… hidden wishes?” he asked with concern, fixedly looking at her.
She hesitated whether to speak or not.
Pyotr Ivanych noticed this. “Say, for Heaven’s sake, say what it is!” he went on. “Your wishes shall be mine, I’ll carry them out like the law.”
“Well, good,” she answered. “If you can do that for me… then… cancel our Fridays… these dinners exhaust me…”
Pyotr Ivanych considered. “You live all closed up even so,” he said after a moment’s silence. “But when our friends stop coming to see us Fridays, you’ll be altogether a hermit. Though, please; if you want this–it shall be done. What will you do?”
“Give me your bills, books, business deals… I’ll work on them…” she said and reached under the table to pick up the expense book.
This seemed to Pyotr Ivanych a badly concealed pretense. “Liza!” he said reproachfully.
The little book remained under the table.
“And I’ve been thinking whether we shouldn’t renew some acquaintances we had completely abandoned? To do that I wanted to give a ball so as to create some distraction for you, so you might go out yourself…”
“Oh, no, no!” began Lizaveta Alexandrovna, frightened. “For Heaven’s sake, that isn’t necessary! How could we have… a ball!”
“Why does this frighten you so? At your age a ball hasn’t lost its interest. You can still dance…”
“No, Pyotr Ivanych, I beg you, don’t plan things!” she said quickly. “To worry about what to wear, get dressed up, receive the crowd, drive out in a carriage-Heaven protect me!”
“It seems you want to spend your whole life in a blouse.”
“Yes, if you’d permit, I’d never take it off. Why get all dressed up? It’s a waste of money, and superfluous bother without any use.”
“Do you know what?” suddenly said Pyotr Ivanych. “They say Rubini has been engaged to sing here this winter. I asked them to reserve a box for us. What do you think?”
She didn’t answer.
“Liza!”
“It’s no use…” she said shyly. “I think that too will be tiring for me… I get tired…”
Pyotr Ivanych bowed his head, walked to the fireplace, and leaning his elbow on it, looked at her… how should we say this?–with sorrow, no, not with sorrow, but with anxiety, with worry and with fear.
“Why this, Liza”–he was going to say, “indifference,” but didn’t even finish; he could not utter the word.
He looked at her for a long time in silence. In her lifelessly dull eyes, in her face, whi
ch lacked the play of lively thought and feelings, in her listless pose and slow movements, he perceived the cause of that indifference he was afraid to ask about. He had guessed the answer earlier when the doctor had merely called his attention to his fears. He had then realized and begun to guess that in methodically cutting off his wife from all inclinations which could harm their conjugal interests, he had not at the same time given her in himself any compensations for those joys not sanctioned by law which she would have encountered out of wedlock–he saw that her domestic world was nothing but a fortress inaccessible to temptation, where, instead, at every step barriers and patrols prevented every lawful manifestation of feeling…
The methodicalness and dryness of his relationship to her had unfolded without his consent and will to the point of cold and subtle tyranny and over what? Over the heart of a woman! For this tyranny he paid her with wealth, luxury, all the external conditions, as he saw it, for her happiness–a terrible mistake, the more so because his mistake stemmed not from ignorance, not from his crude understanding of the heart–he knew it well–but from lack of concern, from egoism! He forgot that she had no civil service job, did not play cards, owned no factory, that an excellent table and the best wine have little value in a woman’s eyes, yet, nevertheless, he compelled her to lead this life.
Pyotr Ivanych was kind, and if not out of love of his wife, then from his sense of justice he would have given Heaven knows what to correct this wrong, but how? He spent many nights without sleep from the time the doctor told him his fears about Lizaveta Alexandrovna’s health, nights of trying to find a way to reconcile her heart with her real situation and to restore her diminishing strength. And now, standing at the fireplace, he was thinking of this very thing. It occurred to him that perhaps the embryo of a dangerous disease was already hidden in her, that she was already dead from her colorless, empty life.
An Ordinary Story Page 37
