Poor Folk and Other Stories

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Whether it was that Mr Prokharchin possessed certain inherent deficiencies, or whether it was that each and every one of his fellow boarders possessed them, things seemed not to go smoothly on either side right from the very start. Let us observe here that all Ustinya Fyodorovna’s new lodgers got along together like brothers; some of them worked in the same department; on the first day of each month they all of them in turn lost their salaries to one another at banco, preference and billiards; they liked to spend a happy hour all together in a throng, enjoying life’s sparkling moments, as they put it; they also sometimes liked to talk about lofty matters, and although in the last instance things seldom passed off without a dispute, since prejudices were banished from the entire company, mutual agreement was on such occasions invariably preserved. The most note-worthy of the lodgers were Mark Ivanovich, a clever and well-read man; then a tenant named Oplevaniyev; then one named Prepolo-venko, also a good, modest fellow; then one Zinovy Prokofyevich, who had made it his aim in life to enter high society; then the copying-clerk Okeanov, who had in his time nearly succeeded in wresting thepalm of number one and favourite from Semyon Ivanovich; another clerk by the name of Sudbin; the reznocbinets Kanta-rev;* and several others besides. Semyon Ivanovich did not, however, seem one of them. To be sure, no one wished him any harm, especially since they had all from the very outset rendered Prokharchin his due and had decided, in the words of Mark Ivanovich, that he, Prokharchin, was a good and self-effacing fellow, not a man of the world, but reliable and devoid of flattery; a man not without his deficiencies, of course, but one who, if he ever suffered, could ascribe it to nothing otherthan his own deficiency of imagination. Not was this all: lacking in any imagination of his own, Mr Prokharchin could never have hoped to make a particularly advantageous impression on anyone by, for example, his appearance or his manners (a favourite target of those who are out to mock), and yet his appearance did not count against him, just as though everything were perfectly normal; and indeed, Mark Ivanovich, being a clever man, conducted a formal defence of Semyon Ivanovich, declaring in grand and flowery terms that Prokharchin was a respectable old fellow who had long ago said farewell to the elegies of his youth. Consequently, if Semyon Ivanovich was unable to get along with the others, it must have been solely his own fault.

  The first thing that caught their attention was, unquestionably, Semyon Ivanovich’s stinginess and excessive thrift. This was at once observed and taken note of, for Semyon Ivanovich would never under any circumstances or no whatever pretext lend anyone his teapot even for the very shortest space of time; and what made this all the more unfair of him was that he himself very rarely drank tea, but when the need arose imbibed a rather pleasant infusion of wild flowers and certain medicinal grasses, of which he always kept a plentiful supply. He also ate in a fashion that was completely different from the other lodgers. Never, for example, would he permit himself to consume the whole of the dinner that was provided each day by Ustinya Fyodorovna for his fellow boarders. The dinner cost half a ruble; Semyon Ivanovich spent only twenty-five copecks in copper and never any more than that, and so took either one helping of shchi *or one helping of beef; most often, however, he had neither shchi nor beef, but made do with a few slices of white bread garnishedwith onion, cottage cheese, pickled cucumber or other condiments, which was far less expensive, and only returned to his half dinner when he could stand such fare no longer…

  Here the biographer must confess that not for anything in the world would he have taken it into his head to speak of such base, unworthy and positively embarrassing details, which some lovers of the noble style may even find offensive, were it not for the fact that these details illustrate a particular trait, a central feature in the character of the hero of this narrative; for Mr Prokharchin was far from being so poor that he could not afford to eat regular and adequate meals, but acted in a way as to suggest the contrary, without fear of disgrace or common gossip, and merely to satisfy his peculiar whims, out of miserliness and excessive caution – a state of affairs that will become more clearly evident in what follows. We shall, however, take care not to bore the reader with a description of all Semyon Ivanovich’s caprices andshall not only omit, for example, the curious and for the reader highly amusing description of his mode of dress, but shall even, with the exception of Ustinya Fyodo-rovna’s own testimony to the fact that it was so, refrain from mentioning that throughout his entire life Semyon Ivanovich could not bring himself to send his linen to be washed or, if he evercould, did it so rarely that in the intervals it would have been perfectly possible to forget the presence of linen on Semyon Ivanovich. From the landlady’s testimony it appeared that’Semyon Ivanovich, bless his soul, poor lamb, festered away in that corner of his for twenty years, not that he had any shame, for during all the days of his sojourn upon earth he was a persistent stranger to socks, handkerchiefs and other such things’; aided by the decrepitude of the folding screen, Ustinya Fyodorovna had actually seen with her own eyes that ‘the poor dear sometimes had nothingto cover his white little body with’. Rumours of this kind went round after Semyon Ivanovich’s death. Duringhis lifetime, however (and here lay one of the major sources of dissension), he could not bear it if anyone, even on the most agreeable of comradely pretexts, poked his inquisitive nose into his corner unasked, even if it were only because the screen was so decrepit. He was a thoroughly intractable person, a man of few words who had no time for small talk. He was not fond of those who proffered advice, and was merciless towards upstarts; he would upbraid those who mocked at him, tried to give him advice or push themselves forward right there and then on the spot, put them to shame, and have done with it. ‘You are an insolent jackanapes, you are an idle whistler, who are you to come offering me advice; mind your own business, sir, you’re a jackanapes and you’d do better to set your own house in order, that’s what!’ Semyon Ivanovich was a straightforward man, and he had absolutely no qualms about addressing everyone with the ‘thou’ form. He could not endure it, either, if anyone familiar with his habitual ways began pestering him out of sheer mischief, asking him what he kept in his trunk… Semyon Ivanovich had a small trunk. It stood underneath his bed, and he guarded it like the apple of his eye; and although everyone knew that it really contained nothing apart from some old rags, two or three pairs of worn-out boots and a lot of ill-assorted rubbish and filth, Mr Prokharchin attached a very high value to this property of his, and on one occasion was even heard to express dissatisfaction with the trunk’s old, but fairly sound lock and to say that he was going to get another, of some special, German manufacture, with various gadgets and a secret spring. When one day Zinovy Prokofyevich, carried away by youthful cleverness, expressed the thoroughly vulgar and indecent notion that Semyon Ivanovich was probably putting money away in his trunk and keeping it hidden in order to leave it to his descendants, everyone present was fairly stunned by the extraordinary consequences of Zinovy Prokofye-vich’s improper action. For a start, Mr Prokharchin had to think for a while before he could find decent language to describe such a shameless and vulgar idea. For a long time words deprived of all meaning poured from his lips, and only gradually could it be ascertained that, in the first instance, Semyon Ivanovich was upbraiding Zinovy Prokofyevich for some niggardly deed of his that had taken place a very long time ago; then it could be discerned that Semyon Ivanovich seemed to be predicting that Zinovy Prokofyevich would never succeed in entering high society, and that the tailor to whom he owed money for his clothes would give him a hiding, nay, would certainly give him a hiding since the jackanapes was taking such a long time to pay up, and that, finally, ‘You want to be a cadet in the hussars, you jackanapes, but you won’t make the grade, it won’t work out the way you think it will, and when the administration gets to hear of it you’ll be demoted to the rank of common clerk; that’s what I’m telling you, do you hear, you insolent jackanapes?’ After that Semyon Ivanovich grew calmer, but, having lain down for five hours, to everyone’s extreme astonishmen
t he seemed to get a second wind and, first to himself, and then turning to Zinovy Prokofyevich, began to upbraid him again and put him to shame. But the matter did not end there, and in the evening, when Mark Ivanovich and the lodger Prepolovenko rustled up some tea and invited the copying-clerk Okeanov to share it with them, Semyon Ivanovich left his bed and humorously joined them, contributing his fifteen or twenty copecks and, on the pretext of having suddenly acquired a thirst for a cup of tea, began to expatiate on the matter at great length, explaining that a poor man was simply that, a poor man and nothing more, and that as a poor man he had no means from which he might save. Here Mr Prokharchin even confessed, solely because the subject had come up, that he, a poor man, had the day before yesterday asked Zinovy Prokofyevich, an insolent man, for the loan of a ruble, but that now he would not accept the loan in case the cheeky brat should give himself airs, that that was the way it was, his salary was such that he could not even afford to feed himself; and that, finally, ‘as the poor man you see before you’, he sent his sister-in-law in Tver the sum of five rubles every month, that if he did not do this his sister-in-law would die, and that if his dependent sister-in-law had died, he, Semyon Ivanovich, would long ago have bought himself some new clothes… And at such length did Semyon Ivanovich expatiate on the subject of the poor man, his rubles and his sister-in-law, repeating the same thing over andover again in order to make the strongest possible impression on his listeners, that he finally lost his thread completely, fell silent, and only three days later, when no one was even thinking of picking on him and everyone had forgotten abouthim, added in conclusion something to the effect that when Zinovy Prokofyevich got into the hussars he would have his leg cut off in a war and be given a wooden one in its place, that Zinovy Prokofyevich would come to him saying, ‘Give me some bread, Semyon Ivanovich, there’s a good man,’ but that Semyon Ivanovich would refuse to give Zinovy Prokofyevich any bread, that he would not even look at the ungovernable fellow and would tell him to go to the devil.

  All this, as one might have supposed, aroused much curiosity and also a fearful amount of hilarity. Without wasting much time about it, all the landlady’s paying guests joined forces in order to pursue the inquiry further and, out of nothing more than sheer inquisitiveness, decided to converge on Semyon Ivanovich once and for all in a gang. And since Mr Prokharchin had, of late – that is to say, ever since the day he had moved in with them – also been very keen on findingout all about them and asking them nosy questions, something he did for reasons that were doubtless private and his own, a mutual relationship was established between the two warring parties, one which required no preliminary effort, but seemedto come about naturally and as if by chance. In order to establish such relationships Semyon Ivanovich always had at the ready a special, rather cunning and highly intricate manoeuvre of his own, which is in part already familiar to the reader:he would leave his bed at around the time for evening tea and, if he saw the others gathering together anywhere in order to prepare the beverage, would go up to them like a modest, intelligent and kindly sort of person, contribute his twenty copecks and declare that he wished to join their company. At that point the young men would exchange winks and, having thus signalled to one another their collusion against Semyon Ivanovich, would strike up a conversation that was initially decorousand proper. Then one of them would rather wittily begin, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, to relate various items of news, which nearly always contained fictitious and entirely improbable material. Thus, for example, he might say that someone had heard His Excellency that day telling Demid Vasilyevich that in his opinion married clerks were more reliable than single ones, and more suitable for promotion as they were quiet and had their aptitudes considerably enhanced by marriage, and for this reason he, the speaker, wishing to excel and to add to his stature, was striving to be united in wedlock as soon as possible with a certain Fevronya Prokofyevna. Or he might, for example, say that it had more than once been observed of various members of their fraternity that they were entirely lacking in good breeding and correct, pleasant manners, and were therefore unlikely to have any appeal in the society of ladies, and that for this reason, in order to eradicate the said abuse, a deduction should be made from their salaries forthwith, the corporate sum thereby obtained to be used for the furbishing of a hall where they would be given dancing lessons and allowed to acquire all the traits of nobility and good etiquette – politeness, consideration for their elders, strength of character, goodness and appreciativeness of heart, and various pleasant airs and graces. Or again, he might say that there was a plan afoot to make some of the clerks, starting with the very oldest, sit some kind of examination in all subjects,* designed to improve their level of education, as a consequence of which, the speaker would add, the sheep would be divided from the goats and several gentlemen would have to throw in their hands. In short, a thousand of the most absurd rumours belonging to one type or the other were expounded. In order to sustain the illusion, everyone immediately pretended to believe the story; they would show great interest in it, ask questions, consider how it applied to themselves; some of them, assuming mournful expressions, would even begin to shake their heads and seek advice right, left and centre, as though to say: what shall I do if I am found out? It need hardly be added that even a man far less gentle and good-natured than Mr Prokharchin would have become confused and entangled by such a welter of rumour. What is more, from all the evidence it may be concluded beyond any doubt that Semyon Ivanovich was entirely impervious to any idea unfamiliar to his intelligence and that having, forexample, received some piece of news he was invariably compelled to chew it over and digest it, search for its meaning, inorder at last, after a process of trial and error, to master it, in a thoroughly peculiar way that was quite special to himself… Thus it was that Semyon Ivanovich suddenly began to reveal a number of curious qualities which hitherto no onehad suspected he possessed. Talk and gossip ensued, and the whole affair eventually found its way, with suitable embellishments, to the office where the clerks pursued their labours. The effect was rendered all the more intense by the fact that Mr Prokharchin, having looked more or less the same for as long as anyone could remember, suddenly changed in physiognomy: his features became restless, his gaze fearful, timid and slightly suspicious; he began to pace about delicately, startingand pricking up his ears and, to complete his newly acquired qualities, he developed a positively ferocious passion for the truth. In the end, he carried this love of truth so far that he even took the risky step of challenging Demid Vasilyevich himself as to the plausibility of the tidings that reached his ears in their dozens every day, and if we remain silenthere about the consequences of this singular action on the part of Semyon Ivanovich, it is for no reason other than a sincere concern for his reputation. In the light of this, it was decided he was a misanthrope with a disregard for the conventions of decent society. It was subsequently decided, too, that there was much about him that was fantastical, a perceptionin no way mistaken, as it was repeatedly observed that Semyon Ivanovich sometimes forgot himself completely: sitting at his desk with his mouth wide open and his pen raised in the air, looking as though he had frozen or been turned to stone, hesooner resembled the shadow of a rational being than a rational being proper. It not infrequently happened that some innocently gaping gentleman, having suddenly met his fugitive, lustreless and questing gaze, would be set all-a-tremble, lose his nerve and immediately insert into some high-priority document either a blot or some word that was of no priority at all. The unseemliness of Semyon Ivanovich’s behaviour embarrassed and offended people of a truly righteous disposition… What finally dispelled all further doubts as to the fantastical nature of Semyon Ivanovich’s mind was the arrival in the office one morning of a rumour that Mr Prokharchin had even given a fright to Demid Vasilyevich himself, for, upon encountering him in the corridor, he had acted so peculiarly and strangely that he had compelled him to retreat… Finally, Semyon Ivanovich’s misdemeanour reach
ed his own ears. Learning of it, he at once stood up, carefully made his way between the desks and chairs, attained the vestibule, took his overcoat, put it on, went outside – and disappeared for an indefinite period of time. Whether he had taken fright, or whether he had acted under the prompting of some other influence, we do not know – but for a time he was not to be found either at home or at the office…

  We shall not attempt to explain Semyon Ivanovich’s fate simply as a result of his fantastical disposition; on the other hand, however, we cannot refrain from observing to the reader that our hero was an unworldly and thoroughly submissive individual, who until the day he had joined the company of his fellow boarders had lived in obscure, impenetrable solitude, and had been distinguished by his quietness and even a certain mysteriousness; for he had spent the whole of the time he had lived at Peski lying on his bed behind the screen, never saying a word and communicating with no one. Both of his former room-mates had lived in exactly the same way as he: they, too, were somewhat mysterious individuals, and had also spend fifteen years lying behind their screens. In the patriarchal calm the happy, somnolent days had drifted by one after the other, and since everything around them had also followed a smooth and uneventful course neither Semyon Ivanovich nor Ustinya Fyodorovna could even remember exactly when fate had brought them together. ‘Oh, it’ll be ten years now, no, fifteen, no, twenty-five,’ she would sometimes say to her new lodgers, ‘since he settled down with me, poor lamb, bless his little soul.’ And so it was perfectly natural that the hero of our tale, unused to company, had been most unpleasantly surprised when, just a year earlier, he had suddenly found himself, a staid and modest man, amidst a noisy, restless throng of a dozen young lads, his new room-mates and companions.