‘I want to tell you what I think,’ Prokofy began. ‘This business here can’t go on, because you yourself know this vale of tears can blacken our name. Of course, Ma’s too sorry for you to tell you anything unpleasant – I mean, that your sister should move somewhere else because she’s expecting, like. But I want no more of it, seeing as I can’t approve of the way she’s been carrying on.’
I understood and walked away from the stall. That same day my sister and I moved to Radish’s. We had no money for a cab, so we walked. I carried our things in a bundle on my back, but my sister carried nothing. She kept gasping and coughing and asking if we would be there soon.
XIX
At last a letter from Masha arrived.
My dear, kind M. (she wrote), my kind, gentle ‘guardian angel’, as our old painter calls you. Goodbye. I’m going with Father to the Exhibition in America.14 In a few days I shall see the ocean – it’s so far from Dubechnya it frightens me to think of it! It’s as distant and boundless as the sky and it’s there I long to go, to be free. I’m exultant, as happy as a lark, I’m insane – you can see what a mess this letter is. My dear Misail, give me my freedom, please hurry and snap the thread which is still binding you and me. To have met and known you was like a ray of heavenly light that brightened my existence. But becoming your wife was a mistake, you understand that, and the realization of this mistake weighs heavy on me. I go down on my knees and beg you, my dear generous friend, to send me a telegram as quick as you can, before I travel over the ocean. Tell me that you agree to correct the mistake both of us made, to take away the only stone that drags my wings down. Father will make all the arrangements and he’s promised not to trouble you too much with formalities. And so, am I as free as a bird? Yes? Be happy, God bless you. Forgive me for having sinned.
I’m alive and well. I’m throwing money away, I do many stupid things and every minute I thank God that a silly woman like me has no children. I’m having success with my singing, but it’s no idle pastime, it’s my refuge, my cell where I retire to find peace. King David had a ring with the inscription ‘All things pass’. Whenever I feel sad those words cheer me up, but when I’m cheerful they make me sad.
I have a ring now with Hebrew letters and it’s a talisman that will keep me from temptation. All things pass, and life itself will pass, which means one needs nothing. Or perhaps all one needs to know is that one is free, because free people need nothing, absolutely nothing. Break the thread. My fondest love to you and your sister.
Forgive and forget your M.
My sister was lying in one room; in another lay Radish, who had been ill again and was just convalescing. When the letter arrived my sister had quickly gone into the painter’s room, had sat down and started reading to him. Every day she read Ostrovsky15 or Gogol, and he would listen very seriously, staring into space. Now and then he would shake his head and mutter to himself ‘All things are possible, all things!’
If something ugly, nasty was depicted in a play he would poke the book with his finger and start gloating, ‘There’s a pack of lies. That’s what lying does for you!’
He liked plays for their plot, moral message and intricate artistic structure, and he always called the author him, he, never actually mentioning names. ‘How skilfully he’s made everything fit together!’ he would say.
This time my sister read only one page to him; she could not go on as her voice was too weak. Radish took her by the arm, twitched his dry lips and said in a barely audible, hoarse voice, ‘The righteous man’s soul is white and smooth as chalk, but a sinner’s is like pumice stone. A righteous man’s soul is like bright oil, but a sinner’s is like tar. We must toil, endure sorrow, suffer illness,’ he went on. ‘But he who does not toil or grieve will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Woe to the well-fed, woe to the strong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers. They will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Aphids eat grass, rust eats iron…’
I read the letter once more. Then the soldier came into the kitchen – the same soldier who twice weekly brought us tea, French rolls and grouse that smelt of perfume. Who the sender was remained a mystery. I had no work, so I had to stay at home for days on end, and whoever sent the rolls must have known that we were hard up.
I could hear my sister talking to the soldier and cheerfully laughing. Then she ate a small roll, lay on the bed and told me, ‘From the very start, when you said you didn’t want to work in an office and became a house-painter, Anyuta Blagovo and I knew that you were in the right, but we were too scared to say it out loud. Tell me, what is this strange power that prevents us from saying what we think? Take Anyuta Blagovo, for example. She loves you, she adores you, and she knows that you’re right. She loves me like a sister and knows that I’m right as well. Perhaps in her heart of hearts she envies me. But something is stopping her from coming to see us. She avoids us, she’s scared.’
My sister folded her hands on her breast and said excitedly, ‘If only you knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me alone, and in secret, in the dark. She used to take me to a dark avenue in the garden and whisper how dear you are to her. You’ll see, she’ll never marry, because she loves you. Don’t you feel sorry for her?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was the one who sent those rolls. She really makes me laugh. Why should she hide it? I was once funny and silly too, but now I’ve left that place I’m no longer scared of anyone. I think and I say what I like out loud and that’s made me happy. When I was living at home I had no idea what happiness was; now I wouldn’t change places with a queen.’
Dr Blagovo arrived. He had received his M.D. and was staying in town at his father’s place for a little rest. He said that he would soon be off to St Petersburg again, as he wanted to do research in typhus and cholera inoculations, it seemed. He wanted to go abroad to complete his studies and then become a professor. He had resigned from the army and wore loose-fitting cheviot jackets, very wide trousers and superb ties. My sister was in raptures over the tiepins, the cufflinks, and the red silk scarf he sported in the top pocket of his jacket. Once, when we had nothing to do, we tried to remember how many suits he had and concluded that there were at least ten. He clearly loved my sister as much as before, but not once, even as a joke, did he suggest taking her with him to St Petersburg or abroad. I just couldn’t imagine what would happen to her if she survived, what would become of the child. All she did was daydream, however, without giving any serious thought to the future: she said that he could go where he liked, even abandon her, as long as he was happy, and that she was quite content with things as they had turned out.
When he visited us he usually listened very carefully to her and insisted she had drops in her milk. And this time it was the same. He listened to her chest, then made her drink a glass of milk, after which our rooms smelled of creosote.
‘That’s my clever girl!’ he said, taking her glass. ‘You mustn’t talk too much, you’ve been chattering ten to the dozen lately. Now, please don’t talk so much!’
She burst out laughing. Then he went into Radish’s room, where I was sitting, and gave me an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
‘Well, how are you, old man?’ he asked, bending over the invalid.
‘Sir,’ Radish said, quietly moving his lips. ‘If I may be so bold as to inform you, sir… all of us are in God’s hands, we all have to die some time… Allow me to tell you the truth, sir… you won’t enter the kingdom of heaven!’
‘What can I do about it?’ the doctor joked. ‘Someone has to go to hell.’
And then, suddenly, I seemed to lose consciousness and felt that I was dreaming: it was a winter’s night and I was standing in the slaughterhouse next to Prokofy, who smelt of pepper-brandy. I tried to pull myself together, rubbed my eyes and seemed to be on my way to the Governor’s, for the interview. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before or since and I can only put these strange, dream-like memories down to nervous strain. I lived through the scene at the slaughterhouse
and my interview at the Governor’s, vaguely conscious all the time that it wasn’t real. When I came to, I realized that I wasn’t in the house, but standing near a street-lamp with the doctor.
‘It’s sad, so sad,’ he was saying, the tears running down his cheeks. ‘She’s cheerful, always laughing and full of hope. But her condition is hopeless, my dear friend. Your Radish hates me and keeps trying to drum into me how badly I’ve behaved towards her. In his way he’s right, but I have my views as well and I don’t regret what happened at all. One must love, we should all love, shouldn’t we? Without love there wouldn’t be any life and the man who fears love and runs away from it is not free.’
Gradually he turned to other topics – science, his thesis, which had a good reception in St Petersburg. He spoke very enthusiastically and quite forgot my sister, his own sorrows, and me. He was thrilled with life. ‘She has America and a ring with an inscription,’ I thought, ‘and he has a higher degree and an academic career in front of him. Only my sister and I are in the same old rut.’
I said goodbye and went over to a street-lamp to read the letter again. And I remembered vividly how she had come down to the mill one spring morning to see me, how she lay down and covered herself with a sheepskin coat, trying to look like a simple old peasant woman. Another time, when we were pulling the fish-trap out of the water, large raindrops scattered over us from the willows along the bank and made us laugh.
Everything was dark in our house in Great Dvoryansky Street. I climbed the fence and went into the kitchen by the back door, as in former days, to fetch a lamp. No one was there. A samovar was hissing by the stove, all ready for Father. ‘Who’s going to pour Father’s tea for him now?’ I wondered. Taking the lamp, I went into my hut, made up a bed from old newspapers and lay down. The spikes on the wall looked as ominous as before and their shadows flickered. It was cold. I expected my sister to come in with my supper at any moment, but immediately I remembered that she was ill at Radish’s. Climbing that fence and lying in my unheated hut struck me as bizarre. Everything seemed confused and my imagination conjured up the oddest things.
The bell rang. I remember those sounds from childhood: at first the wire rustling along the wall, then a short, plaintive tinkle. This was Father returning from his club. I got up and went into the kitchen. When Aksinya the cook saw me she clasped her hands and, for some reason, burst out crying.
‘My dear boy!’ she said softly. ‘My dear! Oh, good heavens!’
She was so excited she began crumpling her apron. Half-gallon jars of berries in vodka stood in the window. I poured out a teacupful and gulped it down, I was so thirsty. Aksinya had just scrubbed the table and benches and there was that smell which bright, comfortable kitchens always have where the cook keeps everything clean and shining. This smell, with the chirping of crickets, always used to tempt us into the kitchen when we were children and put us in the mood for fairy tales and card games.
‘Where’s Cleopatra?’ Aksinya asked, quietly and hurriedly, holding her breath. ‘And where’s your cap, dear? I hear your wife’s gone to St Petersburg.’
She had worked for us when Mother was alive and used to bath me and Cleopatra in a tub. And for her we were still children who had to be told what to do. Within a quarter of an hour she had revealed to me, in that quiet kitchen, with all the wisdom of an old servant, the ideas she had been accumulating since we last met. She told me that the doctor ought to be forced to marry Cleopatra – he only needed a good fright, and that, if the application were made in the right way, the bishop would dissolve his first marriage. She said that it would be a good idea to sell Dubechnya without my wife knowing anything about it and to bank the money in my own name; that if my sister and I went down on bended knees before our father and begged hard enough, he would perhaps forgive us; and that we should say a special prayer to the Holy Mother.
‘Well, off with you, dear, go and talk to him,’ she said when we heard Father coughing. ‘Go and talk to him, bow down before him, your head won’t fall off.’
So I went. Father was at his desk sketching a plan for a villa with Gothic windows and a stumpy turret that resembled the watchtower of a fire-station – all very heavy-handed and amateurish. I entered his study and stopped where I could see the plan. I didn’t know why I’d come to see Father, but when I saw his gaunt face, his red neck, his shadow on the wall, I remember that I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and go down on my bended knees as Aksinya had instructed. But the sight of that villa with its Gothic windows and stumpy turret held me back.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
He looked at me and immediately looked down at his plan.
‘What do you want?’ he asked after a while.
‘I’ve come to tell you that my sister is very ill. She doesn’t have long to live,’ I added in an empty voice.
‘Well, now,’ Father sighed, taking off his spectacles and laying them on the table. ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap. As ye sow, so shall ye reap,’ he repeated, getting up from the table. ‘I want you to remember when you came here two years ago. In this very place I asked you, I begged you, to abandon the error of your ways. I reminded you of your duty, your honour, your debt to your ancestors, whose traditions must be held sacred. You ignored my advice and stubbornly clung to your erroneous ideas. What’s more, you led your sister astray and made her lose her moral sense and all sense of decency. Now you’re both paying for it. Well, then, as ye sow, so shall ye reap!’
He said all this pacing the study. Probably he thought that I’d come to apologize and probably plead for myself and my sister. I was cold, I shivered feverishly and spoke in a hoarse voice and with great difficulty.
‘And I would also ask you to remember something,’ I said. ‘In this very room I begged you to try and understand my viewpoint, to think hard about what we’re living for and how we should live. But your only answer was to talk about ancestors, about the grandfather who wrote poetry. Now, when you’re told that your only daughter is hopelessly ill, all you can do is go on about ancestors and tradition. How can you be so thoughtless in your old age, when death is just round the corner and you have only five or ten years left?’
‘Why have you come here?’ Father asked sternly, clearly annoyed with me for calling him thoughtless.
‘I don’t know. I love you and can’t say how sorry I am that we’re so far apart. That’s why I came. I still love you, but my sister’s finished with you for good. She won’t forgive you, she never will. The mere mention of your name fills her with revulsion for the past, for life.’
‘And who’s to blame?’ Father shouted. ‘You’re to blame, you scoundrel!’
‘All right, I’m to blame,’ I said. ‘I admit that I’m to blame for many things. But why is the type of life you’re leading – which you insist we have to follow – so boring, so undistinguished? In all the houses you’ve been building for thirty years now, why isn’t there a single person who could teach me how to live the way you want? There’s not one honest man in the whole town! These houses of yours are thieves’ kitchens, where life is made hell for mothers and daughters and where children are tortured. My poor mother!’ I went on despairingly. ‘My poor sister! One has to drug oneself with vodka, cards, scandal, one has to cringe, play the hypocrite, draw up plan after plan for years and years to blind oneself to the horrors lurking in those houses. Our town has existed for hundreds of years and not once in all that time has it given one useful person to the country – not one! Anything at all bright and lively has been stifled at birth by you. This is a town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, priests. It’s a useless town, no good to anyone. Not one person would be sorry if the earth suddenly swallowed it up.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more, you scoundrel!’ my father said, picking up a ruler from the table. ‘You’re drunk! How dare you visit your father in that state! I’m telling you for the last time – and you can tell this to your slut of a sister – that you will get nothing from me. There’s no
place in my heart for disobedient children, and if they suffer for their disobedience and obstinacy they’ll get no pity from me. You can go back to where you came from. It was God’s will to punish me through you, but I endure this trial with all humility. I’ll find consolation in suffering and never-ending toil, as Job did. You will never cross my doorstep again unless you reform. I’m a just person, everything I’m telling you is good sense. If you want to do yourself some good, remember what I said to you before and what I’m telling you now – remember it for the rest of your life!’
I gave up and left. I don’t remember what happened that night or on the next day. People said that I staggered bare-headed through the streets, singing out loud, with crowds of boys following me and shouting ‘Better-than-Nothing! Better-than-Nothing!’
XX
If I had wanted a ring I would have chosen the following inscription for it: ‘Nothing passes’. I believe that nothing actually disappears without trace and that the slightest step we take has some meaning for the present and future.
What I have lived through has not been in vain. The people in the town have been touched by my misfortunes and my powers of endurance. No longer do they call me ‘Better-than-Nothing’, no longer do they laugh at me or pour water over me when I walk through the market. Now they are used to my being a workman and they see nothing strange in a gentleman like myself carrying buckets of paint and fitting window-panes. On the contrary, they willingly give me jobs to do and I’m considered an excellent workman and the best contractor after Radish. Although his health is better – he still paints church belfry cupolas without using scaffolding – he can no longer keep the men under control. I run around town now instead of him, looking for orders. I take men on, sack them, I borrow money at high interest. And now that I’ve become a contractor I can understand how a man can run round town for three days looking for roofers, for the sake of some lousy little job. People are polite to me, call me ‘Mr’, and in the houses where I’m working I’m given tea and asked if I want a hot meal. Children and girls often come and watch me, with sad, inquisitive looks.