The Beggar and Other Stories

by Gaito Gazdanov

  On that January evening when André was alone in the apartment, awaiting Dorin’s return from Paris, it was cold and deserted outside, no one passed along the frozen road running nearby the Dorins’ home, and there was silence all around; only from time to time could the discordant and soon fading barking of dogs be heard, whereupon Jack would lift his enormous head and growl quietly—André sat at his desk until late, thinking and writing in his diary, in which he wanted to describe his father. He penned a lengthy introduction and then began: “Henri Dorin, my father, was born to be happy.”

  After this line André wrote nothing; he placed his pen on the desk and lapsed into thought. Yes, of course Dorin had been born a happy person. From no other person had André heard such a calm and jolly voice, to no other did every misery and setback seem so easily solved as it did to his father. André recalled an episode from his childhood, when he had wept bitterly because a complex plan to construct a narrow paved path from an anthill on the edge of a wood to an old gnarled tree stump, covered over in thin little branches with green foliage—this whole plan, after several days’ work, proved to be impracticable, since André had forgotten about the stream separating the ants from the tree stump. André would watch as after a downpour the ants would make their way through the mud towards the bank of the stream and then turn back, uneasily moving their feelers. He believed that the ants just had to reach this tree stump—and so he began to build for them a solid path that no rain could imperil. In the pockets of his breeches he carried stones and a hammer; he carried heavy pails of sand, and made a clumsy attempt at a path leading right to the tree stump. Then he sat on the ground and began to cry—and he arrived home with tears in his eyes. “What’s the matter, André?” asked his father. André told him what had happened. His father heard him out with a serious countenance, nodded and said: “You’re quite right, André, we’ll build it yet; after breakfast I’ll go with you and we’ll work on it together.”

  It turned out that there was nothing difficult about it; Dorin laid a low bridge over the stream, tamped down the path, and with André’s help continued it up as far as the stump. Remains of this path existed to this very day, until this moment when André at last realized how ridiculous his childish plan had been.

  Then André fell to thinking about his evening chats with his father, which had begun to happen only recently, and when for the first time Dorin had spoken to him as an adult. Most often it would be the same argument; it would begin with André going to his father to ask his opinion on some historical event or a book he had read. “All right, then,” Dorin would say, “tell me what you think about it, and then I’ll tell you my impressions.”

  So André would speak; often he would say what he was writing or planning to write; sometimes it would be a question that dogged him—the question of Madeleine; but he would pose it in such an abstracted formulation that his father could never have suspected that the question had to do with his wife. Yet whenever André mentioned love, Dorin felt simultaneously both ashamed and happy: ashamed because he was married to Madeleine, happy because of the memory of André’s mother. Moreover, he would hold back—and only once did he sit André on his knee, as if the boy were eight years old, and say:

  “André, do you know how much I love you?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Well, there’s one thing you don’t know,” he said with more emotion than André had ever known from him, “and that’s how much you’re like your late mother.”

  For a whole two days after this, Henri Dorin was silent and pensive.

  More often, however, these talks would turn out rather differently. With a perspicacity that was strange in a boy so young, André would notice and observe much sorrow in everything around him; and it was namely these things that would usually draw his interest. He found everything brash, gay and exuberantly distasteful. In talking to him like an adult, Henri Dorin—it flattered André very much, and he knew that it flattered him and was angry at himself for this, but he could never overcome the particular satisfaction this brought—would object:

  “Well then, André, I understand your point of view. You’re saying that everything is dismal and unpleasant. Without even entering into a discussion of that, but simply—factually, if you will—that isn’t so. Look, here comes Jack, bounding up to you; isn’t he happy to see you?”

  “Jack is a dog,” replied André.

  “André, André,” Dorin said reproachfully. “Come now, you’re a student of zoology: you mustn’t diminish the significance of animals. You must know that in a certain sense Jack is more perfect than you or I.”

  “Jack doesn’t have reason in the human sense,” André insisted, “but rather instinct. Instinct is the desire to eat, to breed, to move—it’s necessary so that his muscles don’t grow weak, that’s all. But could a dog really have any idea of what’s good or bad?”

  “I don’t know, I do not know. Perhaps. Say a man falls ill and dies; his dog won’t leave his grave for several days and after some time perishes there too, although it was seemingly in perfect health. What instinct is that? But do let’s put all that aside. Can you really not imagine a man so infinitely clever, who sees and understands everything—insofar as man’s abilities allow—and finds only good in it?”

  “No, Papa, no such man ever existed.”

  “What about Francis of Assisi, André? Naturally, André, there was Francis of Assisi,” and Dorin smiled as he would have done at little André when he solved a problem facing the young boy and everything proved simple and remarkably easy. “There, you see. He knew an awful lot and understood everything—and he was eternally joyful; so it is possible. I was right.”

  “But I cannot be like that,” said André stubbornly.

  “Because you don’t know much. Don’t be offended, André. To understand theoretically is one thing: to feel it is another. There are a great many feelings that you don’t yet know, my boy. Just you wait, we’ll talk about this again in fifty years’ time,” Dorin began to joke.

  “But what if something bad happens, Papa? Like a catastrophe or…”—André paused and then with difficulty continued—“…or you are betrayed by the woman you love.” He used such a bookish expression because it was the first time he was talking about this with his father.

  “Ah, André, how curious you are. Very well: a catastrophe—what is a catastrophe? If it’s death, then it’s all over; if it isn’t someone’s death but a betrayal, then just think what joy awaits you; you are betrayed, and then, in this betrayed state, you shall know all the delights you once knew. It means a life anew. As far as betrayal is concerned… you see, my boy, the woman you love cannot betray you.”

  “But what if she does?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Say I’ve been told.”

  “It means it’s a lie.”

  “I have incontrovertible evidence: I saw her being kissed.”

  “It means there were some terrible circumstances that forced her to act in that way—circumstances which you do not know and which entirely exonerate her. And if there are none, it means that you are mistaken: she isn’t the woman you love. But that’s rare, André, that’s the exception. However, here, on this point, I haven’t even the right to argue with you, because I know this, whereas you’re ignorant. You see, André, you’re at a major disadvantage in such questions.”

  “How’s that, Papa?”

  “The fact is,” said Dorin, with a barely noticeable, gently teasing smile, “that my clever son, who knows everything, is only fifteen years old. Voilà, monsieur. Now, goodnight. And, please, don’t try staying up reading till morning; I’ll still come and stop you. You couldn’t have chosen a more tiresome old man.”

  “Henri Dorin, my father, was born to be happy.”

  André read over this line once again. It was very late. Jack was asleep with his head resting on one of his paws. “Why hasn’t Papa come yet?” André thought with sudden alarm.

  He diligently m
ade up his bed, neatly spreading out the sheets, placed a lamp with a green shade on the bedside table, and extracted Stendhal’s The Red and the Black from the shelf, a silk bookmark placed at the three hundred and twenty-eighth page; opening the book, he even managed to read:

  “Mathilde croyait voir le bonheur. Cette vue toute puissante sur les âmes courageuses, liées à un esprit supérieur, eut à lutter longuement contre la dignité et tous sentiments de devoirs vulgaires.”||

  His father had still not returned. So André fetched his overcoat and went out into the road; Jack, who had woken immediately, followed him.

  For a long time, André stood looking into the darkness, but he could see nothing. The highway, with its little pebbles frozen to the ground, loomed white before André’s eyes, vanishing around twenty paces ahead of him, as though silently falling into an abyss. From time to time the trees lining the road creaked and swayed in the wind; it was terribly cold, empty; there wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere. Jack gave a long yawn, then he pricked up his ears, but nothing emerged out of the darkness. Suddenly André noticed that Jack’s ears had long been standing to attention; the dog’s body was straining forward, as if he was undecided whether to run or stand still. Then André discerned in the distance a barely audible sound, which consisted of the rumble of tyres over the ground and the quiet hum of an engine. André knew that five hundred yards from the house there was a sharp bend in the highway; the noise from the turning wheels was obviously that same sound André had heard. Then far ahead, amid the darkness, two lights appeared, dancing strangely in the air—as if a drunkard were at the wheel, driving in zigzags. André was seized by alarm; he ran towards the headlights; Jack rushed ahead of him, barking. André reached the car, flung open the door and saw his father sitting there, pale, clutching the wheel with his weakened hand in a leather glove. He didn’t smile as he always did whenever he saw André—he merely said to him in a broken voice:

  “André, I feel very ill. Help me get home.”

  André struggled to help his father move away from the wheel, and slowly, confusing the brakes and the accelerator, causing the motor to jerk and making Dorin wince in pain, drove him home. He awoke his father’s valet, Joseph, and together they helped Dorin upstairs and laid him on the bed. Finding it difficult to utter the words, Dorin said:

  “Joseph, wake the pharmacist and get some aspirin and quinine; tell him I have terrible pain just below my chest and have him give you something for this. Go, as fast as you can.”

  With unceasing alarm André followed his father’s every movement. He suddenly began to think that Henri Dorin might die—and when André thought about this, everything around him became so cold and awful that he decided to die right there with his father. Henri Dorin found the strength within him to smile at André.

  “It’s nothing, André,” he said. “I’ve just caught cold, you see: my head hurts, and I don’t feel too well.” He neglected to tell André that en route from Paris to Sainte-Sophie he had blacked out several times. “I’ll take the aspirin and quinine, sleep it off, and tomorrow morning we’ll have a boxing match in ten rounds.”

  André understood from the line about boxing that his father was in a very bad way. But he did not have time to dwell on this, for at that moment Joseph came in, panting and bearing the medicine.

  “Forgive me, monsieur, but since the pharmacist was in such a hurry he couldn’t find the capsules and so he just put everything you asked for in sachets. Here’s the quinine, and here is the aspirin, and here’s something for the pain below your chest; the pharmacist said to take a tablespoon and a half.”

  “Fine, Joseph, you may go.”

  Turning to André, Dorin said:

  “Wait here a moment, André.”

  After Joseph had gone, Dorin continued:

  “Well, there, André, everything’s fine. I’ll take these medicines and go to sleep. Go and sleep, too, I beg you. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Papa,” André replied in a whisper. But by the time he had reached the door, his father’s voice suddenly stopped him:

  “André, do you know Madeleine’s address?”

  “Yes, Papa,” André replied, suddenly realizing why his father was asking him this. But so as not to alarm his father or let on that he had guessed, he said: “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve forgotten.” Dorin quickly and artificially smiled. “One hundred and eighty-three or one hundred and ninety-three—the building number, that is?”

  “One hundred and ninety-three.”

  “Thank you.”

  Returning to his room, André decided not to undress or go to sleep. Again he extracted The Red and the Black, sat down in the easy chair and tried to read. But he was unable to read further than “Mathilde croyait voir le bonheur”; he understood none of it. He closed the book; an unexpected drowsiness suddenly took hold of him, and he fell asleep.

  He awoke with the feeling that something was nudging his knee. He opened his eyes: Jack was standing beside him. All was quiet in the apartment. André stood up on tiptoe and went to see whether his father was sleeping. On entering the room, he saw Dorin lying with his eyes open, staring fixedly ahead of him. It surprised and even hurt André that his father did not so much as glance in his direction.

  “Aren’t you sleeping, Papa?” asked André. Dorin said nothing. André looked him straight in the eye; his father continued to stare straight ahead and didn’t move a muscle. The terrible thought of death entered André’s head: he drew back the blanket and placed his ear to his father’s chest; it was warm and his heart was beating. He immediately felt much better, as if nothing at all had happened. “Do you feel very unwell, Papa?”

  Dorin didn’t answer. “He’s fainted,” thought André. “Though why are his eyes open?” He began to splash water on his father’s face. The face didn’t flinch or twitch, and his eyes remained open. André was scared.

  Dawn was already breaking when Joseph telephoned to summon a doctor from Paris.

  Henri Dorin clearly recalled that moment when, having taken the aspirin and what he took for quinine (he was a little surprised that it didn’t taste very bitter), he grasped the tablespoon lying on the bedside table, poured in the remedy for the pain below his chest and swallowed it with a sip of water. Thereafter he saw nothing, understood nothing, heard nothing; he regained the ability to think only after the passage of several hours. He was in no pain. “Thank God, it’s passed,” he told himself and tried to sit up, but could not. “How dark it is in the room,” he continued to think. “But I’m still very weak. It must be morning already: how strange that no one’s about. I must call André.”

  Yet he was unable to call André. It was then that he realized his inability to move even his hands and feet; he was unable to speak, to see or to hear. “Am I dead?” he asked himself in terror. “No, I can’t be: surely I wouldn’t be able to think. I’m paralysed.”

  He again lost consciousness.

  He knew that there were people moving around him, opening and closing shutters, that night had replaced day—yet he saw, heard and felt nothing. He made an incredible effort to raise his arm, but nothing came of it. Finally his right hand slightly twitched.

  This happened on the third day after the evening when he took the medicine. For three days and nights he lay there supine, like a living cadaver; he was moved several times, the doctor gave him injections, but Dorin’s body remained motionless. Summoned by a telegram from André, an anxious Madeleine arrived on the evening of the second day and never left Dorin’s bedside. Nothing would compel André to leave the room: for hours he would sit on his father’s bed, repeating all the while “Papa, Papa”, as though hoping that his voice would rouse Dorin out of his terrible unbeing. The doctor informed André that his father had taken an accidental overdose of quinine and it was too early to predict the outcome.

  André was the first to notice his father’s hand twitch. He fetched a pencil and some paper, but however much he tried to place th
e pencil in his father’s hand, Dorin’s fingers would unclench and nothing would come of it. Finally, towards evening, pausing and dropping the pencil, which André would replace in his hand, in shaky letters Henri Dorin wrote: “I can’t see, hear or feel anything.”

  From that point began his recovery. The following morning Dorin was able to move both of his hands; a day later he could bend his knees. After three days, he heard Madeleine’s footsteps as he awoke. He recalled how, as a first-year student at the lycée, he would amuse himself by clasping his hands tightly over his ears and then, when he removed them, immediately hear a loud rushing noise. So was it now: an odd silence suddenly gave way to various sounds and voices—André, Madeleine, the doctor, Joseph and other people. Then he began—albeit with great difficulty—to speak. The first thing he uttered were the words:

  “Get André.”

  “I’m here, Papa,” came André’s voice.