The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories Part 17

Both of us held our peace. A strange discomposure took possession of me.

I was sitting beside her, beside that woman whose image had so often flitted through my dreams, had so torturingly agitated and irritated me,--I was sitting beside her and felt a cold and a weight at my heart.

I knew that nothing would come of that meeting, that between her and me there was a gulf, that when we parted we should part forever. With her head bowed forward and both hands lying in her lap, she sat there indifferent and careless. I know that carelessness of incurable grief, I know that indifference of irrecoverable happiness! The masks strolled past us in couples; the sounds of the "monotonous and senseless" waltz now reverberated dully in the distance, now were wafted by in sharp gusts; the merry ball-music agitated me heavily and mournfully. "Can it be,"--I thought,--"that this woman is the same who appeared to me once on a time in the window of that little country house far away, in all the splendour of triumphant beauty?...." And yet, time seemed not to have touched her. The lower part of her face, unconcealed by the lace of her mask, was of almost childish delicacy; but a chill emanated from her, as from a statue.... Galatea had returned to her pedestal, and would descend from it no more.

Suddenly she drew herself up, darted a glance into the next room, and rose.

"Give me your arm,"--she said to me. "Let us go away quickly, quickly."

We returned to the ball-room. She walked so fast that I could barely keep up with her. She came to a standstill beside one of the columns.

"Let us wait here,"--she whispered.

"Are you looking for any one?"--I began....

But she paid no heed to me: her eager gaze was fixed upon the crowd.

Languidly and menacingly did her great black eyes look forth from beneath the black velvet.

I turned in the direction of her gaze and understood everything. Along the corridor formed by the row of columns and the wall, he was walking, that man whom I had met with her in the forest. I recognised him instantly: he had hardly changed at all. His golden-brown moustache curled as handsomely as ever, his brown eyes beamed with the same calm and self-confident cheerfulness as of yore. He was walking without haste, and, lightly bending his slender figure, was narrating something to a woman in a domino, whose arm was linked in his. As he came on a level with us, he suddenly raised his head, looked first at me, then at the woman with whom I was standing, and probably recognised her eyes, for his eyebrows quivered slightly,--he screwed up his eyes, and a barely perceptible, but intolerably insolent smile hovered over his lips. He bent down to his companion, and whispered a couple of words in her ear; she immediately glanced round, her blue eyes hastily scanned us both, and with a soft laugh she menaced him with her little hand. He slightly shrugged one shoulder, she nestled up to him coquettishly....

I turned to my Unknown. She was gazing after the receding pair, and suddenly, tearing her arm from mine, she rushed toward the door. I was about to dash after her; but turning round, she gave me such a look that I made her a profound bow, and remained where I was. I understood that to pursue her would be both rude and stupid.

"Tell me, please, my dear fellow,"--I said, half an hour later, to one of my friends--the living directory of Petersburg:--"who is that tall, handsome gentleman with a moustache?"

"That?... that is some foreigner or other, a rather enigmatic individual, who very rarely makes his appearance on our horizon. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, because!"....

I returned home. Since that time I have never met my Unknown anywhere.

Had I known the name of the man whom she loved, I might, probably, have found out, eventually, who she was, but I myself did not desire that. I have said above that that woman appeared to me like a dream-vision--and like a dream-vision she went past and vanished forever.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Pa.s.s through these hills and come cheerily to me: care thou not for too great a company. Come thou, and think secretly of me, that I may be thy comrade all the way.

[21] In central and southern Russia where timber is scarce, fences, and even the walls of barns and store-houses, are made of interlaced boughs.--TRANSLATOR.

[22] The n.o.bles' Club.--TRANSLATOR.

[23]

"I am a picture of sorrow, Leaning against the wall."

MUMu

(1852)

In one of the remote streets of Moscow, in a grey house with white pillars, an entresol, and a crooked balcony, dwelt in former days a well-born lady, a widow, surrounded by numerous domestics. Her sons were in the service in Petersburg, her daughters were married; she rarely went out into society, and was living out the last years of a miserly and tedious old age in solitude. Her day, cheerless and stormy, was long since over; but her evening also was blacker than night.

Among the ranks of her menials, the most remarkable person was the yard-porter, Gerasim, a man six feet five inches in height, built like an epic hero, and a deaf-mute from his birth. His mistress had taken him from the village, where he lived alone, in a tiny cottage, apart from his brethren, and was considered the most punctual of the taxable serfs.

Endowed with remarkable strength, he did the work of four persons.

Matters made progress in his hands, and it was a cheerful sight to watch him when he ploughed and, applying his huge hands to the primitive plough, seemed to be carving open the elastic bosom of the earth alone, without the aid of his little nag; or about St. Peter's Day[24] wielding the scythe so shatteringly that he might even have hewn off a young birch-wood from its roots; or threshing briskly and unremittingly with a chain seven feet in length, while the firm, oblong muscles on his shoulders rose and fell like levers. His uninterrupted muteness imparted to his indefatigable labour a grave solemnity. He was a splendid peasant, and had it not been for his infirmity, any maiden would willingly have married him.... But Gerasim was brought to Moscow, boots were bought for him, a broom and a shovel were put into his hand, and he was appointed to be the yard-porter.

At first he felt a violent dislike for his new life. From his childhood he had been accustomed to field-labour, to country life. Set apart by his infirmity from communion with his fellow-men, he had grown up dumb and mighty, as a tree grows on fruitful soil.... Transported to the town, he did not understand what was happening to him;--he felt bored and puzzled, as a healthy young bull is puzzled when he has just been taken from the pasture, where the gra.s.s grew up to his belly,--when he has been taken, and placed in a railway-wagon,--and, lo, with his robust body enveloped now with smoke and sparks, again with billows of steam, he is drawn headlong onward, drawn with rumble and squeaking, and whither--G.o.d only knows! Gerasim's occupations in his new employment seemed to him a mere farce after his onerous labours as a peasant; in half an hour he had finished everything, and he was again standing in the middle of the courtyard and staring, open-mouthed, at all the pa.s.sers-by, as though desirous of obtaining from them the solution of his enigmatic situation; or he would suddenly go off to some corner and, flinging his broom or his shovel far from him, would throw himself on the ground face downward, and lie motionless on his breast for whole hours at a time, like a captured wild beast.

But man grows accustomed to everything, and Gerasim got used, at last, to town life! He had not much to do; his entire duty consisted in keeping the courtyard clean, fetching a cask of water twice a day, hauling and chopping up wood for the kitchen and house,[25] and in not admitting strangers, and keeping watch at night. And it must be said that he discharged his duty with zeal; not a chip was ever strewn about his courtyard, nor any dirt; if in muddy weather the broken-winded nag for hauling water and the barrel entrusted to his care got stranded anywhere, all he had to do was to apply his shoulder,--and not only the cart, but the horse also, would be pried from the spot. If he undertook to chop wood, his axe would ring like gla.s.s, and splinters and billets would fly in every direction; and as for strangers--after he had, one night, caught two thieves, and had banged their heads together, and mauled them so that there was no necessity for taking them to the police-station afterward, every one in the neighbourhood began to respect him greatly, and even by day, pa.s.sers-by who were not in the least rascals, but simply strangers to him, at the sight of the ominous yard-porter, would brandish their arms as though in self-defence, and shout at him as though he were able to hear their cries.

With all the other domestics Gerasim sustained relations which were not exactly friendly,--they were afraid of him,--but gentle; he regarded them as members of the family. They expressed their meaning to him by signs, and he understood them, accurately executed all orders, but knew his own rights also, and no one dared to take his seat at table. On the whole, Gerasim was of stern and serious disposition, and was fond of orderliness in all things; even the c.o.c.ks did not venture to fight in his presence--but if they did, woe be to them! if he caught sight of them, he would instantly seize them by the legs, whirl them round like a wheel half a score of times in the air, and hurl them in opposite directions. There were geese also in his lady mistress's courtyard, but a goose, as every one knows, is a serious and sensible bird; Gerasim felt respect for them, tended them, and fed them; he himself bore a resemblance to a stately gander.

He was allotted a tiny chamber over the kitchen; he arranged it himself after his own taste, constructed a bed of oaken planks on four blocks--truly a bed fit for an epic hero; a hundred puds[26] might have been loaded upon it,--it would not have given way. Under the bed was a stout chest; in one corner stood a small table of the same st.u.r.dy quality, and beside the table a three-legged chair, and so firm and squatty that Gerasim himself would pick it up, drop it, and grin. This little den was fastened with a padlock which suggested a _kalatch_[27]

in shape, only black; Gerasim always carried the key to this lock with him, in his belt. He was not fond of having people come into his room.

In this manner a year pa.s.sed, at the end of which a small incident happened to Gerasim.

The old gentlewoman with whom he lived as yard-porter in all things followed the ancient customs, and kept a numerous train of domestics; she had in her house not only laundresses, seamstresses, carpenters, tailors, and dressmakers, but also one saddler, who set up to be a veterinary and a medical man for the servants as well (there was a house-physician for the mistress), and, in conclusion, there was a shoemaker, by the name of Kapiton Klimoff, a bitter drunkard. Klimoff regarded himself as an injured being and not appreciated at his true value, a cultured man used to the ways of the capital, who ought not to live in Moscow, without occupation, in a sort of desert spot, and if he drank,--as he himself expressed it, with pauses between his words, and thumping himself on the breast,--he drank in reality from grief. One day he was under discussion by the mistress and her head butler, Gavrila, a man who would seem, from his little yellow eyes and his duck's-bill nose, to have been designated by Fate itself as a commanding personage.

The mistress was complaining about the depraved morals of Kapiton, who had been picked up somewhere in the street only the night before.

"Well, Gavrila,"--she suddenly remarked:--"shall not we marry him? What dost thou think about it? Perhaps that will steady him."

"Why should n't we marry him, ma'am? It can be done, ma'am,"--replied Gavrila;--"and it would even be a very good thing."

"Yes; only who would marry him?"

"Of course, ma'am. However, as you like, ma'am. He can always be put to some use, so to speak; you would n't reject him out of any ten men."

"I think he likes Tatyana?"

Gavrila was about to make some reply, but compressed his lips.

"Yes!.... let him woo Tatyana,"--the mistress announced her decision, as she took a pinch of snuff with satisfaction:--"dost hear me?"

"I obey, ma'am,"--enunciated Gavrila, and withdrew.

On returning to his chamber (it was situated in a wing, and was almost completely filled with wrought-iron coffers), Gavrila first sent away his wife, and then seated himself by the window, and became engrossed in meditation. The mistress's sudden command had evidently dazed him. At last he rose, and ordered Kapiton to be called. Kapiton presented himself.... But before we repeat their conversation to the reader, we consider it not superfluous to state, in a few words, who this Tatyana was, whom Kapiton was to marry, and why his mistress's command had disconcerted the major-domo.

Tatyana, who, as we have said above, served as laundress (but, in her quality of expert and well-trained laundress, she was given only the delicate linen), was a woman of eight-and-twenty, small, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles on the left cheek are regarded as a bad sign in Russia--as the presage of an unhappy life....

Tatyana could not boast of her luck. From early youth she had been ill-treated; she had worked for two, and had never received any caresses; she was badly clothed; she received the very smallest of wages; she had practically no relatives; an old butler in the village who had been discharged for uselessness was her uncle, and her other uncles were common peasants,--that is all. At one time she had been a beauty, but her beauty soon left her. She was of extremely meek, or, to put it more accurately, frightened disposition, felt the most complete indifference for herself, and was deadly afraid of other people. Her sole thought was as to how she might finish her work by the appointed time. She never talked with any one, and she trembled at the mere mention of the mistress's name, although she hardly knew her by sight.

When Gerasim was brought from the country, she almost swooned with terror at the sight of his huge form, used all possible efforts to avoid meeting him, and even screwed up her eyes when she was obliged to run past him, as she scurried from the house to the laundry. At first, Gerasim paid no special attention to her, then he began to laugh when she crossed his path; then he began to gaze at her with pleasure, and at last he never took his eyes from her. Whether he had taken a liking to her because of her gentle expression of countenance, or of the timidity of her movements--G.o.d knows! And behold, one day, as she was making her way across the courtyard, cautiously elevating on her outspread fingers a starched wrapper belonging to her mistress ... some one suddenly grasped her by the elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed aloud: behind her stood Gerasim. Laughing stupidly, and bellowing affectionately, he was offering her a gingerbread c.o.c.k with gold tinsel on its tail and wings. She tried to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly straight into her hand, nodded his head, walked away, and, turning round, bellowed once more something of a very friendly nature to her.

From that day forth he gave her no peace; wherever she went, he immediately came to meet her, smiled, bellowed, waved his hands, suddenly drew a ribbon from his breast and thrust it into her hand, and cleaned the dust away in front of her with his broom.

The poor girl simply did not know how to take it or what to do. The whole household speedily found out about the pranks of the dumb yard-porter; jeers, jests, stinging remarks showered down on Tatyana.

But none of them could bring himself to ridicule Gerasim; the latter was not fond of jests; and they let her alone in his presence. w.i.l.l.y-nilly the girl became his protegee. Like all deaf and dumb people, he was very perspicacious, and understood perfectly well when they were laughing at him or at her. One day, at dinner, the keeper of the linen, Tatyana's chief, undertook, as the saying is, to banter her, and carried it to such a pitch that the latter, poor creature, did not know where to look, and almost wept with vexation. Gerasim suddenly rose half-way, stretched out his enormous hand, laid it on the head of the keeper of the linen, and glared into her face with such ferocity that the latter fairly bent over the table. All fell silent. Gerasim picked up his spoon again, and went on eating his cabbage-soup. "Just see that dumb devil, that forest fiend!" all muttered under their breaths, and the keeper of the linen rose and went off to the maids' room. On another occasion, observing that Kapiton--that same Kapiton of whom we have just been speaking--was chatting in rather too friendly a manner with Tatyana, Gerasim beckoned the man to him, led him away to the carriage-house, and seizing by its end a shaft which was standing in the corner, he menaced him slightly but significantly with it. From that time forth no one dared to address a word to Tatyana. And all this ran smoothly in his hands. No sooner had the linen-keeper, it is true, run into the maids' hall than she fell down in a swoon, and altogether behaved in such an artful manner, that on that very same day she brought to the knowledge of the mistress Gerasim's rude behaviour; but the capricious old lady merely laughed several times, to the extreme offence of her linen-keeper, made her repeat, "What didst thou say? Did he bend thee down with his heavy hand?" and on the following day sent a silver ruble to Gerasim. She favoured him as a faithful and powerful watchman. Gerasim held her in decided awe, but, nevertheless, he trusted in her graciousness, and was making ready to betake himself to her with the request that she would permit him to marry Tatyana. He was only waiting for the new kaftan promised him by the major-domo, in order that he might present himself before his mistress in decent shape, when suddenly this same mistress took into her head the idea of marrying Tatyana to Kapiton.

The reader will now be able readily to understand the cause of the perturbation which seized upon Gavrila, the major-domo, after his conversation with his mistress. "The mistress,"--he thought, as he sat by the window,--"of course, favours Gerasim" (this was well known to Gavrila, and therefore he also showed indulgence to him); "still, he is a dumb brute. I can't inform the mistress that Gerasim is courting Tatyana. And, after all, 't is just; what sort of a husband is he? And, on the other hand, Lord forgive! for just as soon as that forest fiend finds out that Tatyana is to be married to Kapiton, he 'll smash everything in the house, by Heaven he will! For you can't reason with him--you can't prevail upon him, the devil that he is, in any way whatsoever--sinful man that I am to have said so wicked a thing ....