“That’s enough!” the aunt demanded. “You’re blaspheming.”
“Not at all, Auntie,” Apollo Perepenchuk replied. “Not in the least. I’m just stating the facts…So, by your logic, worms have souls…Say I take a worm, then, Auntie, and cut it in half, right down the middle…Now imagine, Auntie, that each half goes on living on its own. So? According to you, Auntie, that’s a soul split in two! What kind of soul is that?”
“Leave me be,” the aunt implored and gazed at Apollo Semyonovich with frightened eyes.
“No, let me finish!” cried Perepenchuk. “So there’s no soul. Man has no soul. Man is bone and meat…He dies like the lowest beast, and is born like a beast. Only he lives on fantasies. But he must live differently…”
Except that Apollo Semyonovich couldn’t explain to his aunt how man ought to live—because he simply didn’t know. Yet he had been shaken by his thoughts. It seemed he had begun to understand something. But then his mind grew confused, jumbled. He had to admit that, in fact, he had no idea how a man ought to live in order to avoid feeling what he himself now felt. What did he feel, exactly? He felt his game was up, that life was calmly marching on without him.
For several days he paced the room in a state of extreme agitation. And on the day this agitation reached its highest point of tension, Aunt Adelaide brought in a letter addressed to Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk. The letter was from Tamara.
With the affectations of a flirtatious woman, she wrote in a sad lyric tone that she was preparing to marry a certain foreign merchant named Glob, and that, in taking this step, she did not wish Apollo Perepenchuk to think badly of her. She issued a most humble apology for all the things she had done to him; she was asking forgiveness, knowing what a mortal blow she had struck him.
Apollo Perepenchuk laughed quietly as he read the letter. Yet her unshakable conviction that he, Apollo Perepenchuk, was perishing on her account truly stunned him. Contemplating this, he suddenly realized that he needed nothing, not even her, on whose account he was perishing. And he also realized, clearly and finally, that he was perishing not on her account, but because he hadn’t lived as he ought to have lived. But then his mind grew confused and jumbled again.
And he wanted to go to her immediately, to say that it was not she who was to blame—that he alone was to blame, that he had made some mistake in his life.
But he didn’t go, because he didn’t know what that mistake had been.
6
A week later Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk paid Tamara a visit. It all happened unexpectedly. One night he quietly put on his clothes, told Aunt Adelaide that he had a headache and wanted to take a walk, then left the house. He walked for a long time, wandering aimlessly through the streets, with no intention of going to see Tamara. Extraordinary musings on the meaninglessness of existence gave him no peace. He took off his cap and wandered the streets, occasionally halting beside dark wooden houses and peering into their lighted windows, attempting to understand, to penetrate, to see how people lived—to get at the nature of their existence. Through the lighted windows he saw men in suspenders sitting at tables, women standing near samovars, children…Some men were playing cards; others sat without moving, staring blankly at flames. Some women washed dishes, or sewed—and that was about it. Many ate, opening their mouths wide without making a sound. And despite the double panes, it seemed to Apollo Perepenchuk that he could hear them champ and chew.
Apollo Semyonovich went from house to house and before he knew it, there he was, at Tamara’s residence.
He pressed against the window to her room. Tamara lay on the couch—apparently asleep. Suddenly, to his own surprise, Apollo Semyonovich rapped on the glass with his fingers.
Tamara shivered, leapt up, and listened intently. Then she went to the window, trying to make out in the darkness who it was that had knocked. But she could not, and so she shouted: “Who is it?”
Apollo Semyonovich was silent.
She ran out into the street, recognized him, and brought him into the house. She began to lecture him angrily, telling him that he had no business coming here, that it was all over between them—and hadn’t her written apologies been enough?…
Apollo Perepenchuk gazed at her beautiful face, thinking that there was no point in telling her that she wasn’t to blame, that he alone was to blame, that he had conducted his life in the wrong way. She wouldn’t understand, and wouldn’t want to understand, because this situation seemed to give her some sort of pleasure, and perhaps even boosted her pride.
He wanted to go, but something stopped him. For a long time he stood in the middle of the room, thinking intensely. Then a strange calm came over him. He cast his eyes around Tamara’s room, smiled blankly, and left.
He went out into the street, walked two blocks, put on his cap—and stopped.
“That thought—what had it been?”
At that moment, when he had stood in her room, some happy thought had flashed across his mind. But he had forgotten it…Some thought, some conclusion that had, for a moment, brought him calm and clarity.
Apollo Perepenchuk tried to recollect every detail, every word. Was it that he should leave? No…Become a clerk? No…He had forgotten.
So he raced back to her house. Yes, of course, he must get back inside her home, her room, now, this very minute—there, standing in that same spot, he’d recall that blasted thought.
He went up to her door, intending to knock. But he noticed that the door was open. No one had locked it behind him. He quietly walked down the hall, unnoticed, and stopped on the threshold of Tamara’s room.
Tamara was weeping, her face buried in her pillow. In her hand she held a photograph—a portrait of him, Apollo Perepenchuk.
Let the reader cry all he wants—the author couldn’t care less. He remains unmoved, proceeding impassively to further developments.
Apollo Perepenchuk looked at Tamara, at the photograph in her hand, at the window. He looked at the flower on the table, at the little vase with some dried herbs and grasses, and suddenly it came to him.
“Yes!”
Tamara screamed when she saw him. He raced off, his boots stamping down the hall. Someone from the kitchen rushed after him.
Apollo Semyonovich ran out of the house. He walked quickly down Prolomnaya Street. Then he began running again. He fell in the soft snow. Tripped. Got up. Ran on further.
“I’ve found that thought!”
He ran a long time, gasping for breath. The cap fell from his head, but he raced on without stopping to find it. The city was quiet. It was the dead of night. Perepenchuk kept running.
At last he reached the outskirts of town. The suburbs. Fences. Railroad signal. Huts. Side ditch. Railway bed.
Apollo Perepenchuk collapsed. He crawled a bit farther, reached the rails, then lay still.
“My thought. I’ve found it.”
He lay in the soft snow. His heart kept skipping beats. He felt he was dying.
A man holding a lantern walked past him twice, then came back and nudged him in the ribs with his foot.
“What’s with you?” said the man with the lantern. “Whatcha lyin’ there for?”
Perepenchuk didn’t respond.
“Whatcha lyin’ there for?” the man repeated in a frightened tone. The lantern shook in his hand.
Apollo Semyonovich raised his head and sat up.
“People are good…People are good,” he said.
“What people?” the man said quietly. “Whatcha ramblin’ about? Come on, now, let’s go to my hut. I’m the switchman…”
The man took him by the hand and led him to his hut.
“People are good…People are good,” Perepenchuk kept muttering.
They went into the hut. It was stuffy. A table. A lamp. A samovar. Sitting at the table, a peasant in an unbuttoned coat. A woman crumbling sugar with a pair of tongs.
Perepenchuk sat down on a bench. His teeth were chattering.
“So why’d you go and lie down out there, eh
?” the switchman asked again, winking at the man in the coat. “Lookin’ for death, were ya? Or did ya wanna go and tear up them rails?”
“What did he do?” asked the man in the coat. “Lie down on the rails?”
“That’s what he did,” said the switchman. “I’m out there with my lantern, and there he is, the asshole, lyin’ there like a baby, his mug stuck right up against the rail.”
“Hm,” said the man in the coat. “Bastard.”
“You back off,” said the woman. “Don’t you go yellin’ at him. You see the fella’s shakin’. He ain’t shakin’ from joy. Have some tea, fella…”
Apollo Perepenchuk drank, his teeth knocking against the glass.
“People are good…”
“Hold on,” said the switchman, winking at the man in the coat again and, for some reason, elbowing him in the side. “I’m gonna ask ’im some questions, orderly and official-like.”
Apollo Semyonovich sat motionless.
“Answer in order, like on paper,” the switchman said sternly. “Family name.”
“Perepenchuk,” said Apollo Semyonovich.
“Never heard of it. Age?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Prime of life,” the man said with inexplicable satisfaction. “Me, I’m in my fifty-first year…Now that’s an age…Out of work?”
“Out of work…”
The switchman grinned and winked again.
“Not good,” he said. “Well, you got any skill? Know any skill?”
“No…”
“Not good,” the switchman said, shaking his head. “How you gonna live without handi-skills, fella? I tell ya, that ain’t no good at all. A man’s gotta know a handi-skill. Take me—I’m a watchman, a switchman. But say they run me out—cutbacks or some such…Well, that won’t be the end of me. I know how to work boots. I’ll work boots till my arms fall off, and I won’t come to grief. Hell, I’ll twist ropes with my teeth. Yes, that’s me. But you ain’t got no handi-skill. Can’t do a doggone thing…How you gonna live?”
“An aristocrat, this one,” the man in the coat scoffed. “Blood’s too blue…Can’t live. They just go and stick their snouts in rails.”
Apollo Perepenchuk got to his feet. He wanted to leave. But the switchman wouldn’t let him:
“Sit down. I’ll set you up with a splendid job.”
He winked at the man in the coat and said:
“Vasya, why dontcha take the fella on? You do nice, quiet work—anyone can understand. Why let the poor fella croak?”
“All right,” the man said, buttoning his coat. “Listen here, citizen: you come to the Annunciation Cemetery and ask the fella in charge if I’m around.”
“Take ’im with ya now, Vasya,” the woman said. “You never know.”
“All right,” the man said, getting up and putting on his hat. “Well, let’s go, then. So long, now.”
The man left the hut with Apollo Perepenchuk.
7
Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk entered the third and last period of his life—he assumed the position of a freelance gravedigger. For almost a full year Apollo Semyonovich labored at the Annunciation Cemetery. Once again, he underwent a remarkable change.
He went about in yellow leg wrappings, a half-coat, and a brass badge on his chest—No. 3. His calm, thoughtless face exuded quiet bliss. All wrinkles, blemishes, and freckles vanished from his countenance. His nose took on its former shape. It was only that his eyes would occasionally fix without blinking on some object—on a single point on that object—no longer seeing or noticing anything else.
At those moments Apollo would contemplate, or rather, recall his life, the path he had traveled, and then his calm face would grow dark. But these recollections would come over him against his will—he was trying to rid his mind of all thought. He acknowledged that he had no sense of what he ought to have done, of what mistake he had made in his life. And had there really been a mistake? Perhaps there hadn’t. Perhaps it was all just life—simple, stark, and plain—which allows only two or three people out of a thousand to smile and enjoy themselves.
However, all these sorrows were now behind him. A spirit of happy tranquility never again left Apollo Semyonovich. Every morning, at the usual hour, he would come to work with a shovel in his hand, and while digging the earth and straightening the sides of the graves, he’d well up with enthusiasm at the silence and charm of his new life.
On summer days, after working two hours or more without a break, he would lie down on the grass or on the warm, freshly dug earth, and would gaze without moving at the fleecy clouds, or follow the flight of some little birdie, or simply hearken to the rustle of the Annunciation’s pines. Recalling his past, Apollo Perepenchuk reflected that he had never felt such peace in all his life, that he had never lain in the grass and had never known that freshly dug earth was warm and smelled sweeter than French powder or any drawing room. And then he would smile a calm, full smile, happy at being alive and wanting to live on.
But one day Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk spotted Tamara walking arm in arm with some fairly important-looking foreigner. They were strolling down the path of Saint Blessed Xenia, blithely prattling about this or that.
Apollo Perepenchuk snuck after them, crouching behind graves and crosses like an animal. The couple strolled through the cemetery for a long time, then found a dilapidated bench and sat down, squeezing each other’s hands.
Apollo Perepenchuk fled from the scene.
But that was an isolated incident. Life went on as before, calm and quiet. The days followed one another, and nothing disturbed their calm. Apollo Semyonovich worked, ate, lay in the grass, and slept…Occasionally he would stroll through the cemetery, read the touching or clumsy inscriptions on the headstones, sit down on this or that forgotten grave, and stay there for a while, thinking of nothing.
On the nineteenth of September, according to the new calendar, Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk succumbed to a heart rupture while working on one of the graves.
As it happens, Tamara Glob, née Omelchenko, had died in childbirth on the seventeenth of September—that is, two days before his own death.
Alas, Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk never heard about this.
March 1923
PEOPLE
1
Strange things are afoot in literature these days! If an author should write a tale about contemporary events—why, that author is lavished with praise from all sides. The critics applaud him, the readers sympathize.
Now say that same author manages to pin some public theme, some precious little social idea onto this tale of his—well, said author lands himself on the receiving end of fame, popularity, all kinds of respect. He gets his picture in all the weekly papers. And the publishers pay him in gold—no less than a hundred rubles a sheet.
Well, in our worthless opinion, this hundred rubles a sheet is clearly and totally unjust.
After all, in order to write a tale about contemporary events, one needs access to the appropriate geography—that is, the author must be located in the major centers or capitals of the republic, where the vast majority of historical events happen to take place.
But not every author has that geography at his disposal—not every author has the material opportunity to reside with his family in the major cities and capitals.
Therein lies the stumbling block and the cause of injustice.
One author resides in Moscow, and, so to speak, witnesses with his own eyes the whole round of events involving his heroes and great leaders, while another, by virtue of family circumstances, drags out a miserable existence in some provincial town where nothing particularly heroic has ever happened or ever will.
So how is our author supposed to get his hands on major world events, contemporary ideas, and significant heroes?
Would you have him tell lies? Or would you have him rely on the absurd, inaccurate rumors his comrades bring back from the capital?
No, no, and no! The author loves
and respects belles lettres too much to base his compositions on old wives’ tales and unverified rumors.
Of course, some enlightened critic who can prattle in six foreign tongues may urge the author not to shun the minor heroes and little provincial scenes taking place all around him. Such a critic may even insist that it’s preferable to sketch out little colorful etudes peopled with insignificant provincial types.
Dear critic, keep your silly comments to yourself! The author has thought it all through long before you came along. Yes, he’s traveled down every road and worn out more than a few pairs of boots. He’ll have you know that he’s inscribed every name more or less worthy of attention on a separate piece of paper, adding various comments and a nota bene or two. But he keeps coming up empty! Forget remarkable heroes—there isn’t even a single mediocrity whose story would be the least bit interesting or instructive. Nothing but small fry, piffle, zeroes who have no place in belles lettres, no place in the contemporary heroic scheme of things.
Of course, the author would still rather confine himself to an altogether small scale, to an altogether insignificant hero with all his trifling passions and experiences, rather than letting loose and spinning tall tales about some altogether nonexistent person. The author has neither the insolence nor the imagination for that task.
In addition, the author considers himself a member of the only honest literary school—the naturalists—who will determine the future course of Russian belles lettres. But even if the author didn’t consider himself a member of this school, he would still find it, shall we say, difficult to write about an unfamiliar person. He might overshoot the mark and bungle up his psychological analysis—or he might skip over some little detail, so that the reader hits a dead end and is forced to wonder at the carelessness of contemporary writers.
Hence, by virtue of the reasons outlined above, and also due to certain restrictive material circumstances, the author begins his contemporary tale, but he does so with a warning: the tale’s hero is trifling and unimportant, perhaps unworthy of the attention of today’s pampered public. As the reader might have guessed, this hero is Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov.
Sentimental Tales Page 4
