“The old man, as you know, was raving all his life about buying himself a house… So now he’s bought it. The prettiest little house. Yes… And today also happened to be his birthday, though he never celebrated it before, even concealed it from us, making excuses out of stinginess, heh, heh! and now he’s so glad of his new house that he invited me and Semyon Ivanovich. You know—Shipulenko.”
Akim Petrovich leaned forward again. Zealously leaned forward! Ivan Ilyich was somewhat comforted. For it had already occurred to him that the chief clerk might perhaps surmise that, at that moment, he was a necessary point of support for His Excellency. That would have been nastiest of all.
“Well, we three sat there, he stood us to some champagne, talked about business… Well, about this and that… about pro-blems… Even had a little dis-pute… Heh, heh!”
Akim Petrovich deferentially raised his eyebrows.
“Only that’s not the thing. I finally say good night to him, he’s a punctual old man, goes to bed early—old age, you know. I go out… my Trifon isn’t there! I worry, I ask: ‘What did Trifon do with the carriage?’ It turns out that, in hopes I’d stay long, he went to the wedding of some female crony of his or else his sister… God knows with him. Somewhere here on the Petersburg side. And incidentally took the carriage.” Again, for propriety’s sake, the general glanced at Pseldonymov. The man bent double instantly, but not at all in the way the general would have liked. “No sympathy, no heart,” flashed in his head.
“You don’t say!” said the deeply struck Akim Petrovich. A little hum of astonishment went through the whole crowd.
“Can you imagine my position…” (Ivan Ilyich glanced at them all.) “No help for it, I set out by foot. I thought I’d toddle along to Bolshoi Prospect, and there find some cabbie… heh, heh!”
“Hee, hee, hee!” Akim Petrovich echoed deferentially. Again a hum, now on a merry note, passed through the crowd. At that moment the glass of a wall lamp cracked with a loud noise. Someone zealously rushed to put it right. Pseldonymov roused himself and gave the lamp a stern look, but the general did not even pay attention, and everything quieted down.
“I’m walking… and the night is so beautiful, still. Suddenly I hear music, stomping, dancing. I ask a policeman: Pseldonymov’s getting married. So, brother, you’re throwing a ball for the whole Petersburg side? ha, ha,” he suddenly addressed Pseldonymov again.
“Hee, hee, hee! yes, sir…” echoed Akim Petrovich; the guests stirred again, but the stupidest thing of all was that Pseldonymov, though he did bow again, even now did not smile, just as if he were made of wood. “Is he a fool, or what?” thought Ivan Ilyich. “The ass ought to have smiled now, then everything would go swimmingly.” Impatience raged in his heart. “I thought, why not visit my subordinate. He won’t drive me out… glad or not, welcome the guest. Excuse me, please, brother. If I’m interfering, I’ll go… I only stopped to have a look…”
But little by little a general movement was beginning. Akim Petrovich gazed with a sweetened air, as if to say: “Could Your Excellency possibly interfere?” All the guests were stirring and beginning to show the first tokens of casualness. The ladies almost all sat down. A good and positive sign. Those who were braver fanned themselves with handkerchiefs. One of them, in a shabby velvet dress, said something deliberately loudly. The officer she had addressed also wanted to reply loudly, but since the two of them were the only loud ones, he passed. The men, most of them clerks, plus two or three students, exchanged glances, as if urging each other to loosen up, coughed, and even began making a couple of steps in different directions. Anyhow, none of them was particularly timid, only they were all uncouth and almost all of them looked with animosity at the person who had barged in on them to disrupt their merry-making. The officer, ashamed of his pusillanimity, gradually began to approach the table.
“But listen, brother, allow me to ask your name and patronymic?” Ivan Ilyich asked Pseldonymov.
“Porfiry Petrovich, Your Excellency,” the man replied, goggle-eyed, as if on review.
“Now then, Porfiry Petrovich, introduce me to your young wife… Take me to… I…”
And he made a show of getting up. But Pseldonymov rushed headlong to the drawing room. The young bride, however, had been standing right at the door, but on hearing that the talk was about her, she hid at once. A minute later Pseldonymov led her out by the hand. Everyone made way, letting them pass. Ivan Ilyich rose solemnly and addressed her with a most amiable smile.
“Very, very glad to make your acquaintance,” he said with a most high-society half bow, “and what’s more on such a day…”
He gave a most insidious smile. The ladies got pleasantly excited.
“Sharmay,” the lady in the velvet dress said almost aloud.
The bride was worthy of Pseldonymov. This was a thin little damsel, still only some seventeen years old, pale, with a very small face and a sharp little nose. Her small eyes, quick and furtive, were not at all abashed, but, on the contrary, looked at him intently and even with a certain tinge of spite. Obviously, Pseldonymov had not taken her for her beauty. She was wearing a white muslin dress with pink doubling. Her neck was skinny, her body like a chicken’s, all protruding bones. To the general’s greeting she was able to say precisely nothing.
“Yes, you got yourself a pretty little thing,” he went on in a low voice, as if addressing Pseldonymov alone, but purposely so that the bride heard it, too. But Pseldonymov said precisely nothing here as well, and this time did not even sway. It even seemed to Ivan Ilyich that there was in his eyes something cold, secretive, even something kept to himself, peculiar, malignant. And yet he had at all costs to get at some feeling. It was for that he came.
“A fine pair, though,” he thought. “However…”
And he again addressed himself to the bride, who was placed beside him on the sofa, but all he received to his two or three questions was again only a “yes” or a “no,” and in fact he did not quite receive even that.
“If only she’d get a little embarrassed,” he went on to himself. “Then I could start joking. Otherwise there’s no way out.” And Akim Petrovich, as if on purpose, was also silent, though only out of stupidity, but still it was inexcusable.
“Gentlemen! am I not perhaps interfering with your pleasures?” he tried to address everyone in general. He felt that his palms were even sweating.
“No, sir… Don’t worry, Your Excellency, we’ll get started right away, and for now… we’re cooling our heels, sir,” the officer replied. The bride glanced at him with pleasure: the officer was still young and wore the uniform of some command or other. Pseldonymov stood right there, thrusting himself forward, and seemed to stick his hooked nose out still more than before. He listened and watched, like a lackey who stands holding a fur coat and waiting for the parting words of his masters to come to an end. Ivan Ilyich made this comparison himself; he was at a loss, felt that he was ill at ease, terribly ill at ease, that the ground was slipping from under his feet, that he had gotten somewhere and could not get out, as if in the dark.
Suddenly everyone stepped aside, and a heavyset and not very tall woman appeared, elderly, simply dressed though with some festiveness, a big shawl around her shoulders, pinned at the throat, and wearing a bonnet to which she was obviously not accustomed. In her hands was a small, round tray on which stood a not yet started, but already uncorked, bottle of champagne and two glasses, no more nor less. The bottle was evidently meant for only two guests.
The elderly woman went straight up to the general.
“Don’t find fault, Your Excellency,” she said, bowing, “but since you haven’t disdained us, doing us the honor of coming to my son’s wedding, be so kind as to congratulate the young folk with wine. Don’t disdain it, do us the honor.”
Ivan Ilyich seized upon her as his salvation. She was not such an old woman, about forty-five or -six, no more. But she had such a kind, red-cheeked, such an open, round Russian face, she smiled so goo
d-naturedly, bowed so simply, that Ivan Ilyich was almost reassured and began to have hopes.
“So yo-o-ou are the ma-ter-nal pa-a-arent of your so-o-on?” he said, rising from the sofa.
“The maternal parent, Your Excellency,” Pseldonymov maundered, stretching his long neck and again sticking his nose out.
“Ah! Very glad, ve-ry glad to make your acquaintance.”
“Don’t scorn us, then, Your Excellency.”
“Even with the greatest pleasure.”
The tray was set down, Pseldonymov leaped over and poured the wine. Ivan Ilyich, still standing, took the glass.
“I am especially, especially glad of this occasion, since I can…” he began, “since I can… herewith pay my… In a word, as a superior… I wish you, madam” (he turned to the bride), “and you, my friend Porfiry—I wish you full, prosperous, and enduring happiness.”
And, even with emotion, he drank off the glass, his seventh that evening. Pseldonymov looked serious and even sullen. The general was beginning to hate him painfully.
“And this hulk” (he glanced at the officer) “is stuck here, too. Why doesn’t he shout ‘hurrah!’ Then it would take off, take right off…”
“And you, too, Akim Petrovich, drink and congratulate them,” added the old woman, addressing the chief clerk. “You’re a superior, he’s your subordinate. Look after my boy, I ask you as a mother. And don’t forget us in the future, dear Akim Petrovich, kind man that you are.”
“How nice these Russian old women are!” thought Ivan Ilyich. “She’s revived them all. I’ve always liked our folkways…”
At that moment another tray was brought to the table. It was carried by a wench in a rustling, not yet laundered calico dress with a crinoline. She could barely get her arms around the tray, it was so big. On it was a numberless multitude of little plates with apples, bonbons, gumdrops, candied fruit, walnuts, and so on and so forth. Till then the tray had been in the drawing room, for the pleasure of all the guests, mainly the ladies. But now it was brought over to the general alone.
“Don’t scorn our victuals, Your Excellency. What we’ve got, we’re glad to give,” the old woman repeated, bowing.
“Heavens…” said Ivan Ilyich, and even with pleasure he took and crushed between his fingers a single walnut. He was resolved to be popular to the end.
Meanwhile the bride suddenly began to giggle.
“What, ma’am?” Ivan Ilyich asked with a smile, glad of some signs of life.
“It’s Ivan Kostenkinych there, making me laugh, sir,” she replied, looking down.
The general actually made out a blond youth, not bad-looking at all, hiding on the other side of the sofa in a chair, who kept whispering something to Madame Pseldonymov. The youth got up. He was apparently very timid and very young.
“I was telling her about the ‘dream book,’18 Your Excellency,” he murmured, as if making an excuse.
“About what dream book?” Ivan Ilyich asked indulgently.
“The new one, sir, the literary one. I was telling her, sir, that if you see Mr. Panaev19 in your dreams, it means you’ll spill coffee on your shirtfront, sir.”
“What innocence,” thought Ivan Ilyich, even angrily. The youth, though he became very red as he was saying it, was still incredibly glad that he had told about Mr. Panaev.
“Well, yes, yes, I’ve heard…” responded His Excellency.
“No, there’s an even better one,” another voice said, right beside Ivan Ilyich, “there’s a new lexicon being published, they say Mr. Kraevsky himself will write articles, Alferaki… and esposé literature…”20
This was said by a young man, not a bashful one this time, but a rather casual one. He was wearing gloves, a white waistcoat, and held his hat in his hand. He did not dance, had a supercilious look, because he was a collaborator on the satirical magazine The Firebrand, set the tone, and showed up at this wedding by chance, invited as a guest of honor by Pseldonymov, with whom he was on intimate terms and with whom, still last year, he had shared a life of poverty “in corners”21 rented from some German woman. He did drink vodka, however, and for that purpose had already absented himself more than once to a cozy little back room, the way to which was known to all. The general took a terrible dislike to him.
“And that’s funny, sir, because,” the blond youth suddenly interrupted joyfully, the one who had told about the shirtfront and to whom the collaborator in the white waistcoat had given a hateful look for it, “funny because, Your Excellency, the writer assumes that Mr. Kraevsky doesn’t know how to spell and thinks that ‘exposé literature’ should be written ‘esposé literature’…”
But the poor youth barely finished. He could see by his eyes that the general had known that long ago, because the general also became as if abashed himself, obviously because he did know it. The young man was incredibly ashamed. He managed hurriedly to efface himself somewhere, and for the rest of the time afterward was very sad. Instead, the casual collaborator on The Firebrand came closer still and, it seemed, was intending to sit down somewhere nearby. To Ivan Ilyich such casualness seemed a bit ticklish.
“Yes! tell me, please, Porfiry,” he began, in order to talk about something, “why—I’ve been wanting to ask you personally about it—why are you called Pseldonymov, and not Pseudonymov? Surely you’re Pseudonymov?”
“I’m unable to give a precise report, Your Excellency,” Pseldonymov replied.
“It must have been mixed up already on his father’s papers, sir, when he entered the service, sir, so now he’s stayed Pseldonymov,” Akim Petrovich responded. “It happens, sir.”
“Ab-so-lutely,” the general picked up heatedly, “ab-so-lutely, because, consider for yourself: Pseudonymov—that comes from the literary word ‘pseudonym.’ Well, and Pseldonymov doesn’t mean anything.”
“Out of stupidity, sir,” Akim Petrovich added.
“That is, what, in fact, is out of stupidity?”
“The Russian people, sir; out of stupidity they sometimes change letters, sir, and pronounce things sometimes in their own way, sir. For instance, they say ninvalid, when they ought to say invalid, sir.”
“Well, yes… ninvalid, heh, heh, heh…”
“They also say liberry, Your Excellency,” the tall officer blurted out, having long had an itch to distinguish himself somehow.
“That is, liberry meaning what?”
“Liberry instead of library, Your Excellency.”
“Ah, yes, liberry… instead of library… Well, yes, yes… heh, heh, heh!…” Ivan Ilyich was obliged to chuckle for the officer as well.
The officer straightened his tie.
“And they also say perfick,” the collaborator on The Firebrand attempted to mix in. But His Excellency tried this time not to hear. He was not going to chuckle for everyone.
“Perfick instead of perfect,” the “collaborator” went on pestering with visible irritation.
Ivan Ilyich gave him a stern look.
“Stop pestering him!” Pseldonymov whispered to the collaborator.
“What do you mean, I’m just talking. What, can’t I talk?” the other objected in a whisper, but nevertheless fell silent and with concealed rage left the room.
He made his way straight to the alluring little back room where, ever since the evening began, a small table had been placed for the dancing gentlemen, covered with a Yaroslavl tablecloth, on which stood vodka of two kinds, pickled herring, cheap caviar, and a bottle of the strongest sherry from the national cellar.22 With spite in his heart, he was just pouring himself some vodka, when suddenly in ran the medical student with the tousled hair, the foremost dancer and can-canner at Pseldonymov’s ball. With hasty greed he rushed for the decanter.
“They’re starting now!” he said, hurriedly serving himself. “Come and watch: I’ll do a solo upside down, and after supper I’ll risk the fish.23 It’s even suitable for a wedding. A friendly hint, so to speak, to Pseldonymov… She’s nice, this Kleopatra Semyonovna, you
can risk whatever you like with her.”
“He’s a retrograde,” the collaborator said gloomily, drinking his glass.
“Who’s a retrograde?”
“That one, that personage, sitting in front of the gumdrops. A retrograde, I tell you!”
“Ah, you!” the student muttered, and dashed out of the room, hearing the ritornello of the quadrille.
The collaborator, left alone, poured himself some more for the sake of greater bravado and independence, drank up, ate a bite, and never before had the actual state councillor Ivan Ilyich acquired for himself a fiercer enemy or a more implacable avenger than this slighted-by-him collaborator on The Firebrand, especially after two glasses of vodka. Alas! Ivan Ilyich suspected nothing of the sort. Nor did he yet suspect another capital circumstance, which had an influence on all further mutual relations of the guests with His Excellency. The thing was that, though for his part he had given a decent and even detailed explanation of his presence at his subordinate’s wedding, this explanation had not in fact satisfied anyone, and the guests went on being embarrassed. But suddenly everything changed, as if by magic; they all calmed down and were ready to make merry, guffaw, squeal, and dance just as if the unexpected guest were not in the room at all. The reason for it was the rumor, the whisper, the news which suddenly spread, no one knew how, that the guest seemed to be… under the influence. And though the matter had, at first glance, the look of the most terrible slander, it gradually began to justify itself, as it were, so that everything suddenly became clear. What’s more, they suddenly became extraordinarily free. And it was at this same moment that the quadrille began, the last one before supper, to which the medical student had hastened so.
And just as Ivan Ilyich was addressing himself to the bride again, trying this time to get at her with some quip, the tall officer suddenly jumped over to her and swung himself down on one knee. She jumped up from the sofa at once and fluttered off with him to line up for the quadrille. The officer did not even apologize, nor did she even glance at the general as she left, as if she were even glad of her deliverance.
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 5
