LITMIR.BIZ

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I serve? Where could I be of use? Admitting that no great cleverness is needed for serving in our Zemstvo, for example, yet I suffer from… the devil knows what, a sort of faintheartedness, I haven’t a ha’p’orth of pluck. If I went into the Service I should always feel I was not in my right place. I am not an idealist; I am not a Utopian; I haven’t any special principles; but am simply, I suppose, stupid and thoroughly incompetent, a neurotic and a coward. Altogether not like other people. All other people are like other people, only I seem to be something… a poor thing…. I met Naryagin last Wednesday — you know him? — drunken, slovenly… doesn’t pay his debts, stupid” (the prince frowned and tossed his head)… “a horrible person! He said to me, staggering: ‘I’m being balloted for as a justice of the peace!’ Of course, they won’t elect him, but, you see, he believes he is fit to be a justice of the peace and considers that position within his capacity. He has boldness and self-confidence. I went to see our investigating magistrate too. The man gets two hundred and fifty roubles a month, and does scarcely anything. All he can do is to stride backwards and forwards for days together in nothing but his underclothes, but, ask him, he is convinced he is doing his work and honourably performing his duty. I couldn’t go on like that! I should be ashamed to look the clerk in the face.”

      At that moment Grontovsky, on a chestnut horse, galloped by us with a flourish. On his left arm the basket bobbed up and down with the mushrooms dancing in it. As he passed us he grinned and waved his hand, as though we were old friends.

      “Blockhead!” the prince filtered through his teeth, looking after him. “It’s wonderful how disgusting it sometimes is to see satisfied faces. A stupid, animal feeling due to hunger, I expect…. What was I saying? Oh, yes, about going into the Service,… I should be ashamed to take the salary, and yet, to tell the truth, it is stupid. If one looks at it from a broader point of view, more seriously, I am eating what isn’t mine now. Am I not? But why am I not ashamed of that…. It is a case of habit, I suppose… and not being able to realize one’s true position…. But that position is most likely awful…”

      I looked at him, wondering if the prince were showing off. But his face was mild and his eyes were mournfully following the movements of the chestnut horse racing away, as though his happiness were racing away with it.

      Apparently he was in that mood of irritation and sadness when women weep quietly for no reason, and men feel a craving to complain of themselves, of life, of God….

      When I got out of the chaise at the gates of the house the prince said to me:

      “A man once said, wanting to annoy me, that I have the face of a cardsharper. I have noticed that cardsharpers are usually dark. Do you know, it seems that if I really had been born a cardsharper I should have remained a decent person to the day of my death, for I should never have had the boldness to do wrong. I tell you frankly I have had the chance once in my life of getting rich if I had told a lie, a lie to myself and one woman… and one other person whom I know would have forgiven me for lying; I should have put into my pocket a million. But I could not. I hadn’t the pluck!”

      From the gates we had to go to the house through the copse by a long road, level as a ruler, and planted on each side with thick, lopped lilacs. The house looked somewhat heavy, tasteless, like a façade on the stage. It rose clumsily out of a mass of greenery, and caught the eye like a great stone thrown on the velvety turf. At the chief entrance I was met by a fat old footman in a green swallowtail coat and big silver-rimmed spectacles; without making any announcement, only looking contemptuously at my dusty figure, he showed me in. As I mounted the soft carpeted stairs there was, for some reason, a strong smell of indiarubber. At the top I was enveloped in an atmosphere found only in museums, in signorial mansions and old-fashioned merchant houses; it seemed like the smell of something long past, which had once lived and died and had left its soul in the rooms. I passed through three or four rooms on my way from the entry to the drawing-room. I remember bright yellow, shining floors, lustres wrapped in stiff muslin, narrow, striped rugs which stretched not straight from door to door, as they usually do, but along the walls, so that not venturing to touch the bright floor with my muddy boots I had to describe a rectangle in each room. In the drawing-room, where the footman left me, stood old-fashioned ancestral furniture in white covers, shrouded in twilight. It looked surly and elderly, and, as though out of respect for its repose, not a sound was audible.

      Even the clock was silent… it seemed as though the Princess Tarakanov had fallen asleep in the golden frame, and the water and the rats were still and motionless through magic. The daylight, afraid of disturbing the universal tranquillity, scarcely pierced through the lowered blinds, and lay on the soft rugs in pale, slumbering streaks.

      Three minutes passed and a big, elderly woman in black, with her cheek bandaged up, walked noiselessly into the drawing-room. She bowed to me and pulled up the blinds. At once, enveloped in the bright sunlight, the rats and water in the picture came to life and movement, Princess Tarakanov was awakened, and the old chairs frowned gloomily.

      “Her honour will be here in a minute, sir …” sighed the old lady, frowning too.

      A few more minutes of waiting and I saw Nadyezhda Lvovna. What struck me first of all was that she certainly was ugly, short, scraggy, and round-shouldered. Her thick, chestnut hair was magnificent; her face, pure and with a look of culture in it, was aglow with youth; there was a clear and intelligent expression in her eyes; but the whole charm of her head was lost through the thickness of her lips and the over-acute facial angle.

      I mentioned my name, and announced the object of my visit.

      “I really don’t know what I am to say!” she said, in hesitation, dropping her eyes and smiling. “I don’t like to refuse, and at the same time… .”

      “Do, please,” I begged.

      Nadyezhda Lvovna looked at me and laughed. I laughed too. She was probably amused by what Grontovsky had so enjoyed — that is, the right of giving or withholding permission; my visit suddenly struck me as queer and strange.

      “I don’t like to break the long-established rules,” said Madame Kandurin. “Shooting has been forbidden on our estate for the last six years. No!” she shook her head resolutely. “Excuse me, I must refuse you. If I allow you I must allow others. I don’t like unfairness. Either let all or no one.”

      “I am sorry!” I sighed. “It’s all the sadder because we have come more than ten miles. I am not alone,” I added, “Prince Sergey Ivanitch is with me.”

      I uttered the prince’s name with no arrière pensée, not prompted by any special motive or aim; I simply blurted it out without thinking, in the simplicity of my heart. Hearing the familiar name Madame Kandurin started, and bent a prolonged gaze upon me. I noticed her nose turn pale.

      “That makes no difference …” she said, dropping her eyes.

      As I talked to her I stood at the window that looked out on the shrubbery. I could see the whole shrubbery with the avenues and the ponds and the road by which I had come. At the end of the road, beyond the gates, the back of our chaise made a dark patch. Near the gate, with his back to the house, the prince was standing with his legs apart, talking to the lanky Grontovsky.

      Madame Kandurin had been standing all the time at the other window. She looked from time to time towards the shrubbery, and from the moment I mentioned the prince’s name she did not turn away from the window.

      “Excuse me,” she said, screwing up her eyes as she looked towards the road and the gate, “but it would be unfair to allow you only to shoot…. And, besides, what pleasure is there in shooting birds? What’s it for? Are they in your way?”

      A solitary life, immured within four walls, with its indoor twilight and heavy smell of decaying furniture, disposes people to sentimentality. Madame Kandurin’s idea did her credit, but I could not resist saying:

      “If one takes that line one ought to go barefoot. Boots are made out of the leather of slaughtered animals.”

      “One must distinguish between a necessity and a caprice,” Madame Kandurin answered

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