In the year 1812 I was taken to Moscow and placed in Karl Ivanovich Meyer’s boarding school, where I spent no more than three months, for we were disbanded before the enemy entered, and I returned to the country.4 Once the twelve nations were driven out, they wanted to take me to Moscow again, to see if Karl Ivanovich had returned to his former hearth and home, or, in the contrary case, to place me in another school, but I persuaded my dear mother to keep me in the country, my health preventing me from getting up at seven, as is the custom in all boarding schools. Thus I reached the age of sixteen, remaining with my primary education and playing ball with my playmates, the only science of which I acquired sufficient knowledge during my stay in boarding school.
At that time I enlisted as a cadet in the * * * infantry regiment, in which I remained until this past year of 18––. My term in the regiment left me with few pleasant impressions apart from being promoted to officer and winning 245 roubles at a time when I had only one rouble and sixty kopecks left in my pocket. The death of my beloved parents forced me to resign my commission and return to my paternal seat.
This epoch of my life is so important for me that I intend to enlarge upon it, begging the kindly reader’s pardon beforehand if I am making ill use of his indulgent attention.
The day was autumnal and bleak. Having reached the station where I had to turn off to Goryukhino, I hired a private coach and drove down the country road. Though I am of mild temperament by nature, I was so gripped by impatience to see again the places where I had spent my best years that I kept urging my coachman on, now promising him a tip, now threatening him with a beating, and since it was more convenient for me to nudge him in the back than to take out and undo my purse, I confess I struck him two or three times, something that had never happened to me in all my life, for, though I don’t know why myself, the coachman’s estate has always been especially dear to me. The coachman urged his troika on, but it seemed to me that, as is usual with coachmen, while talking to the horses and waving his whip, he kept tightening the reins. At last I glimpsed the Goryukhino grove, and ten minutes later we drove into the courtyard. My heart was beating hard—I looked around me with indescribable emotion. I had not seen Goryukhino for eight years. The little birches that had been planted by the fence when I was there had grown and were now tall, branchy trees. The courtyard, in former times adorned by three regular flowerbeds with wide, sand-strewn paths between them, had been turned into an unmowed meadow on which a brown cow grazed. My britzka stopped at the front porch. My servant went to open the door, but it was boarded up, though the shutters were open and the house seemed inhabited. A woman came out of the servants’ cottage and asked whom I wanted. Learning that the master had arrived, she ran back to the cottage, and soon the domestics surrounded me. I was touched to the bottom of my heart, seeing familiar and unfamiliar faces, and I exchanged friendly kisses with them all: the boys I had played with were grown men, and the girls who used to sit on the floor waiting for errands were married women. The men wept. To the women I said unceremoniously: “How you’ve aged!” And they replied with feeling: “And how plain you’ve grown, dear master!” They took me to the back porch, where I met my wet nurse, who embraced me with tears and sobs as a much-enduring Odysseus. They ran to heat up the bathhouse. The cook, who in his current inactivity had grown a beard, offered to prepare dinner for me, or supper—for it was already getting dark. The rooms in which the wet nurse and my late mother’s maids had been living were cleared for me at once, and I found myself in my humble ancestral abode and fell asleep in the same room I had been born in twenty-three years earlier.
I spent some three weeks in all sorts of business—dealing with assessors, marshals, and provincial officials of every description. At last I came into my inheritance and took possession of my ancestral seat: I calmed down, but soon the boredom of inactivity began to torment me. I was not yet acquainted with my good and estimable neighbor * * *. Running an estate was an occupation entirely foreign to me. The conversation of my wet nurse, whom I had promoted to housekeeper and steward, consisted of exactly fifteen family anecdotes, very interesting for me, but always recounted in the same way, so that she became for me another New Grammar, in which I knew every line on every page. The real, time-honored grammar I found in the pantry, amidst all sorts of junk, in lamentable condition. I brought it into the light and tried to read it, but Kurganov had lost his former charm for me; I read it through once more and never opened it again.
In this extremity the thought came to me: why not try writing something myself? The indulgent reader already knows that I received a skimpy education and had no chance to acquire for myself what had once been neglected, having played with serf boys until I was sixteen, and then moving from province to province, from quarters to quarters, spending time with Jews and sutlers, playing on shabby billiard tables, and marching in the mud.
Besides that, being a writer seemed to me so complicated, so beyond the reach of the uninitiated, that the thought of taking up the pen frightened me at first. Could I dare hope to find myself someday numbered among the writers, when my ardent desire to meet even one of them had never been fulfilled? But this reminds me of an occasion which I intend to tell about as proof of my constant passion for our native literature.
In 1820, while still a cadet, I happened to be in Petersburg on official business. I lived there for a week, and despite the fact that I did not know a single person there, I had an extremely merry time of it: each day I slipped away to the theater, to the gallery of the fourth circle. I learned the names of all the actors and fell passionately in love with * * *, who one Sunday played with great artfulness the role of Amalia in the drama Misanthropy and Repentance.5 In the morning, returning from general headquarters, I usually went to a basement tearoom and read literary magazines over a cup of hot chocolate. Once I was sitting there immersed in a critical article in The Well-Intentioned; someone in a pea-green overcoat came over to me and quietly pulled a page of the Hamburg Gazette from under my journal.6 I was so taken up that I did not even raise my eyes. The stranger ordered himself a beefsteak and sat down facing me; I went on reading and paid no attention to him; meanwhile he finished his lunch, angrily scolded the waiter for negligence, drank half a bottle of wine, and left.
Two young men were there having lunch. “Do you know who that was?” one said to the other. “That was B., the writer.”
“The writer!” I exclaimed involuntarily and, abandoning the journal half read and the cup half drunk, I rushed to pay and, without waiting for the change, ran out to the street. Looking in all directions, I saw a pea-green overcoat in the distance and set out after it down Nevsky Prospect almost at a run. Having gone a few steps, I suddenly felt I was being stopped—I turned to look, an officer of the guards pointed out to me that I ought not to have shoved him off the sidewalk, but rather to have stopped and stood at attention. After this reprimand I became more careful; to my misfortune I kept meeting officers, I kept stopping, and the writer was getting further ahead of me. Never in my life was my soldier’s uniform so burdensome to me, never in my life had epaulettes seemed to me so enviable. By the Anichkin Bridge I finally caught up with the pea-green overcoat.
“Allow me to ask,” I said, putting my hand to my brow, “are you Mr. B., whose excellent articles I have had the good fortune to read in The Zealot for Enlightenment?”
“No, sir,” he replied, “I’m not a writer, I’m a lawyer, but I know B. very well. I met him a quarter of an hour ago at the Police Bridge.”
Thus my respect for Russian literature cost me thirty kopecks in forfeited change, an official reprimand, and a near arrest—and all for nothing.
Despite all the objections of my reason, the bold thought of becoming a writer kept running through my head. Finally, unable to resist the pull of nature any longer, I stitched together a thick notebook with the firm intention of filling it with whatever might come along. I investigated and evaluated all kinds of poetry (for I had yet to think ab
out humble prose) and decided to venture upon an epic poem drawn from Russian history. It did not take me long to find a hero. I chose Rurik7—and set to work.
I had acquired a certain knack for verses by copying the notebooks that were handed around among our officers—namely: The Dangerous Neighbor, Critique of the Moscow Boulevard or of the Presnya Ponds, and so on. In spite of that my poem advanced slowly, and I abandoned it at the third verse. I thought that the epic genre was not my genre, and began a tragedy of Rurik. The tragedy didn’t get going. I tried turning it into a ballad—but the ballad somehow didn’t work out for me either. Finally inspiration dawned on me, I began and successfully finished an inscription for a portrait of Rurik.
Though my inscription was not entirely unworthy of attention, especially as the first production of a young versifier, I nevertheless felt that I was not born to be a poet, and satisfied myself with this first experience. But my creative endeavors so attached me to literary pursuits that I could no longer part with the notebook and the inkpot. I wanted to descend to prose. First off, not wishing to busy myself with doing preliminary research, laying out a plan, putting parts together, and so on, I conceived the idea of writing down separate thoughts, with no connection, with no order, just as they presented themselves to me. Unfortunately, thoughts did not enter my head, and in two whole days all I came up with was the following observation:
A man who does not obey the laws of reason and is used to following the promptings of passion, often errs and subjects himself to later remorse.
A correct thought, of course, but no longer a new one. Abandoning thoughts, I took up stories, but, having no habit of organizing fictional events, I chose some remarkable anecdotes I had heard formerly from various persons, and tried to adorn the truth by lively storytelling, and occasionally also by the flowers of my own imagination. In putting these stories together, I gradually formed my style and grew accustomed to expressing myself correctly, pleasantly, and freely. But my store soon ran out, and again I began to seek a subject for my literary activity.
The thought of abandoning trivial and dubious anecdotes for the recounting of true and great events had long stirred my imagination. To be the judge, observer, and prophet of epochs and nations seemed to me the greatest height a writer could attain. But what sort of history could I write with my pitiful education, where would I not have been preceded by men of great learning and conscientiousness? What genre of history have they not yet exhausted? I might start writing world history—but does the immortal work of the Abbé Millot not exist already? Should I turn to the history of our fatherland? But what can I say after Tatishchev, Boltin, and Golikov?8 And is it for me to rummage in chronicles and delve into the secret meaning of an obsolete language, when I could not even learn Slavonic numerals? I thought of a less voluminous history, for instance, the history of our provincial capital; but here, too, I faced so many insurmountable obstacles! The trip to the city, visits to the governor and the bishop, requests for admission to the archives and monastery storerooms, and so on. The history of our district town would have been more suitable for me, but it was of no interest either for the philosopher or for the pragmatist, and offered little food for eloquence: the village * * * was renamed a town in the year 17––, and the only remarkable event preserved in its chronicles was a terrible fire that had occurred ten years earlier and had destroyed the marketplace and the government buildings.
An unexpected event resolved my perplexity. A peasant woman who was hanging laundry in the attic found an old basket filled with woodchips, litter, and books. The whole house knew my love of reading. At the very time when I was sitting over my notebook, chewing my pen and thinking of experimenting with country preaching, my housekeeper triumphantly lugged the basket into my room, exclaiming joyfully:
“Books! Books!”
“Books!” I repeated in rapture and rushed to the basket.
In fact, I saw a whole pile of books with green and blue paper covers. It was a collection of old almanacs. This discovery cooled my rapture, but even so I was glad of the unexpected find, even so they were books, and I generously rewarded the laundress’s zeal with fifty silver kopecks. Left alone, I started to examine my almanacs, and soon my attention was strongly engaged by them. They made up a continuous sequence of years from 1744 to 1799, that is, exactly fifty-five years. The blue pages usually bound into almanacs were covered with old-fashioned handwriting. Casting a glance at these lines, I saw with amazement that they contained not only observations about the weather and household accounts, but also brief historical notices about the village of Goryukhino. I immediately began sorting through these precious notes and soon found that they presented a complete history of my paternal seat over the course of almost an entire century in the most strict chronological order. On top of that they contained an inexhaustible store of economic, statistical, meteorological, and other learned observations. Since then the study of these notes has occupied me exclusively, for I saw the possibility of extracting from them a well-ordered, interesting, and instructive narrative. After familiarizing myself sufficiently with these precious memorials, I began to search for new sources for the history of the village of Goryukhino. And the abundance of them soon amazed me. Having devoted a whole six months to preliminary research, I finally took up the long-desired work and with God’s help completed it this November 3rd of the year 1827.
Now, like a certain historian similar to me, whose name I cannot recall, having finished my arduous task, I set down my pen and with sadness go to my garden to reflect upon what I have accomplished. It seems to me, too, that, having written The History of Goryukhino, I am no longer needed in this world, that my duty has been done, and it is time I went to my rest!
Here I append a list of the sources I have used in compiling The History of Goryukhino:
1. The collection of old almanacs. Fifty-four parts. The first twenty parts written in an old-fashioned hand with contractions. This chronicle was composed by my great-grandfather, Andrei Stepanovich Belkin. It is distinguished by clarity and brevity of style; for instance: “May 4—Snow. Trishka beaten for rudeness. 6—Brown cow died. Senka beaten for drunkenness. 8—Fair weather. 9—Rain and snow. Trishka beaten on account of weather. 11—Fair weather. Fresh snowfall. Hunted down three hares…” and so on, without any reflections. The remaining thirty-five parts are written in various hands, mostly in what is known as “shopkeeper’s style,” with or without contractions, are generally prolix, incoherent, and do not follow the rules of orthography. Here and there a woman’s hand is noticeable. This portion includes the notes of my grandfather, Ivan Andreevich Belkin, and my grandmother, his spouse, Evpraxia Alexeevna, as well as the notes of the clerk Garbovitsky.
2. The chronicle of the Goryukhino sexton. This curious manuscript I dug up at my priest’s, who is married to the chronicler’s daughter. The first pages had been torn out by the priest’s children and used for so-called kites. One of them fell in the middle of my courtyard. I picked it up and was about to give it back to the children, when I noticed that it was covered with writing. From the first lines I saw that the kite had been made from a chronicle, the rest of which I luckily managed to save. This chronicle, which I acquired for a quarter measure of oats, is distinguished by its profundity and uncommon grandiloquence.
3. Oral tradition. I did not neglect any sources. But I am especially indebted to Agrafena Trifonova, mother of the headman Avdei, and, it was said, the mistress of the clerk Garbovitsky.
4. Census records, with observations by previous headmen (ledgers and expense accounts) concerning the morality and living conditions of the peasants.
The land known as Goryukhino, after the name of its capital, occupies more than 650 acres of the earthly globe. The number of its residents amounts to sixty-three souls. To the north it borders on the villages of Deriukhovo and Perkukhovo,9 whose inhabitants are poor, scrawny, and undersized, and whose proud proprietors are devoted to the warlike exercise of hare hunting. To the so
uth the river Sivka separates it from the domain of the Karachevo free plowmen, restless neighbors, known for the violent cruelty of their temper. To the west it is surrounded by the flourishing fields of Zakharyino, prospering under the rule of wise and enlightened landowners. To the east it adjoins wild, uninhabited territory, an impassable swamp, where only wild cranberry grows, where the sole sound is the monotonous croaking of frogs, and which superstitious tradition supposes to be the dwelling-place of a certain demon.
NB. This place is in fact known as Demon’s Swamp. The story goes that a half-witted girl tended a heard of swine not far from this solitary place. She got pregnant and could give no satisfactory explanation of her misadventure. The voice of the people accused the swamp demon; but this tale is not worthy of a historian’s attention, and after Niebuhr it would be unpardonable to believe it.
From olden times Goryukhino had been famous for its fertility and favorable climate. Rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat thrive in its rich fields. A birch grove and a pine forest provide the inhabitants with timber and windfalls for building and heating their dwellings. There is no lack of nuts, cranberries, whortleberries, and bilberries. Mushrooms spring up in extraordinary numbers; fried with sour cream, they provide pleasant, though unhealthy, nourishment. The pond is full of carp, and in the river Sivka there are pike and burbot.
The male inhabitants of Goryukhino are for the most part of average height, of sturdy and manly build, their eyes gray, their hair brown or red. The women are distinguished by their slightly upturned noses, prominent cheekbones, and corpulence. NB. A buxom wench: this expression is found frequently in the headman’s notes to the census records. The men are well-behaved, hardworking (especially on their own land), brave, pugnacious: many of them go alone against bears and are famous in the neighborhood for fist-fighting; they are all generally inclined to the sensual pleasure of drunkenness. On top of housework, the women share a large part of the men’s labors; they yield nothing to them in bravery, and scarcely a one of them stands in fear of the headman. They make up a powerful public guard, tirelessly vigilant in the master’s courtyard, and are called “halberdears” (from the old word “halberd”). The chief duty of the halberdears is to bang a stone on a cast-iron plate as often as possible and thereby terrify evildoers. They are as chaste as they are beautiful, responding to audacious attempts both sternly and expressively.
Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin Page 14
