The comparison with the army made by the Colonel is delightful and proves his elevated intelligence; his appeal to the feeling of civic duty speaks of the nobility of his self, but still, we must not forget that the citizen side in each individual is closely linked with his Christian nature….
“Will we go against our civic duty,” Ivan Markovich exclaims with inspiration, “if instead of punishing a mistaken boy we give him a helping hand?”
Ivan Markovich talks further of family honor. He himself does not have the honor of belonging to the outstanding family of the Uskovs, but he is well aware of the fact that the family’s history goes back to the thirteenth century; he also does not forget for a minute that his cherished, most beloved sister was the wife of one of the representatives of that family. In short, the family is dear to him for many reasons, and he will never believe that, for the sake of a mere fifteen hundred rubles, a shadow should be cast on the priceless heraldic tree. If all the above lines of reasoning do not sound convincing enough, in conclusion he proposes to clarify what the word ‘crime’ actually means. Crime is an immoral act based on evil intentions. But can human intentions be considered free? Science has not yet given a positive answer to this question.
Scientists have different views on the subject. The latest school of Lombroso, for instance, does not believe in free will, and every crime is considered to be a product of the anatomical characteristics of the individual.
“Ivan Markovich,” says the Colonel in a pleading voice, “we are talking seriously about the important matter at hand, and you bring in Lombroso. You are an intelligent man; give it some thought: why are you going into this stuff? Do you really believe that all this empty chatter and your rhetoric can provide us with the answer to the question?”
Sasha Uskov is sitting at the door listening. He is neither afraid, nor ashamed, nor bored, he just feels tired and empty inside. It seems to him that it makes no difference whatsoever whether they forgive him or not; the only reason he has come here to sit and wait for the decision was because the very kind Ivan Markovich talked him into doing so.
He has no fear for the future. It is all the same to him whether he is sitting here in the hall, or in prison, or sent to Siberia.
“If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, to hell with it!”
He has grown sick of life and feels it is all unbearably hard. He is hopelessly weighed down with debts, not a penny in his pocket, he is disgusted with his family, and he understands he will have to part sooner or later from his acquaintances and ladies, as they have started to treat him with contempt in his role as a sponger. The future looks gloomy. Sasha is indifferent; there is only one circumstance that troubles him: that they are calling him a scoundrel and a criminal behind that door. Every minute he is ready to jump to his feet, burst into the study, and shout in reply to the detestable metallic voice of the Colonel: “You are lying!”
“Criminal” is a frightful word. This is how murderers, thieves, robbers, and, on the whole, wicked and immoral people are called. And Sasha has nothing to do with all that…. Well, he is involved in debts and does not pay the money he owes. But debt is not a crime, and very few people can do without debts. The Colonel and Ivan Markovich both have debts….
“Is there anything else I’ve done wrong?” Sasha ponders.
He has cashed a false note. But all the young men he knows do the same. Say, Handrikov and Von Burst always sell the false notes of their parents or acquaintances when they are short of money, and then, after receiving the money from home, they buy the notes back before they are due. Sasha did the same, but could not buy the note back as he had not received the money that Handrikov had promised to lend him. It is not he who is to blame but the circumstances. Well, it is no good to use another person’s signature, but, still, it is not a crime; it is a generally accepted tactic, an unpleasant formality that offended and harmed no one, and in forging the Colonel’s signature Sasha never meant to cause anybody trouble or loss.
“No, it doesn’t mean that I am a criminal …” Sasha thinks. “And one has to have a different character to commit a crime. I am too soft and sensitive … as soon as I have money I help the poor …”
Sasha ponders along these lines while the discussion goes on behind the door.
“Gentlemen, this is endless.” The Colonel flies into passion. “Imagine we have forgiven him and paid the note. But this doesn’t mean that after that he’ll give up that dissipated life he leads, or that he’ll never squander and make debts again, or go to our tailors to order clothes at our expense! Can you vouch that this will be his last fraud? As for me, I do not in the least believe that he’ll mend his ways!”
The Treasury man mutters something in reply, and after him Ivan Markovich starts talking smoothly and softly. The Colonel moves his chair impatiently and drowns out Ivan Markovich’s words with his disgusting metallic voice. Finally, the door opens and Ivan Markovich walks out of the study, red spots visible on his lean shaven face.
“Let’s go,” he says and takes Sasha by the hand. “Come in and explain everything open-heartedly. No pride, my dear boy, humbly and candidly.”
Sasha goes into the study. The official of the Treasury is seated; the Colonel, his hands in his pockets, one knee on a chair, is standing in front of the table. It is smoky and stuffy in the study. Sasha looks neither at the official nor at the Colonel. Suddenly, he feels ashamed and terrified. He looks anxiously at Ivan Markovich and mutters:
“I’ll pay it … I’ll give it back….”
“What did you hope for when you cashed the promissory note?” he hears a metallic voice.
“I … Handrikov promised to lend me the money before it is due.”
This is all Sasha can say. He walks out of the room and again sits down on the chair near the door.
He would have been happy to go away altogether, but hatred is choking him and he ardently desires to stay to cut the Colonel short and say something cheeky to him. He is sitting at the door trying to think of something impressive and momentous that he could say to the hateful uncle, and at the same time a woman’s figure, cloaked in the twilight, appears at the door of the drawing room. It is the Colonel’s wife. She beckons Sasha toward her, wringing her hands and weeping:
“Alexander, I know you don’t like me, but … listen to me, listen, I beg you…. My dear, how could it happen? Why, it’s awful, awful! For goodness’ sake, implore them, defend yourself, entreat them.”
Sasha looks at her quivering shoulders, at the big tears rolling down her cheeks, hears the muffled, nervous voices of the tired, exhausted people behind him, and shrugs his shoulders. He had never expected that his aristocratic relatives would make such a fuss over a mere fifteen hundred rubles! He cannot come to terms with the tears or with the quiver of their voices.
An hour later he hears the Colonel take the upper hand: the uncles finally incline to let the case go to court.
“It’s settled now,” says the Colonel with a sigh. “Enough.”
It is clear that after the decision all the uncles, even the insistent Colonel, lose their confidence. Silence follows.
“Oh, goodness!” Ivan Markovich sighs. “My poor sister!”
And he starts to say quietly that it is likely now that his sister, Sasha’s mother, is present invisibly in this study. He feels with his heart how this unhappy, holy woman is weeping, grieving, and begging for her boy. They should forgive Sasha so she can sleep in peace in the other world.
Sobs can be heard. Ivan Markovich is weeping and muttering something that one cannot make out through the door. The Colonel gets up and paces from corner to corner. The long conversation starts over again.
At last, the clock in the drawing room strikes two. The family council is over. The Colonel walks out of the study and goes not to the hall but to the entrance to avoid seeing the man who has occasioned him so much trouble. Ivan Markovich comes out into the hall. He is agitated, he rubs his hands and looks contented. His tearful eyes are chee
rful and his mouth twists into a smile.
“Excellent,” he says to Sasha. “Thank God! My dear friend, you can go home and sleep tight. We’ve decided to pay the note, but on condition that you repent and tomorrow you’ll go with me to the village and get work.”
A minute later Ivan Markovich and Sasha, wearing their coats and caps, are going downstairs. The uncle is muttering didactically. Sasha ignores him as he feels something heavy and frightful dropping gradually off his shoulders. He is forgiven, he is free! Like a fresh wind, happiness bursts into his chest and splashes his heart with a sweet chill. He is willing to breathe, to move, to live! Glancing at the street lamps and the black sky, he remembers that today, in the “Bear” restaurant, Mr. Von Burst is giving a birthday party, and again happiness fills his heart. “I’m going!” he decides.
But then he remembers that he does not have a penny and that the friends he wanted to see despise him for his lack of money. He must get some money, whatever it may cost him!
“Uncle, lend me a hundred rubles,” he says to Ivan Markovich.
His uncle looks into his face with surprise and backs toward a lamppost.
“Give it to me,” says Sasha, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other and starting to lose his breath. “Uncle, I beg you, I need a hundred rubles.”
His face has distorted, he is trembling and advancing menacingly towards his uncle….
“Won’t you?” he asks, seeing that his uncle is still surprised and does not understand what is happening. “Listen, if you don’t give me the money, tomorrow I’ll denounce myself! I won’t let you pay the note! I’ll cash another false note tomorrow!”
Stupefied by terror, muttering incoherently, Ivan Markovich produces a hundred-ruble note from his wallet and gives it to Sasha. The latter takes it and quickly walks away.
In the cab, Sasha calms down and feels happiness breaking into his chest again. The “rights of youth” referred to by kind Uncle Ivan Markovich at the family council have awakened and spoken for themselves. Sasha is imagining the forthcoming bash, and a small thought flashes through his mind in between the bottles, women, and friends:
“Now I see I’m a criminal. Yes, I am a criminal.”
DREAMS
Two police deputies: one is black-bearded and stocky, with legs so short that if you looked at him from behind you would think his legs began much lower than in other people; the other is long, thin, and upright as a stick, with a sparse beard of a dark, reddish color. They are escorting a tramp who doesn’t remember his name into town. The stocky deputy struts, looking from side to side, and chewing now a straw, now his own sleeve; at times he slaps himself on the hips and hums a tune. He appears completely unconcerned and flippant. The other, despite his gaunt face and narrow shoulders, looks reliable, serious, and thorough. The way he is built and the expression of his whole body reminds one of the Old Believers or the warriors painted on icons. “For his wisdom God has added to his forehead”; in other words, he is bald, which only increases the above likeness. The first is called Andrei Ptaha, the latter Nikolai Sapozhnikov.
The appearance of the man they are escorting does not correspond in the least to the standard conception of a tramp. He is a small, frail man, feeble-bodied and sickly, his features faint, colorless, and extremely indefinite. His eyebrows are sparse, his eyes submissive and pale, and he has hardly any facial hair, although he is over thirty. He walks timidly, with his shoulders bent forward and his hands thrust into his sleeves. The collar of his threadbare wool overcoat, too nice for a tramp, is turned up to the very edge of his cap, so that nothing but his little red nose dares to peep out into the big, wide world. He has an inaudible, ingratiating tenor voice, and he coughs lightly now and again. It is exceedingly difficult to take him for a tramp who won’t reveal his own name. He looks more like a penniless priest’s son, a God-forgotten loser, a scribe fired for drinking, or the son or nephew of a merchant, who, having tried his scanty talent in the theatrical world, is now walking home to play the last act of the parable of the prodigal son; or, perhaps, judging by the dull patience with which he struggles through the thick autumn mud, he could be a fanatic crawling from one monastery to another, endlessly seeking a life that is peaceful, holy, and free from sin, and never finding it …
The travelers have been walking quite a while now but they never seem to advance beyond the same small patch of land. About thirty feet of the blackish-brown muddy road still lies ahead of them, about the same is seen behind, and farther ahead, as far as your eyes can see, there is an impenetrable wall of white fog. They march on and on, but the land remains the same, the wall will not move closer, and the same patch of ground is forever there. From time to time they glimpse a craggy white stone, a gully, or a bundle of hay dropped by a passerby. A large, dirty puddle will glimmer, or a shadow with vague outlines will suddenly come into view ahead of them; the nearer they come to it the smaller and darker it becomes; still nearer, and there in front of them stands a leaning milestone with its illegible number, or a miserable birch tree, drenched and bare, like a wayside beggar. The birch tree will whisper something with its last yellow leaves, and one leaf will break off and float lazily to the ground. And then again the same fog, mud, the brown grass along the edges of the road. Dim tears are hanging on the grass. These are not the tears of tender joy that the earth sheds when welcoming and parting from the summer sun, and that she gives at dawn for the quails, corncakes, and slender, long-beaked curlews to drink. The travelers’ feet get stuck in a heavy, sticky mud. Every step takes effort.
Andrei Ptaha is somewhat excited. He keeps examining the tramp, trying to figure out how on earth a man, alive and sober, could happen to forget his name.
“Are you Christian at all?” he asks.
“I am,” the tramp answers timidly.
“Hmm … then you’ve been baptized?”
“Well, to be sure! I’m no Turk. I go to church and I observe the fasts, and I don’t eat meat when not allowed. And I do exactly what the pastor says….”
“So what’s your name, then?”
“Call me whatever you like, chap.”
Completely at a loss, Ptaha shrugs his shoulders and slaps himself on the hips. His partner, Nicholas Sapozhnikov, maintains a significant silence. He is not as simple-minded as Ptaha and apparently knows very well the reasons that could induce an orthodox Christian to conceal his name. His expressive face remains cold and stern. He walks a little bit apart from the others and does not condescend to idle chatter. He seems to be trying to demonstrate to everyone, the fog included, his gravity and reason.
“God knows what to make of you,” Ptaha keeps nagging. “Common man you are not, and gentleman you are not, you are sort of in the middle or so…. I was washing a sieve in the pond the other day and up comes this viper, you know, long as a finger, with gills and a tail. First I thought it was a fish, and then I had a good look at it—and, plague upon it! The thing had legs. Maybe it was a fish, or something else, deuce only knows. So that’s like you. What’s your calling?”
“I’m a common man and of a peasant family,” sighs the tramp. “My mother was a house serf. I don’t look like a serf, I don’t, as my family were of a different kind, good men. They kept my mamma as a nurse with the gentlemen, and she had every comfort, and I being of her flesh and blood, I used to live with her in the master’s house. She petted and pampered me, and did her best to take me out of my humble condition and make a gentleman of me. I’d sleep in a bed and eat a real dinner every day, and I wore breeches and half-boots like any other gentleman boy. What my mamma ate she’d give me to eat, too; they gave her money to buy herself new clothes, and she’d buy clothes for me. A good life it was! So many sweets and cakes I was eating as a boy that if I’d sold them all now I could’ve got a good horse. Mamma took me in hand in my learning, and taught me fear of God from my early days.”
The tramp bares his head, and the hair on it looks like a toothless old brush; he turns his eyes upward and
crosses himself twice.
“Grant her, dear Lord, a place plenteous and benevolent.” He pronounces this in a drawl, sounding more like an old woman than a man. “Teach Thy servant Ksenia Thy justifications. My beloved mamma had such a good heart that without her I would’ve been the most commonest sort of man with no understanding. And now, chap, you can ask me about whatever you wish and I know it all: scriptures secular and holy, and prayers of all kinds, and catechism. And I live accordingly. I don’t harm anyone, I keep my flesh clean and chaste, I observe the fasts, I eat at the appropriate time. Another man may be the slave of vodka and fish, and I—whenever I have some time—I’d sit in a corner and read a book. I’d read and I’d weep and weep.”
“And why would you weep?”
“They write most pitiful! You can give just a five-kopeck piece for a book, and yet you’ll weep and sigh uncommonly over it.”
“Is your father dead?” asked Ptaha.
“I don’t know, fellow. I don’t know my father; I shall be sincere with you. I think I was Mamma’s illegitimate child. My mamma lived with the gentry all her life and didn’t want to marry a muzhik.”
“Aye, and got mixed up with the master,” Ptaha grins.
“She gave in to temptation, she did. She was very goodhearted, and God-fearing, but she didn’t keep herself chaste. It is vicious, of course, very vicious, but now maybe I have some genteel blood in me and maybe they only call me a muzhik but in nature I am a noble gentleman.”
This speech is delivered by the “noble gentleman” in a quiet and sugary little tenor, his narrow forehead wrinkled up and his chilled little nose emitting squeaking sounds. Ptaha listens to what he is saying, looks at him with surprise, and continually shrugs his shoulders.
A Night in the Cemetery Page 16
