The shopkeeper gazes at him in dumb astonishment, becomes perplexed and frightened himself: never before has Father Grigory spoken in that tone with the Verkhnie Zaprudy intellectual! For a moment the two are silent, peering into each other’s eyes. The shopkeeper’s perplexity is so great that his fat face spreads in all directions like spilled batter.
“How did you dare?” the priest repeats.
“Wh … what, sir?” Andrei Andreich’s perplexity continues.
“You don’t understand?!” Father Grigory whispers, stepping back in amazement and clasping his hands. “What’s that on your shoulders—a head, or some other object? You send a note in to the sanctuary and write a word on it that is even indecent to say in the street! Why are you goggling your eyes? Don’t you know the meaning of this word?”
“That is, concerning the harlot, sir?” murmurs the shopkeeper, blushing and blinking his eyes. “But the Lord, in his goodness, I mean … that is, he forgave the harlot … and prepared a place for her, and from the life of the blessed Mary of Egypt5 we can see, in that same sense of the word, begging your pardon …”
The shopkeeper wants to give some further argument as an excuse, but gets confused and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
“So that’s how you understand it!” Father Grigory clasps his hands. “But the Lord forgave—you understand?—forgave, and you judge, denounce, call someone an indecent name—and who? Your own departed daughter! Not only in sacred, but even in secular writings you cannot find such a sin! I repeat to you, Andrei: don’t get too clever! Yes, brother, don’t get too clever! God may have given you a searching mind, but if you can’t control it, you’d better give up thinking … Give up thinking and keep quiet!”
“But she was a sort of… begging your pardon … a play-actress!” pronounces the stunned Andrei Andreich.
“A play-actress! But whoever she was, you must forget it all after her death, and not go writing it in your notes!”
“That’s so …” agrees the shopkeeper.
“You ought to have a penance laid on you.” From inside the sanctuary comes the bass voice of the deacon, who looks contemptuously at Andrei Andreich’s abashed face. “Then you’d stop acting smart! Your daughter was a famous artiste. Her death was even reported in the newspapers … Philosophizer!”
“That, of course … in fact …” mutters the shopkeeper, “is not a suitable word, but it wasn’t by way of judging, Father Grigory, but to make it godly-like … so you could see better who to pray for. People do write different titles for commemoration, like, say, the child Ioann, the drowned Pelageya, the warrior Yegor, the murdered Pavel, and such like … That’s what I wanted.”
“None too bright, Andrei! God will forgive you, but next time watch out. Above all, don’t get clever, just think as others do. Make ten bows and go.”
“Yes, sir,” says the shopkeeper, happy that the admonishment is over, and again giving his face an expression of gravity and importance. “Ten bows? Very good, sir, I understand. And now, Father, allow me to make a request … Because, since I’m her father, after all … you know, and she, whatever she was, she’s my daughter, after all, I sort of… begging your pardon, I’d like to ask you to serve a panikhida6 today And I’d like to ask you, too, Father Deacon!”
“Now, that’s good!” says Father Grigory, taking off his vestments. “I praise you for it. Meets my approval … Well, go! We’ll come out at once.”
Andrei Andreich gravely walks away from the sanctuary and stops in the middle of the church, flushed, with a solemnly panikhidal expression on his face. The caretaker Matvei places a little table with kolivo7 before him, and in a short time the panikhida begins.
The church is quiet. There is only the metallic sound of the censer and the drawn-out singing … Beside Andrei Andreich stands the caretaker Matvei, the midwife Makaryevna, and her boy Mitka with the paralyzed arm. There is no one else. The beadle sings poorly, in an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the melody and the words are so sad that the shopkeeper gradually loses his grave expression and is plunged in sorrow. He remembers his little Mashutka. He recalls that she was born while he was still working as a servant for the master of Verkhnie Zaprudy Owing to the bustle of his servant’s life, he did not notice his girl growing up. For him the long period during which she formed into a graceful being with a blond little head and pensive eyes as big as kopecks went unnoticed. She was brought up, like all children of favorite servants, pampered, together with the young ladies. The gentlefolk, having nothing to do, taught her to read, write, and dance, and he did not interfere with her upbringing. Only rarely, accidentally, meeting her somewhere by the gate or on the landing of the stairs, did he remember that she was his daughter, and he began, as far as his time allowed, to teach her prayers and sacred history. Oh, even then he had a reputation for knowing the services and the holy scriptures! The girl, however grim and solemn her father’s face, listened to him willingly. She yawned repeating prayers after him, but on the other hand, when he began telling her stories, stammering and adding flowery embellishments, she turned all ears. At Esau’s mess of pottage, the punishment of Sodom, and the ordeals of the little boy Joseph,8 she grew pale and opened her blue eyes wide.
Later, when he quit being a servant and opened a village shop with the money he had saved, Mashutka left for Moscow with the master’s family.
Three years before her death, she came to see her father. He barely recognized her. She was a slender young woman with the manners of a lady and dressed like gentlefolk. She spoke cleverly, as if from a book, smoked tobacco, slept till noon. When Andrei Andreich asked her what she was, she boldly looked him straight in the eye and said: “I am an actress!” Such frankness seemed to the former servant the height of cynicism. Mashutka began boasting of her successes and of her artistic life, but seeing that her father only turned purple and spread his arms, she fell silent. And thus silently, without looking at each other, they spent some two weeks, until she left. Before leaving, she persuaded her father to go for a stroll with her along the embankment. Terrified though he was of going for a stroll with his actress daughter in broad daylight, in front of all honest people, he yielded to her entreaties …
“What wonderful places you have here!” she admired as they strolled. “Such dells and marshes! God, how beautiful my birthplace is!”
And she wept.
“These places only take up room …” thought Andrei Andreich, gazing stupidly at the dells and failing to understand his daughter’s admiration. “They’re about as useful as teats on a bull.”
But she wept, wept and breathed greedily with her whole breast, as if sensing that she did not have long to breathe …
Andrei Andreich tosses his head like a stung horse and, to stifle the painful memories, starts crossing himself rapidly …
“Remember, O Lord,” he murmurs, “the departed servant of God, the harlot Maria, and forgive her transgressions both voluntary and involuntary …”
The indecent word again escapes his mouth, but he does not notice it: what is stuck fast in his consciousness will not be dug out of it even by a nail, still less by Father Grigory’s admonitions! Makaryevna sighs and whispers something, sucking in air. Mitka with the paralyzed arm ponders something …
“… where there is no sickness, sorrow or sighing …” drones the beadle, putting his hand to his right cheek.
Bluish smoke streams from the censer and bathes in a wide, slanting ray of sunlight that crosses the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seems that, together with the smoke, the soul of the departed woman herself hovers in the ray of sunlight. The streams of smoke, looking like a child’s curls, twist, rush upwards to the window and seem to shun the dejection and grief that fill this poor soul.
FEBRUARY 1886
ANYUTA
In the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous g
rinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room had not yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …
“The right lung consists of three sections …” repeated Klochkov. “The boundaries! The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest, the fourth rib at the side … the spina scapulae in the back …”
Klochkov, straining to visualize what he had just read, raised his eyes to the ceiling. Getting no clear impression, he began feeling his own upper ribs through his waistcoat.
“These ribs are like piano keys,” he said. “To avoid confusion in counting them, one absolutely must get used to them. I’ll have to study it with a skeleton and a living person … Come here, Anyuta, let me try to get oriented!”
Anyuta stopped embroidering, took off her blouse, and straightened up. Klochkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs.
“Hm … The first rib can’t be felt … It’s behind the collarbone … Here’s the second rib … Right … Here’s the third … Here’s the fourth … Hm … Right … Why are you flinching?”
“Your fingers are cold!”
“Well, well … you won’t die, don’t fidget. So then, this is the third rib, and this is the fourth … You’re so skinny to look at, yet I can barely feel your ribs. The second … the third … No, I’ll get confused this way and won’t have a clear picture … I’ll have to draw it … Where’s my charcoal?”
Klochkov took a piece of charcoal and drew several parallel lines with it on Anyuta’s chest, corresponding to the ribs.
“Excellent. All just like the palm of your hand … Well, and now we can do some tapping. Stand up!”
Anyuta stood up and lifted her chin. Klochkov started tapping and got so immersed in this occupation that he did not notice that Anyuta’s lips, nose, and fingers had turned blue with cold. Anyuta was shivering and feared that the medical student, noticing her shivering, would stop drawing with charcoal and tapping, and would perhaps do poorly at the examination.
“Now it’s all clear,” said Klochkov, and he stopped tapping. “You sit like that, without wiping off the charcoal, while I go over it a little more.”
And the medical student again began pacing and repeating. Anyuta, as if tattooed, black stripes on her chest, shrunken with cold, sat and thought. She generally spoke very little, was always silent and kept thinking, thinking …
In all her six or seven years of wandering through various furnished rooms, she had known some five men like Klochkov. Now they had all finished their studies, had made their way in life, and, of course, being decent people, had long forgotten her. One of them lived in Paris, two had become doctors, the fourth an artist, and the fifth was even said to be a professor already. Klochkov was the sixth … Soon he, too, would finish his studies and make his way. The future would no doubt be beautiful, and Klochkov would probably become a great man, but the present was thoroughly bad: Klochkov had no tobacco, no tea, and there were only four pieces of sugar left. She had to finish her embroidery as quickly as possible, take it to the customer, and, with the twenty-five kopecks she would get, buy tea and tobacco.
“Can I come in?” came from outside the door.
Anyuta quickly threw a woolen shawl over her shoulders. The painter Fetisov came in.
“I’ve come to you with a request,” he began, addressing Klochkov and looking ferociously from under the hair hanging on his forehead. “Be so good as to lend me your beautiful maiden for an hour or two! I’m working on a painting, and I can’t do without a model!”
“Ah, with pleasure!” Klochkov agreed. “Go on, Anyuta.”
“What business do I have there?” Anyuta said softly.
“Well, really! The man’s asking for the sake of art, not for some trifle. Why not help if you can?”
Anyuta began to dress.
“And what are you painting?” asked Klochkov.
“Psyche. A nice subject, but it somehow won’t come out right. I have to use different models all the time. Yesterday there was one with blue feet. Why are your feet blue? I ask. My stockings ran, she says. And you keep grinding away! Lucky man, you’ve got patience.”
“Medicine’s that sort of thing, you have to grind away at it.”
“Hm … I beg your pardon, Klochkov, but you live like an awful swine. Devil knows how you can live this way!”
“How do you mean? I can’t live any other way … I get only twelve roubles a month from the old man, and it’s a real trick to live decently on that.”
“So it is …” said the artist, wincing squeamishly, “but all the same you could live better … A developed man absolutely must be an aesthete. Isn’t that true? And here you’ve got devil knows what! The bed isn’t made, there’s swill, litter … yesterday’s kasha on a plate … pah!”
“That’s true,” said the medical student, and he became embarrassed, “but Anyuta didn’t manage to tidy up today. She’s busy all the time.”
When the artist and Anyuta left, Klochkov lay down on the sofa and began to study lying down, then accidentally fell asleep, woke up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and pondered gloomily. He remembered the artist’s words, that a developed man absolutely must be an aesthete, and his room indeed seemed disgusting, repulsive to him now. It was as if he foresaw the future with his mental eye, when he would receive patients in his office, have tea in a spacious dining room in company with his wife, a respectable woman—and now this basin of swill with cigarette butts floating in it looked unbelievably vile. Anyuta, too, seemed homely, slovenly, pitiful … And he decided to separate from her, at once, whatever the cost.
When she came back from the artist’s and began taking off her coat, he stood up and said to her seriously:
“The thing is this, my dear … Sit down and listen to me. We have to separate! In short, I don’t wish to live with you anymore.”
Anyuta had come back from the artist’s so tired, so worn out. She had posed for so long that her face had become pinched, thin, and her chin had grown sharper. She said nothing in reply to the medical student’s words, only her lips began to tremble.
“You must agree that we’ll have to separate sooner or later anyway,” said the medical student. “You’re good, kind, and not stupid—you’ll understand …”
Anyuta put her coat back on, silently wrapped her embroidery in paper, gathered up her needles and thread; she found the little packet with four pieces of sugar in it on the windowsill and put it on the table near the books.
“It’s yours … some sugar …” she said softly and turned away to hide her tears.
“Well, what are you crying for?” asked Klochkov.
He walked across the room in embarrassment and said:
“You’re strange, really … You know yourself that we have to separate. We can’t be together forever.”
She had already picked up all her bundles and turned to him to say good-bye, but he felt sorry for her.
“Why not let her stay another week?” he thought. “Yes, indeed, let her stay, and in a week I’ll tell her to leave.”
And, annoyed at his own lack of character, he shouted at her sternly:
“Well, why are you standing there! If you’re going, go, and if you don’t want to, take your coat off and stay! Stay!”
Silently, quietly, Anyuta took off her coat, then blew her nose, also quietly, gave a sigh, and noiselessly went to her permanent post—the stool by the window.
The student drew the textbook towards him and ag
ain began pacing up and down.
“The right lung consists of three sections …” he ground away. “The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest …”
And someone in the corridor shouted at the top of his voice:
“Gr-r-rigory, the samovar!”
FEBRUARY 1886
EASTER NIGHT
I was standing on the bank of the Goltva and waiting for the ferry from the other side. Ordinarily the Goltva is a middling sort of stream, silent and pensive, sparkling meekly through the thick bulrushes, but now a whole lake was spread before me. The spring waters had broken loose, overflowed both banks and flooded far out on both sides, covering kitchen gardens, hayfields and marshes, so that you often came upon poplars and bushes sticking up solitarily above the surface of the water, looking like grim rocks in the darkness.
The weather seemed magnificent to me. It was dark, but I could still see trees, water, people … The world was lit by the stars, which were strewn massively across the sky. I do not recall ever having seen so many stars. You literally could not put a finger between them. There were some as big as goose eggs, some as tiny as hempseed … For the sake of the festive parade, all of them, from small to large, had come out in the sky, washed, renewed, joyful, and all of them to the last one quietly moved their rays. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars bathed in the dark depths and trembled with their light rippling. The air was warm and still … Far away on the other side, in the impenetrable darkness, a few scattered fires burned bright red …
Two steps away from me darkened the silhouette of a peasant in a tall hat and with a stout, knotty stick.
“There’s been no ferry for a long while now,” I said.
“It’s time it came,” the silhouette replied.
“Are you also waiting for the ferry?”
“No, I’m just …” the peasant yawned, “waiting for the lumination. I’d have gone, but, to tell the truth, I haven’t got the five kopecks for the ferry”