Meidanov gave me Zinaida's address. She was staying at the HotelDemut. Old memories were astir within me.... I determined next day togo to see my former 'flame.' But some business happened to turn up; aweek passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the HotelDemut and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, shehad died, almost suddenly, in childbirth.
I felt a sort of stab at my heart. The thought that I might have seenher, and had not seen her, and should never see her--that bitterthought stung me with all the force of overwhelming reproach. 'She isdead!' I repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter. I slowly mademy way back to the street, and walked on without knowing myself whereI was going. All the past swam up and rose at once before me. So thiswas the solution, this was the goal to which that young, ardent,brilliant life had striven, all haste and agitation! I mused onthis; I fancied those dear features, those eyes, those curls--in thenarrow box, in the damp underground darkness--lying here, not farfrom me--while I was still alive, and, maybe, a few paces from myfather.... I thought all this; I strained my imagination, and yet allthe while the lines:
'From lips indifferent of her death I heard, Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care foranything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of theuniverse--even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turnto thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'Ialone am living--look you!'--but thy days fly by all the while, andvanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes,like wax in the sun, like snow.... And, perhaps, the whole secret ofthy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being ableto think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to thewinds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of usgravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that heis justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had notwasted my time!'
I, now ... what did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich futuredid I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for aninstant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
And what has come to pass of all I hoped for? And now, when the shadesof evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher,more precious, than the memories of the storm--so soon over--of earlymorning, of spring?
But I do myself injustice. Even then, in those light-hearted youngdays, I was not deaf to the voice of sorrow, when it called upon me,to the solemn strains floating to me from beyond the tomb. I remember,a few days after I heard of Zinaida's death, I was present, througha peculiar, irresistible impulse, at the death of a poor old womanwho lived in the same house as we. Covered with rags, lying on hardboards, with a sack under her head, she died hardly and painfully. Herwhole life had been passed in the bitter struggle with daily want; shehad known no joy, had not tasted the honey of happiness. One wouldhave thought, surely she would rejoice at death, at her deliverance,her rest. But yet, as long as her decrepit body held out, as long asher breast still heaved in agony under the icy hand weighing upon it,until her last forces left her, the old woman crossed herself, andkept whispering, 'Lord, forgive my sins'; and only with the last sparkof consciousness, vanished from her eyes the look of fear, of horrorof the end. And I remember that then, by the death-bed of that poorold woman, I felt aghast for Zinaida, and longed to pray for her, formy father--and for myself.
MUMU
In one of the outlying streets of Moscow, in a grey house with whitecolumns and a balcony, warped all askew, there was once living a lady,a widow, surrounded by a numerous household of serfs. Her sons were inthe government service at Petersburg; her daughters were married; shewent out very little, and in solitude lived through the last years ofher miserly and dreary old age. Her day, a joyless and gloomy day, hadlong been over; but the evening of her life was blacker than night.
Of all her servants, the most remarkable personage was the porter,Gerasim, a man full twelve inches over the normal height, of heroicbuild, and deaf and dumb from his birth. The lady, his owner, hadbrought him up from the village where he lived alone in a little hut,apart from his brothers, and was reckoned about the most punctualof her peasants in the payment of the seignorial dues. Endowed withextraordinary strength, he did the work of four men; work flew apaceunder his hands, and it was a pleasant sight to see him when he wasploughing, while, with his huge palms pressing hard upon the plough,he seemed alone, unaided by his poor horse, to cleave the yieldingbosom of the earth, or when, about St. Peter's Day, he plied hisscythe with a. furious energy that might have mown a young birch copseup by the roots, or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over twoyards long; while the hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose andfell like a lever. His perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to hisunwearying labour. He was a splendid peasant, and, except for hisaffliction, any girl would have been glad to marry him.... But nowthey had taken Gerasim to Moscow, bought him boots, had him made afull-skirted coat for summer, a sheepskin for winter, put into hishand a broom and a spade, and appointed him porter.
At first he intensely disliked his new mode of life. From hischildhood he had been used to field labour, to village life. Shut offby his affliction from the society of men, he had grown up, dumb andmighty, as a tree grows on a fruitful soil. When he was transported tothe town, he could not understand what was being done with him; he wasmiserable and stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong youngbull, taken straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up tohis belly, taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there,while smoke and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdybeast, he is whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar andwhistle, whither--God knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new dutiesseemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; inhalf-an-hour, all his work was done, and he would once more standstock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthedat all the passers-by, as though trying to wrest from them theexplanation of his perplexing position or he would suddenly go offinto some corner, and flinging a long way off the broom or the spade,throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for hours togetherwithout stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used to anything,and Gerasim got used at last to living in town. He had little work todo; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard clean, bringingin a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging in wood forthe kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and watching atnight. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his courtyardthere was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust; ifsometimes, in the muddy season, the wretched nag, put under his chargefor fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give ita shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horseitself moving. If he set to chopping wood, the axe fairly ranglike glass, and chips and chunks flew in all directions. And as forstrangers, after he had one night caught two thieves and knockedtheir heads together--knocked them so that there was not the slightestneed to take them to the police-station afterwards--every one in theneighbourhood began to feel a great respect for him; even those whocame in the day-time, by no means robbers, but simply unknown persons,at the sight of the terrible porter, waved and shouted to him asthough he could hear their shouts. With all the rest of the servants,Gerasim was on terms, hardly friendly--they were afraid of him--butfamiliar; he regarded them as his fellows. They explained themselvesto him by signs, and he understood them, and exactly carried out allorders, but knew his own rights too, and soon no one dared to takehis seat at the table. Gerasim was altogether of a strict and serioustemper, he liked order in everything; even the cocks did not dare tofight in his presence, or woe betide them! directly he caught sight ofthem, he would seize them by the legs, swing them ten times round inthe air like a wheel, and throw them in different directions. Therewere geese, too, kept in the yard; but the goose, as is well known,is a dignified and reasonable bird; Gerasim felt a respect for them,looked after them, and fed them; he was himsel
f not unlike a ganderof the steppes. He was assigned a little garret over the kitchen; hearranged it himself to his own liking, made a bedstead in it of oakboards on four stumps of wood for legs--a truly Titanic bedstead; onemight have put a ton or two on it--it would not have bent under theload; under the bed was a solid chest; in a corner stood a littletable of the same strong kind, and near the table a three-leggedstool, so solid and squat that Gerasim himself would sometimes pick itup and drop it again with a smile of delight. The garret was lockedup by means of a padlock that looked like a kalatch or basket-shapedloaf, only black; the key of this padlock Gerasim always carried abouthim in his girdle. He did not like people to come to his garret.
So passed a year, at the end of which a little incident befellGerasim.
The old lady, in whose service he lived as porter, adhered ineverything to the ancient ways, and kept a large number of servants.In her house were not only laundresses, sempstresses, carpenters,tailors and tailoresses, there was even a harness-maker--he wasreckoned as a veterinary surgeon, too,--and a doctor for the servants;there was a household doctor for the mistress; there was, lastly, ashoemaker, by name Kapiton Klimov, a sad drunkard. Klimov regardedhimself as an injured creature, whose merits were unappreciated, acultivated man from Petersburg, who ought not to be living in Moscowwithout occupation--in the wilds, so to speak; and if he drank, as hehimself expressed it emphatically, with a blow on his chest, it wassorrow drove him to it. So one day his mistress had a conversationabout him with her head steward, Gavrila, a man whom, judging solelyfrom his little yellow eyes and nose like a duck's beak, fate itself,it seemed, had marked out as a person in authority. The lady expressedher regret at the corruption of the morals of Kapiton, who had, onlythe evening before, been picked up somewhere in the street.
'Now, Gavrila,' she observed, all of a sudden, 'now, if we were tomarry him, what do you think, perhaps he would be steadier?'
'Why not marry him, indeed, 'm? He could be married, 'm,' answeredGavrila, 'and it would be a very good thing, to be sure, 'm.'
'Yes; only who is to marry him?'
'Ay, 'm. But that's at your pleasure, 'm. He may, any way, so to say,be wanted for something; he can't be turned adrift altogether.'
'I fancy he likes Tatiana.'
Gavrila was on the point of making some reply, but he shut his lipstightly.
'Yes!... let him marry Tatiana,' the lady decided, taking a pinch ofsnuff complacently, 'Do you hear?'
'Yes, 'm,' Gavrila articulated, and he withdrew.
Returning to his own room (it was in a little lodge, and was almostfilled up with metal-bound trunks), Gavrila first sent his wifeaway, and then sat down at the window and pondered. His mistress'sunexpected arrangement had clearly put him in a difficulty. At last hegot up and sent to call Kapiton. Kapiton made his appearance.... Butbefore reporting their conversation to the reader, we consider it notout of place to relate in few words who was this Tatiana, whom itwas to be Kapiton's lot to marry, and why the great lady's order haddisturbed the steward.
Tatiana, one of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained andskilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), wasa woman of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her leftcheek. Moles on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen inRussia--a token of unhappy life.... Tatiana could not boast of hergood luck. From her earliest youth she had been badly treated; shehad done the work of two, and had never known affection she had beenpoorly clothed and had received the smallest wages. Relations she hadpractically none; an uncle she had once had, a butler, left behind inthe country as useless, and other uncles of hers were peasants--thatwas all. At one time she had passed for a beauty, but her good lookswere very soon over. In disposition, she was very meek, or, rather,scared; towards herself, she felt perfect indifference; of others, shestood in mortal dread; she thought of nothing but how to get her workdone in good time, never talked to any one, and trembled at the veryname of her mistress, though the latter scarcely knew her by sight.When Gerasim was brought from the country, she was ready to die withfear on seeing his huge figure, tried all she could to avoid meetinghim, even dropped her eyelids when sometimes she chanced to run pasthim, hurrying from the house to the laundry. Gerasim at first paidno special attention to her, then he used to smile when she came hisway, then he began even to stare admiringly at her, and at last henever took his eyes off her. She took his fancy, whether by the mildexpression of her face or the timidity of her movements, who cantell? So one day she was stealing across the yard, with a starcheddressing-jacket of her mistress's carefully poised on her outspreadfingers ... some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the elbow;she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim. Witha foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out toher a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings. She wasabout to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook hishead, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted something veryaffectionately to her. From that day forward he gave her no peace;wherever she went, he was on the spot at once, coming to meet her,smiling, grunting, waving his hands; all at once he would pull aribbon out of the bosom of his smock and put it in her hand, or wouldsweep the dust out of her way. The poor girl simply did not know howto behave or what to do. Soon the whole household knew of the dumbporter's wiles; jeers, jokes, sly hints were showered upon Tatiana. AtGerasim, however, it was not every one who would dare to scoff; he didnot like jokes; indeed, in his presence, she, too, was left in peace.Whether she liked it or not, the girl found herself to be under hisprotection. Like all deaf-mutes, he was very suspicious, and veryreadily perceived when they were laughing at him or at her. One day,at dinner, the wardrobe-keeper, Tatiana's superior, fell to nagging,as it is called, at her, and brought the poor thing to such a statethat she did not know where to look, and was almost crying withvexation. Gerasim got up all of a sudden, stretched out his gigantichand, laid it on the wardrobe-maid's head, and looked into her facewith such grim ferocity that her head positively flopped upon thetable. Every one was still. Gerasim took up his spoon again andwent on with his cabbage-soup. 'Look at him, the dumb devil, thewood-demon!' they all muttered in under-tones, while the wardrobe-maidgot up and went out into the maids' room. Another time, noticing thatKapiton--the same Kapiton who was the subject of the conversationreported above--was gossiping somewhat too attentively with Tatiana,Gerasim beckoned him to him, led him into the cartshed, and takingup a shaft that was standing in a corner by one end, lightly, butmost significantly, menaced him with it. Since then no one addresseda word to Tatiana. And all this cost him nothing. It is true thewardrobe-maid, as soon as she reached the maids' room, promptlyfell into a fainting-fit, and behaved altogether so skilfully thatGerasim's rough action reached his mistress's knowledge the same day.But the capricious old lady only laughed, and several times, to thegreat offence of the wardrobe-maid, forced her to repeat 'how he bentyour head down with his heavy hand,' and next day she sent Gerasima rouble. She looked on him with favour as a strong and faithfulwatchman. Gerasim stood in considerable awe of her, but, all the same,he had hopes of her favour, and was preparing to go to her with apetition for leave to marry Tatiana. He was only waiting for a newcoat, promised him by the steward, to present a proper appearancebefore his mistress, when this same mistress suddenly took it into herhead to marry Tatiana to Kapiton.
The reader will now readily understand the perturbation of mind thatovertook the steward Gavrila after his conversation with his mistress.'My lady,' he thought, as he sat at the window, 'favours Gerasim, tobe sure'--(Gavrila was well aware of this, and that was why he himselflooked on him with an indulgent eye)--'still he is a speechlesscreature. I could not, indeed, put it before the mistress thatGerasim's courting Tatiana. But, after all, it's true enough; he's aqueer sort of husband. But on the other hand, that devil, God forgiveme, has only got to find out they're marrying Tatiana to Kapiton,he'll smash up everything in the house, 'pon my soul! There's noreasoning with him; why, he's
such a devil, God forgive my sins,there's no getting over him no how ... 'pon my soul!'
Kapiton's entrance broke the thread of Gavrila's reflections. Thedissipated shoemaker came in, his hands behind him, and loungingcarelessly against a projecting angle of the wall, near the door,crossed his right foot in front of his left, and tossed his head, asmuch as to say, 'What do you want?'
Gavrila looked at Kapiton, and drummed with his fingers on thewindow-frame. Kapiton merely screwed up his leaden eyes a little, buthe did not look down, he even grinned slightly, and passed his handover his whitish locks which were sticking up in all directions.'Well, here I am. What is it?'
'You're a pretty fellow,' said Gavrila, and paused. 'A pretty fellowyou are, there's no denying!'
Kapiton only twitched his little shoulders.
'Are you any better, pray?' he thought to himself.
'Just look at yourself, now, look at yourself,' Gavrila went onreproachfully; 'now, what ever do you look like?'
Kapiton serenely surveyed his shabby tattered coat, and his patchedtrousers, and with special attention stared at his burst boots,especially the one on the tip-toe of which his right foot sogracefully poised, and he fixed his eyes again on the steward.
'Well?'
'Well?' repeated Gavrila. 'Well? And then you say well? You look likeold Nick himself, God forgive my saying so, that's what you looklike.'
Kapiton blinked rapidly.
'Go on abusing me, go on, if you like, Gavrila Andreitch,' he thoughtto himself again.
'Here you've been drunk again,' Gavrila began, 'drunk again, haven'tyou? Eh? Come, answer me!'