Virgin Soil Part 40

"Then there is no need to bother about the Sipiagins," he continued gaily, "is there?"

Solomin was about to go out.

"Va.s.sily Fedot.i.tch..."

"Yes..."

"Why is it you are so talkative with me when you are usually so silent?

You can't imagine what pleasure it gives me."

"Why?" Solomin took both her soft little hands in his big hard ones.

"Why, did you ask? Well, I suppose it must be because I love you so much. Good-bye."

He went out. Mariana stood pensive looking after him. In a little while she went to find Tatiana who had not yet brought the samovar. She had tea with her, washed some pots, plucked a chicken, and even combed out some boy's tangled head of hair.

Before dinner she returned to her own rooms and soon afterwards Nejdanov arrived.

He came in tired and covered with dust and dropped on to the sofa. She immediately sat down beside him.

"Well, tell me what happened."

"You remember the two lines," he responded in a weary voice:

"It would have been so funny Were it not so sad."

"Do you remember?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, these lines apply admirably to my first expedition, excepting that it was more funny than sad. I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing easier than to act a part. No one dreamed of suspecting me.

There was one thing, however, that I had not thought of. You must be prepared with some sort of yarn beforehand, or else when any one asks you where you've come from and why you've come, you don't know what to say. But, however, even that is not so important. You've only to stand a drink and lie as much as you like."

"And you? Did you lie?"

"Of course I did, as much as I could. And then I've discovered that absolutely everyone you come across is discontented, only no one cares to find out the remedy for this discontent. I made a very poor show at propaganda, only succeeded in leaving a couple of pamphlets in a room and shoving a third into a cart. What may come of them the Lord only knows! I ran across four men whom I offered some pamphlets. The first asked if it was a religious book and refused to take it; the second could not read, but took it home to his children for the sake of the picture on the cover; the third seemed hopeful at first, but ended by abusing me soundly and also not taking it; the fourth took a little book, thanked me very much, but I doubt if he understood a single word I said to him. Besides that, a dog bit my leg, a peasant woman threatened me with a poker from the door of her hut, shouting, 'Ugh! you pig! You Moscow rascals! There's no end to you!' and then a soldier shouted after me, 'Hi, there! We'll make mince-meat of you!' and he got drunk at my expense!"

"Well, and what else?

"What else? I've got a blister on my foot; one of my boots is horribly large. And now I'm as hungry as a wolf and my head is splitting from the vodka."

"Why, did you drink much?"

"No, only a little to set the example, but I've been in five public-houses. I can't endure this beastliness, vodka. Goodness knows why our people drink it. If one must drink this stuff in order to become simplified, then I had rather be excused!"

"And so no one suspected you?"

"No one, with the exception, perhaps, of a bar-man, a stout individual with pale eyes, who did look at me somewhat suspiciously. I overheard him saying to his wife, 'Keep an eye on that carroty-haired one with the squint.' (I was not aware until that moment that I had a squint.) 'There's something wrong about him. See how he's sticking over his vodka.' What he meant by 'sticking' exactly, I didn't understand, but it could hardly have been to my credit. It reminded me of the mauvais ton in Gogol's "Revisor", do you remember? Perhaps because I tried to pour my vodka under the table. Oh dear! It is difficult for an aesthetic creature like me to come in contact with real life."

"Never mind. Better luck next time," Mariana said consolingly. "But I am glad you see the humorous side of this, your first attempt. You were not really bored, were you?"

"No, it was rather amusing. But I know that I shall think it all over now and it will make me miserable."

"But I won't let you think about it! I will tell you everything I did.

Dinner will be here in a minute. By the way, I must tell you that I washed the saucepan Tatiana cooked the soup in... I'll tell you everything, every little detail."

And so she did. Nejdanov listened and could not take his eyes off her.

She stopped several times to ask why he looked at her so intently, but he was silent.

After dinner she offered to read Spielhagen aloud to him, but had scarcely got through one page when he got up suddenly and fell at her feet. She stood up; he flung both his arms round her knees and began uttering pa.s.sionate, disconnected, and despairing words. He wanted to die, he knew he would soon die... She did not stir, did not resist.

She calmly submitted to his pa.s.sionate embraces, and calmly, even affectionately, glanced down upon him. She laid both her hands on his head, feverishly pressed to the fold of her dress, but her calmness had a more powerful effect on him than if she had repulsed him. He got up murmuring: "Forgive me, Mariana, for today and for yesterday. Tell me again that you are prepared to wait until I am worthy of your love, and forgive me."

"I gave you my word. I never change."

"Thank you, dear. Goodbye."

Nejdanov went out and Mariana locked the door of her room.

x.x.x

A FORTNIGHT later, in the same room, Nejdanov sat bending over his three-legged table, writing to his friend Silin by the dim light of a tallow candle. (It was long past midnight. Muddy garments lay scattered on the sofa, on the floor, just where they had been thrown off. A fine drizzly rain pattered against the window-panes and a strong, warm wind moaned about the roof of the house.)

MY DEAR VLADIMIR,--I am writing to you without giving my address and will send this letter by a messenger to a distant posting-station as my being here is a secret, and to disclose it might mean the ruin not of myself alone. It is enough for you to know that for the last two weeks I have been living in a large factory together with Mariana. We ran away from the Sipiagins on the day on which I last wrote to you. A friend has given us shelter here. For convenience sake I will call him Va.s.sily. He is the chief here and an excellent man. Our stay is only of a temporary nature; we will move on when the time for action comes. But, however, judging by events so far, the time is hardly likely ever to come!

Vladimir, I am horribly miserable. I must tell you before everything that although Mariana and I ran away together, we have so far been living like brother and sister. She loves me and told me she would be mine if I feel I have the right to ask it of her.

Vladimir, I do not feel that I have the right! She trusts me, believes in my honour--I cannot deceive her. I know that I never loved nor will ever love any one more than her (of that I am convinced), but for all that, how can I unite her fate forever with mine? A living being to a corpse? Well, if not a complete corpse, at any rate, a half-dead creature. Where would one's conscience be? I can hear you say that if pa.s.sion was strong enough the conscience would be silent. But that is just the point; I am a corpse, an honest, well-meaning corpse if you like, but a corpse nevertheless. Please do not say that I always exaggerate. Everything I have told you is absolutely true. Mariana is very reserved and is at present wrapped up in her activities in which she believes, and I?

Well, enough of love and personal happiness and all that. It is now a fortnight since I have been going among "the people," and really it would be impossible to imagine anything more stupid than they are. Of course the fault lies probably more in me than in the work itself. I am not a fanatic. I am not one of those who regenerate themselves by contact with the people and do not lay them on my aching bosom like a flannel bandage--I want to influence them. But how? How can it be done?

When I am among them I find myself listening all the time, taking things in, but when it comes to saying anything--I am at a loss for a word! I feel that I am no good, a bad actor in a part that does not suit him.

Conscientiousness or scepticism are absolutely of no use, nor is a pitiful sort of humour directed against oneself. It is worse than useless! I find it disgusting to look at the filthy rags I carry about on me, the masquerade as Va.s.sily calls it! They say you must first learn the language of the people, their habits and customs, but rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, I say! You have only to BELIEVE in what you say and say what you like! I once happened to hear a sectarian prophet delivering a sermon. Goodness only knows what arrant nonsense he talked, a sort of gorgeous mix-up of ecclesiastical learning, interspersed with peasant expressions, not even in decent Russian, but in some outlandish dialect, but he took one by storm with his enthusiasm--went straight to the heart. There he stood with flashing eyes, the voice deep and firm, with clenched fist--as though he were made of iron! No one understood what he was saying, but everyone bowed down before him and followed him. But when I begin to speak, I seem like a culprit begging for forgiveness. I ought to join the sectarians, although their wisdom is not great... but they have faith, faith!

Mariana too has faith. She works from morning until night with Tatiana--a peasant woman here, as good as can be and not by any means stupid; she says, by the way, that we want to become simplified and calls us simple souls. Mariana is about working with this woman from morning until night, scarcely sitting down for a moment, just like a regular ant! She is delighted that her hands are turning red and rough, and in the midst of these humble occupations is looking forward to the scaffold! She has even attempted to discard shoes; went out somewhere barefoot and came back barefoot. I heard her washing her feet for a long time afterwards and then saw her come out, treading cautiously; they were evidently sore, poor thing, but her face was radiant with smiles as though she had found a treasure or been illuminated by the sun. Yes, Mariana is a brick! But when I try to talk to her of my feelings, a certain shame comes over me somehow, as though I were violating something that was not my own, and then that glance... Oh, that awful devoted, irresistible glance! "Take me," it seems to say, "BUT REMEMBER...." Enough of this! Is there not something higher and better in this world? In other words, put on your filthy coat and go among the people... Oh, yes, I am just going.

How I loathe this irritability, sensitiveness, impressionable-ness, fastidiousness, inherited from my aristocratic father! What right had he to bring me into this world, endowed with qualities quite unsuited to the sphere in which I must live? To create a bird and throw it in the water? An aesthetic amidst filth! A democrat, a lover of the people, yet the very smell of their filthy vodka makes me feel sick!

But it's too bad blaming my father. He was not responsible for my becoming a democrat.

"Yes, Vladimir, I am in a bad plight. Grey, depressing thoughts are continually haunting me. Can it be, you will be asking me, that I have not met with anything consoling, any good living personality, however ignorant he might not be? How shall I tell you? I have run across someone--a decent clever chap, but unfortunately, however hard I may try to get nearer him, he has no need of either me or my pamphlets--that is the root of the matter! Pavel, a factoryhand here (he is Va.s.sily's right hand, a clever fellow with his head screwed on the right way, a future "head," I think I wrote to you about him), well this Pavel has a friend, a peasant called Elizar, also a smart chap, as free and courageous as one would wish, but as soon as we get together there seems a dead wall between us! His face spells one big "No!" Then there was another man I ran across--he was a rather quarrelsome type by the way. "Don't you try to get around me, sir," he said. "What I want to know is would you give up your land now, or not?" "But I'm not a gentleman," I remonstrated.

"Bless you!" he exclaimed, "you a common man and no more sense than that!

Leave me alone, please!

Another thing I've noticed is that if anyone listens to you readily and takes your pamphlets at once, he is sure to be of an undesirable, brainless sort. Or you may chance upon some frightfully talkative individual who can do nothing but keep on repeating some favourite expression. One such nearly drove me mad; everything with him was "production." No matter what you said to him he came out with his "production," d.a.m.n him! Just one more remark.

Do you remember some time ago there used to be a great deal of talk about "superfluous" people--Hamlets? Such "superfluous people" are now to be met with among the peasants! They have their own characteristics of course and are for the most part inclined to consumption. They are interesting types and come to us readily, but as far as the cause is concerned they are ineffective, like all other Hamlets. Well, what can one do? Start a secret printing press? There are pamphlets enough as it is, some that say, "Cross yourself and take up the hatchet," and others that say simply, "Take up the hatchet" without the crossing. Or should one write novels of peasant life with plenty of padding? They wouldn't get published, you know. Perhaps it might be better to take up the hatchet after all? But against whom, with whom, and what for? So that our state soldier may shoot us down with the state rifle? It would only be a complicated form of suicide! It would be better to make an end of yourself--you would at any rate know when and how, and choose the spot to aim at.

I am beginning to think that if some war were to break out, some people's war--I would go and take part in it, not so as to free others (free others while one's own are groaning under the yoke!!), but to make an end of myself.