The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  panes by wooden molding, and its columns of painted logs in groups of three at the corners and middle, clear up from the second floor to the roof, I received an impression of official and luxurious relaxations taking place in it. Later, seeing other truly imposing buildings, I could remind myself that the paint on the logs had been a tasteless reddish brown, and peeling, and that the house could have been at best a first- class boardinghouse, depending on the neighborhood. Yet it had its own touch, a stoned promenade going almost all the way around the sides.

  Ossip and Sashenka took hours the next day to prepare the room next to mine. During the night I heard horses.

  Ossip came with wood in the morning, nodding energetically. They had arrived. “You’re to stay here till called for breakfast, it’s to be

  downstairs.”

  ♦

  I dressed myself in my new clothes with the braid on the jacket and heavy horn buttons. I resembled a young cadet. The boots threw a high shine and a genuine silk stripe ran up each trouser-leg.

  After a long half hour Vassily opened the door. “Bring the fiddle,” he said, dressed up himself in his official steward’s coat of gray with a tail in the back. We went to “his” or the big sitting room next to “hers” or the one that measured about twenty-five by twenty.

  It was empty. Vassily told me to wait and not touch anything. The heavy green velour portieres had been drawn before only one of the six French doors facing the promenade. I sat in a chair near the round table set for six, aware in the miserly light of various furniture in heavy woods that appeared never to have been moved since put in. Animals’ heads hung from the walls, mats and fur skins patched the dark floor. The blue cloth of the breakfast table caught the sunless light from the promenade and threw it against the heavy dull pewter.

  Without seeming to notice me — the Squire was saying something — they came in, the five of them, and took their seats at the table. In the middle of what he was talking about the Squire threw a pointing finger at the chair next to him, nodding to me the while, and I obeyed. Like the Squire, Dr. Ostrov and Stanya Parsov wore riding clothes; a smell

  of personal leather rose from them but my eyes rested first on Ernst Glueck’s beardless face, the spectacles firm on his pennant of a nose, his head clean-shaven in the direct German style. The face of my tutor depended on the pointed chin, a face of energetic thinness and strict with the yearn of a fish’s swimming searches after deep wants. It was smiling and nodding with careful grace, and there was something dishonest in its humility, a secret condescension.

  Natalya and Sashenka in fresh aprons were serving from trays — eggs, fruit, honey, three kinds of bread. Dr. Ostrov was inclining his head toward Father Semyon making some discreet prayer before the meal; Stanya Parsov had meanwhile finished spreading his napkin over his scarf, which he did not wear every day. The priest done, Dr. Ostrov turned to the Squire. “You are jolly this morning, Kolya.”

  “Yes, my stomach is excellent now. Serve yourselves, gentlemen. Natalya, fill the boy’s plate. Oh, before I forget, what do you suppose Prince Rogovin’s nephew has been up to?”

  This became another monologue on his Petersburg adventures, of no interest to anyone but himself but listened to none the less. Stanya Parsov desired primarily to settle the matter of the field he wanted to buy from the Squire and Father Semyon wanted to fix times for my religious instruction. As for Alexander Voyinevitch Ostrov, remote and boyish for his fifty-odd years, the tall bald bachelor concerned himself with studying his patient whose paresis always interested him following one of the Squire’s “Petersburgs.” Dr. Ostrov wore only the slightest mustache. He had come to Golinsk seventeen years before with no wish to practice his profession. Of a family with means, it was said, he read and wrote voraciously, mostly by night in the winter, departing every spring, no one ever found out where, to come back again in the autumn.

  Since the Squire managed to eat for two without stopping his flow of words, breakfast was soon over. Passing cigars, the Squire suggested a walk on the promenade before “the principal business.” Holding my fiddle I followed them through the French door. Outside a mist almost fell, everything stiffening for winter, settling into itself for the coming

  The Landsmen

  freezes. For a moment the Squire turned away from his party to make a brief vomit over the side, joining us and falling easily into stride in a casual maneuver showing this stomach-habit to be a regular, expected thing. I found myself beside Father Semyon. His robe had a gentle fall, the baby-curls of his thin brown beard almost touching his crucifix, the peacefulness in his eyes containing that ironed-out childishness so striking in old men. He had something of Reb Maisha in him, free as he was of any cause to probe his vacuum. The difference between the priest and the beadle lay merely in the source of each’s certainty, Father Semyon’s from the most faithful logic and Reb Maisha’s from his mature grasp of infancy. Father Semyon was trying to turn the Squire’s attention his way, saying, “It is interesting, Konstantin Andreyevitch, to see you hope to accomplish things with this boy’s fiddling. You must not forget, meanwhile, the freeing of his soul.”

  “He is yours,” the Squire replied with a wave of his cigar, and went back to whatever he was in the middle of.

  “Well, Squire,” said Stanya Parsov, who had anxiously been hoping to throw in a word, “when shall we sit down about the field?”

  “Yes, I mean to, promptly next week.”

  Parsov said nothing for fear of its raising the price. He had come for nothing, spoke then of having to go down to the market, but the Squire urged him to say “for the concert, Stanya, open yourself to a finer thing.” The middle-peasant reluctantly followed us into the main reception hall, annoyed no doubt by the carelessness of the dilapidated gentry, but still with the look of a patient diplomat. Very thin, and prim in his movements, Stanya knew how to employ his wishy- washy appearance in the driving of a bargain. In my experience one got from such adversaries only hernias, yet he had occasionally tried to be nice to my father.

  In the main reception hall the Squire took a cavalry bugle which hung by a red cord on a nail near the great fireplace and put it to his lips, giving a blurry do-me-sol-do.

  “Ah,” said Glueck, the Squire explaining it was from the old army days. Ossip came running and was told to open a few French doors.

  The hall revealed itself as an informal tomb of grandeurs, heavy with rugs and blue, green, and pink lounges in the French style but corrected to do away with fragility; and there was a love seat in imitation of a boat, with double prows, and a peacock-painted sled with a canopy transforming it into a kind of throne. The lamps lay about, willy- nilly, and I saw tapestries, busts, pedestals, and footrests everywhere. The main chandelier measured about five feet across; it was made of thousands of pieces of different colors of glass, gilt fringes hanging from it and from everything and everything in a condition for a bargain auction. In one of the corners, flanked by French doors and turned to an angle with the room there stood a hippopotamus of a spinet, solid mahogany, at least eight by five feet, on legs a foot wide and carved in designs of descending folds so that they seemed to have oozed down to the floor and cooled there like lava.

  A new violin case lay atop the spinet. The Squire took my fiddle from me and threw it to the floor, purposely stepping on it as he led me to the spinet, calling “Sit” behind him while he opened the case and put the new fiddle into my hands. Glueck examined it, whistling approval and praising it as a real old-timer, with a careful laugh of professional pleasure when the Squire gave it to him to tune; which he did without referring to the piano, his display of perfect pitch wasted upon our patron. Glueck then handed me the fiddle and bow and I realized I was expected to play. I raised my eyes. The Squire sat about fifteen feet away from the breakfast guests with his arms folded, his cigar clamped between waiting teeth. About halfway into the great room I saw the women of the house, Tatiana Arkipovna large and clumsy on a pinkish love seat, her dress a smooth sa
ndy color with lines of tassels at the hem, neck, and sleeves, a quick impression of festive harness on some old circus beast such as pulled gypsies’ wagons; then Madame with the girls on a separate lounge, Madame between them, her small head nodding, her spectacles quite small too but extremely thick, her hair pulled flatly to one side, her dress full and of a dark color making her appear even smaller. Leta and Lilli were not large girls, yet they towered over Madame. I had merely a glimpse

  that way. Glueck had sat down at the piano and was giving it a couple of brushes, whispering, “Anything. I will follow.”

  I never liked playing solos. The one thing I hated about professional fiddle I had always to put up with, always pushed to solos. I played two numbers learned while going around taverns with Tzippe-Sora, first a fast Cossack strain changed in the self-teaching and then my favorite gypsy one, heavy and slow on the G to begin with, thick with schmaltz, going faster and faster moving over to the E; Glueck’s piano grew louder and louder behind me and I worried that he was purposely drowning me out because I was so bad. This helped, my fingers flew until it was over. Madame gasped ambiguously. Father Semyon leaned to say something in Dr. Ostrov’s ear. Tatiana Arkipovna stood up, said nothing, moved to the exit, the girls and Madame following, nothing heard so far but their pattering feet, Madame making quick swivels of her bad hip. A mysterious silence; I put the fiddle on the piano, Father Semyon looked for a place to drop his cigar ash and Stanya Parsov simply rubbed the back of his neck. Then I heard Dr. Ostrov say, rather elaborately, “Kolya, are you sure it will be worth your while?”

  Insulted, the Squire walked to the fireplace with his full military strut, tossed his cigar into it, turned, elapsed his hands behind him and demanded, “And may I ask what you are sure of?”

  It left him like a shot. The doctor said, “You will break a vein, Kolya, if you continue shouting.”

  “Yes, sure that I will die.” His brow livid now, the Squire turned to Glueck. “And what have you to say?”

  Glueck kept his head down, making a basket with his fingers, looking at them as though into the vessel of his fortunes.

  “He will play, Squire.”

  “He plays now.”

  “No. But he will play.”

  “And when?”

  “We will know better in a few months.”

  “Oh, the devil with it then. Go find yourself a train.”

  He kicked a footstool and started to walk out quickly. Dr. Ostrov ran to him, holding his sleeve. In a panic Glueck called, “Squire, you misunderstand.” And then wetting his lips for the lie, “In a few months we shall know if it’s another Auer.”

  The Squire whirled and ran back. “Stupid German,” he smiled, shaking him by the lapels, everything sunny once more, “let him be the twentieth of an Auer . . . you see, gentlemen?”

  “In that case you are to be congratulated,” the doctor remarked with professional irony.

  Alone with Glueck, I asked, “What is an Auer?”

  Winter soon took charge. My eyes opened between six and seven at this period. It would be dark, I would light the lamp, throw wood into the stove, dress, then look over some music for a while — the easy stuff in De Beriot’s Etudes at this time — or perhaps go into the hall to look down through the window at the ice-rutted barnyard in the rear. The lamp in Rodion’s would be lit and I thought different things, what Laib-Shmul might be up to, what new excuse to give Father Semyon for not going to church if he’d visit that evening (he came three times a week), or of how someday I might be able to sneak over to the other side and see what was what.

  Or sometimes I’d knock on Glueck’s door, very lightly, and if he said to enter we might run down some music together, the day’s goal; by this time Rodion would bring breakfast and half an hour later Glueck would be tuning the fiddle. Sometimes we worked in his room and sometimes downstairs when the piano was needed, not often during the first few months. All morning we’d drill, he playing along on his fiddle to make it more interesting. After the midday bite he would write letters or work on his composition while I followed my orders to lie down with my boots off. This Glueck called the “period of drinking-in” during which according to his theory all the work of the morning soaked into me. After that we went out for air if it wasn’t too cold and windy, both of us in boots, he in his city-style overcoat with a fur lining and loops and I in one of the Squire’s old cut-down bearskins,

  very heavy, wearing the astrakhan cap with the ear muffs lowered. Near the conservatory we made ourselves a sliding pond and sometimes took the old sled that used to be the girls’. We saw it in the conservatory, and rubbed the rust off the runners with stones. Glueck would steer. Down the road we’d go until the turn at Dr. Ostrov’s. I’d yell, “All the way down,” but he’d pull into the doctor’s yard and remind me that I was not allowed to go as far as the highroad, “orders of the Squire.”

  By the time we’d be upstairs and thawed out the light would be going. For a couple hours more I’d play as Glueck listened while at his desk putting more work into his composition about which so far he remained tight-lipped. He would call, “Good,” or “Not good” or “Over again,” his head bent low to his scratching pen, until my fingers wouldn’t obey any more. “Well, enough. We mustn’t strain,” he’d say at last, and it would be long deep dark outside, about half past five. The main social activity came at seven, supper, which we took with the family down in the dining room. Until then Glueck made me lie down on the bed with my boots off and sometimes he came and sat next to me and talked about Petersburg, even getting his guidebook and showing me places on the map of it through his magnifying glass, explaining the different places. This somehow always turned into musical topics, he going into how it was natural for me to be having troubles with notes and the theory and the new uncomfortable positions of the fingers; in general, a harping on the value of correctness illustrated with stories about musicians and composers, with descriptions of how certain of the finest music had been constructed, all given out in a dry carpentered way, sensible but narrow.

  Once in a while at this hour the Squire poked his head in. If it wasn’t the Squire it was Father Semyon coming to make himself popular with me. No hells, no brimstones, only smiles and pats on the head and little candies dropped into my jacket pocket. If it was a Father Semyon day he’d go from me to the Squire’s study until Vassily downstairs would ring the bell. Glueck and I would wait standing in the dining room behind our chairs, for the entrance. Whether alone or

  with the priest, Konstantin Andreyevitch never clanked himself in without making some small military noise either with the spurs he didn’t take off or his pistol holster banging against his thigh (sometimes after supper he indulged in shooting from the promenade, throwing a coat over his shoulder and going for the bare branches), and sometimes also when reviewing business matters with Vassily in the Gallery he would wear his dispatch case on a strap. The thank-you prayer would be said either by him or Father Semyon; then Natalya and Vassily would begin supper, Vassily bothering only to serve from the bottles on the sideboard which the Squire had already touched in a test of the temperature. Madame supervised the girls’ portions while Tatiana Arkipovna, if the priest was present, started him on his favorite subject, the building of a new chapel where he would be after he died, and though he never came out bluntly, “also our worthiest people.” Tatiana Arkipovna spoke of this with all the reverence she could muster, the Squire wanting to shoot her, he being extremely touchy to hear about death in connection with himself which Tatiana Arkipovna knew quite well. Witnessing these byplays of fun I took them for the sensible concern of a nice lady in a matter which had to be attended to. Now I will jump forward; here is why she hated the Squire so sincerely.

  When Leta and Lilli had been small the Squire had brought a genuine Frenchwoman from Petersburg, as he said, for purposes of thorough education, the girls at eight and five having shown no talent even for counting numbers. Tatiana Arkipovna had not suspected why the girls
were so backward until she found the governess, a determined woman of brazen views who smoked little cigars, doing more than smoking with the Squire in the privacy of his study. This led to explosions in which her father also participated and it came out at last that for many years the Squire had been suffering the most serious physical consequences of his bachelorhood’s sexual propensities, which explained why after the births of the daughters he had avoided further tries with Tatiana Arkipovna, confining his bed-activities to sorties outside his own house. This had caused Tatiana Arkipovna to enter into a con-

  trolled melancholy out of which she had finally taken to Madame. Now Tatiana Arkipovna had persuaded herself to adopt Madame’s superstition about the girls, that indeed the two miracles would arrive, their husbands; Tatiana Arkipovna had forced herself into believing Leta and Lilli were perhaps not corks on a vinegar sea being eaten away by what kept them afloat. Far from easy to look at, smudged carbon copies of their father, they lacked almost entirely the characteristics of female development, of normal height but without any normal growth of intimate parts and ignorant of why this was so.