‘Who do you think you are?’ Father continued. ‘At your age young men already have a sound position in life, but just take a look at yourself, you common riff-raff, living off your father!’
As usual, he went on about the young people of today being doomed by their atheism, materialism and inflated opinions of themselves, and about the need to ban amateur theatricals, as they distracted young people from their religion and their duties.
‘Please hear me out,’ I said morosely, fearing the worst from this conversation. ‘What you call “position in society” is nothing but the privileges bestowed by capital and education. But the poor and uneducated earn their living by manual labour and I see no reason why I should be any exception.’
‘When you talk about manual labour you sound so stupid and trite,’ Father said irritably. ‘Can’t you get this into your thick head, you dim-wit, that there’s something besides brute strength inside you. You have the divine spirit, the sacred fire which sets you miles apart from an ass or a reptile and makes you akin to the sublime! The finest people needed thousands of years to produce that fire. General Poloznev, your great-grandfather, fought at Borodino.1 Your grandfather was a poet, public orator, marshal of the gentry. Your uncle’s a teacher. And lastly, I, your father, am an architect! So all the Poloznevs have preserved this divine fire, only for you to put it out!’
‘Please be fair,’ I said. ‘Millions of people do manual work.’
‘Well, let them! They’re fit for nothing else! Anyone can do manual work, even a downright idiot or criminal. It’s the distinguishing mark of slaves and barbarians, whereas the sacred fire is granted only to the few!’
There was no point in talking any more. Father worshipped himself and could only be convinced by what he himself said. What’s more, I knew very well that his pompous attitude to manual labour was not founded on thoughts of sacred flames so much as on a secret fear that I might become a labourer and thus make myself the talk of the town. However, the main thing was that all my contemporaries had graduated long ago and were doing well, and that the son of the manager of the State Bank was already quite an important civil servant, whereas I, an only son, was a nobody! It was useless continuing this disagreeable conversation, but I sat there feebly protesting in the hope that he would understand what I meant. After all, the problem was simple and clear enough – how was I to earn my living? But simplicity went unnoticed as Father trotted out those sickly phrases about Borodino, the sacred fire, my grandfather – a forgotten poet who wrote bad, meretricious verse at some time. I felt insulted – being called dim-wit and brainless fool was highly insulting. But how I wanted to be understood! In spite of everything I loved my father and sister. My childhood habit of asking them for advice had become so deeply rooted in me that I could never shake it off. Whether I was right or wrong, I was always afraid of upsetting them, afraid that Father was so excited now that his skinny neck had turned red and that he might have a stroke.
‘Sitting in a stuffy room,’ I said, ‘copying, competing with a typewriter, is shameful and insulting for a man of my age. What does all that have to do with sacred flames?’
‘But it’s still brain work,’ Father said. ‘However, that’s enough for now, we must stop this conversation. In any case, I’m warning you: if you don’t go back to the office and if you persist in these contemptible inclinations of yours, then my daughter and I will cast you from our hearts. I’ll disinherit you, I swear to God I will!’
In all sincerity and to demonstrate the unquestionable purity of the motives by which I wished to be guided all my life I replied, ‘The question of my inheritance is of no importance to me. I renounce it in advance.’
Quite contrary to what I was expecting, these words hurt Father deeply. He turned crimson.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you fool!’ he shouted in a thin, shrill voice. ‘You ignorant lout!’
Swiftly and deftly, in his usual practised way, he slapped me twice in the face. ‘You’re forgetting yourself!’
When Father beat me as a child I had to stand to attention, hands to my sides and look him in the face. And now, whenever he beat me, I would panic completely, stand to attention and try to look him in the face, just as though I were a small child again. Father was old and very thin, but those slender muscles must have been as tough as leather straps, as he really hurt me.
I staggered back into the hall, where he grabbed his umbrella and struck me several times on the head and shoulders. Just then my sister opened the drawing-room door to see what the noise was about, but immediately turned away with a look of horror and pity, without a word in my defence.
I remained unshakeable in my determination not to return to the office, and in my intention to start a new life as a working man. All I had to do was choose a job, and this didn’t seem particularly difficult, since I thought that I was terribly strong, had great stamina and was therefore equal to the most arduous work. A workman’s life lay ahead of me, with all its monotony, hunger, stench and grim surroundings. And there was the constant worry of having enough to live on. Returning from work on Great Dvoryansky Street, I might still envy Dolzhikov the engineer, who worked with his brain. Who knows? But now the thought of these future misfortunes cheered me up. At one time I used to dream of intellectual work, imagining myself as a teacher, doctor or writer, but my dreams never came true. My liking for intellectual pleasures such as the theatre and reading had grown into a passion, but I cannot say whether I had any flair for brain work. At school I had an utter aversion to Greek and I had to be taken out of the fourth form; for a long time I was coached by private tutors who tried to get me into the fifth. Then I worked in different government departments, spending most of the day doing absolutely nothing: this, I was told, constituted brain work. My school and office work called for neither mental effort, nor talent, nor any particular ability or creative energy. It was just mechanical. I consider that type of brain work beneath manual labour. I despise it and do not think that it could justify an idle life of leisure for one minute, since it’s only a sham, another form of idleness. Probably I never knew what real brain work was.
Evening set in. We lived in Great Dvoryansky Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, where our beau monde strolled in the evenings for want of a decent municipal park. This delightful street was a partial substitute for a park, since poplars (particularly sweet-smelling after rain) grew along both sides; acacias, tall lilac bushes, wild cherries and apple trees hung out over fences and railings. The May twilight, the soft green leaves and shadows, the scent of lilac, the droning beetles, the silence, the warmth – spring returns every year, but how fresh, how marvellous everything seemed nonetheless! I would stand by the gate watching the promenaders. I had grown up with most of them and got up to mischief with them when we were children. But they would most likely be startled at the sight of me now, as I was poorly, unfashionably dressed. People called my very narrow trousers and large, clumsy boots ‘macaroni on floats’. Moreover, I had a bad name in that town because I had no social status and frequently played billiards in low pubs. Perhaps another reason was that I’d twice been hauled off to the police station, although I’d done absolutely nothing.
Someone was playing the piano in the engineer Dolzhikov’s flat in the large house opposite. It was growing dark and stars twinkled in the sky. Along came Father with my sister on his arm, wearing that old top-hat with its broad, upturned brim and acknowledging the bows of passers-by as he slowly walked past.
‘Just look!’ he was saying to my sister, pointing at the sky with the same umbrella he had struck me with. ‘Just look at that sky! Even the smallest star is a world of its own! How insignificant is man compared with the universe!’
His tone suggested that he liked being insignificant and found it exceedingly flattering. What a bungler he was! Unfortunately, he was our only architect and not one decent house had been built in the town for the past fifteen or twenty years that I could remember. When he was c
ommissioned to design a house, he usually drew the ballroom and drawing-room first. Just as boarding-school girls, long ago, could dance only if they began from where the stove was, so his creative ideas could only develop by starting from the ballroom and drawing-room. He would add a dining-room, nursery, study – all of them linked by doors. Inevitably, they turned into corridors, each room having two or even three doors too many. He must have had a vague, extremely confused and stunted creative imagination. Always sensing that something was missing, he would resort to different kinds of extensions, lumping one on top of the other. I can still see those narrow entrance-halls, narrow little passages and small, crooked staircases leading onto mezzanines where you could not stand up straight, with three enormous steps instead of a floor, like shelves in a bath-house. And the kitchen was invariably underneath the main house, with vaulted ceilings and brick floors. The façades had a stubborn, harsh look; their lines were stiff, timid, and the roofs were low, squashed-looking. It seemed that the squat, dumpy chimneys just had to be capped with wire cowls and squeaky black weathervanes. The houses that Father built were almost identical – somehow they vaguely put me in mind of his top-hat and the forbidding, rigid lines of the back of his neck. As time passed the town grew used to Father’s ineptitude: it took root and became established as the ruling style.
Father also introduced this style into my sister’s life. To start with, he called her Cleopatra, just as he had called me Misail. When she was a little girl he would scare her by talking about the stars, about the sages of antiquity and our ancestors, explaining the concepts of life and duty in great detail to her. And now that she was twenty-six, he was still at it. Only he was allowed to take her arm when they went for a walk and he somehow imagined that sooner or later a respectable young man would turn up and want to marry her out of respect for his moral virtues. She worshipped Father, was afraid of him and thought him exceptionally clever.
It grew quite dark and the street gradually became deserted. The music died away in the house opposite, gates opened wide and a troika jauntily careered off down the street, its bells softly jingling. The engineer and his daughter had gone for a ride. It was time for bed!
I had my own room in the house, but I lived in a little hut joined onto a brick shed probably built as a harness-room at one time, as large spikes were driven into the walls. But now it was no longer needed for storage and for thirty years Father had been stacking only newspapers there. For some obscure reason he had them bound every six months and would not let anyone touch them. Living in that hut I saw much less of Father and his guests and I felt that if I didn’t have a proper room and didn’t go into the house for dinner every day, that would make Father’s remarks about my being a burden seem less hurtful.
My sister was waiting for me. Without Father’s knowledge, she had brought me supper – a small piece of cold veal and a slice of bread. In our house people were always going on about ‘counting the copecks’ or ‘taking care of the roubles’, and so on. Subjected to all this banal talk, my sister’s only concern was how to save money – and as a result we ate badly. After she put the plate on the table she sat down on the bed and burst into tears.
‘Misail,’ she said, ‘what are you doing to us?’
She did not cover her face; tears trickled on to her breast and arms and she looked most despondent. Then she slumped on to the pillow and gave free rein to her tears, shaking all over and sobbing.
‘That’s another job you’ve left,’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s absolutely terrible!’
‘Please try and understand, my dear sister,’ I said, and her tears filled me with despair.
And as though on purpose, my lamp ran out of paraffin – it was smoking and about to go out. The old spikes on the walls had a sombre look and their shadows flickered.
‘Please spare a thought for us!’ my sister said, getting up. ‘Father is dreadfully upset, I’m not well and nearly going out of my mind. What will become of you?’ she sobbed, holding her hands out. ‘I beg you, I implore you, for our dear mother’s sake, go back to your job!’
‘I can’t, Cleopatra,’ I said, almost giving in. ‘I can’t!’
‘Why not?’ my sister continued. ‘Why not? If you couldn’t get on with your boss you should have found another job. Why don’t you go and work on the railway, for instance? I’ve just been speaking to Anyuta Blagovo and she tells me they’re bound to take you on. She’s even promised to put in a word for you. For heaven’s sake, Misail, think about it! Think about it, I beg you!’
After a little more discussion I gave in. I told her I’d never given much thought to working on the railway and that I’d try it.
She smiled joyfully through her tears, squeezed my hand – and then she started crying again, unable to stop. I went to get some paraffin from the kitchen.
II
No one in that town had greater enthusiasm for amateur theatricals, concerts and tableaux vivants for charity than the Azhogins, who owned a house on Great Dvoryansky Street. They provided the premises for every performance, looked after the organization and took responsibility for all expenses. This rich, landowning family had about eight thousand acres in the district with a splendid manor house, but they had no love for the country and lived in town all year round.
The family consisted of the mother, a tall, thin, refined woman, with short hair, a short blouse and plain skirt in the English style; and three daughters who, instead of being called by their Christian names, were simply known as ‘Eldest’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Youngest’. All three of them had ugly, sharp chins, were shortsighted and round-shouldered. They dressed just like their mother and had an unpleasant lisp. But in spite of this they insisted on taking part in every performance and were always doing charitable work through their acting, reading or singing. They were very earnest, never smiled and even acted – completely lifelessly – in musical comedies with a businesslike look, as though they were book-keepers at work.
I loved our shows, in particular the frequent, somewhat chaotic, noisy rehearsals, after which we were always given supper. I had no part in selecting the plays or casting – my work was backstage. I painted scenery, copied out parts, prompted, helped with the makeup. I was also entrusted with various sound-effects, such as thunder, nightingales’ songs, and so on. As I had no status in society or decent clothes I kept away from everyone at rehearsals, hiding in the darkness of the wings and maintaining a bashful silence.
I painted the scenery – in the Azhogins’ brick shed or out in the yard. I was helped by a house-painter or, as he liked to call himself, ‘decorating contractor’ named Andrey Ivanov. He was about fifty, tall, very thin and pale, with a sunken chest, sunken temples and dark blue patches under his eyes which made him look rather frightening. He suffered from some wasting disease and every spring and autumn people said he was dying, but after a spell in bed he would get up again and declare in a surprised voice ‘So, I’m still here, ain’t I!’
In the town he was called Radish – people said it was his real name. He loved the theatre as much as I did and the moment he heard rumours of a new show he would drop whatever he was doing and go off to the Azhogins’ to paint scenery.
The day after that showdown with my sister I worked from morning to night at the Azhogins’. The rehearsal was due to start at seven p.m., and an hour beforehand all the company assembled in the ballroom; the three sisters, Eldest, Middle and Youngest, walked up and down the stage reading from notebooks. In his long, reddish-brown coat and with a scarf around his neck, Radish stood with his head against the wall, reverently watching the stage. Their mother Mrs Azhogin went up to each of the guests to say something pleasant. She had a way of staring you in the face and speaking softly, as if telling a secret.
‘It must be hard work painting scenery,’ she said softly, coming over to me. ‘I was talking to Madame Mufke about superstitions just now when I saw you come in. Good heavens, I’ve struggled against superstition all my life! To try and convince the servant
s how stupid their fears are I always light three candles in my room and start any important business matters only on the thirteenth of the month.’
The daughter of Dolzhikov the engineer arrived. She was a pretty, buxom blonde, dressed in ‘Paris fashion’ as they described it in the town. She didn’t do any acting, but they put a chair for her on the stage during rehearsals and the shows didn’t start until she was sitting in the front row, looking radiant and amazing everyone with her dresses. As she came from the capital, she was allowed to pass remarks during rehearsals, which she did with a pleasant, condescending smile, and she obviously thought that our shows were childish games. It was said that she had studied singing at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and had even sung for a winter season in a private opera house. She attracted me very much and at rehearsals or performances I could hardly take my eyes off her.
I had already picked up the notebook for prompting when suddenly my sister appeared. Without taking off her hat and coat she came over to me and said ‘Come with me, please.’
I went. Anyuta Blagovo was standing in the doorway backstage. She also wore a hat, with a dark veil. She was the daughter of the deputy judge who had been serving in our town for some time, almost since the day the local court was first set up. Being tall and well built, she was considered indispensable for tableaux vivants, and when she represented some fairy, or ‘Fame’, her face would burn with shame. But she never took part in the plays, just dropping in at rehearsals on some business or other and never entering the hall. And she had obviously looked in only for a moment now.
‘Father’s been talking about you,’ she said dryly, without looking at me and blushing. ‘Dolzhikov’s promised you a job on the railway. Go and see him tomorrow, he’ll be at home.’