Part 7

Pavel Ivanovich is the only man whose judgments I listen to with a light heart, without frowning, whom I allow to gaze inquiringly into my eyes and to thrust his investigating hand into the depths of my soul. . . . We two are friends in the very best sense of the word; we respect each other, although we have between us accounts of the most unpleasant, the most delicate nature. . . . Like a black cat, a woman had passed between us. This eternal _casus belli_ had been the cause of reckonings between us, but did not make us quarrel, and we continued to be at peace. “Screw” is a very nice fellow. I like his simple and far from plastic face, with its large nose, screwed-up eyes and thin, reddish beard. I like his tall, thin, narrow-shouldered figure, on which his frock-coat and paletot hung as on a clothes-horse.

His badly made trousers formed ugly creases at the knees, and his boots were terribly trodden down at the heels; his white tie was always in the wrong place. But do not think that he was slovenly. . . . You had but to look once at his kind, concentrated face to understand that he had no time to trouble about his own appearance; besides, he did not know how to. . . . He was young, honest, not vain, and loved his medicine, and he was always moving about—this in itself is sufficient to explain to his advantage all the defects of his inelegant toilet. He, like an artist, did not know the value of money, and imperturbably sacrificed his own comfort and the blessings of life to one of his passions, and thus he gave the impression of being a man without means, who could scarcely make both ends meet. . . . He neither smoked nor drank, he spent no money on women, but nevertheless the two thousand roubles he earned by his appointment at the hospital and by private practice passed through his hands as quickly as my money does when I am out on the spree. Two passions drained him: the passion of lending money, and the passion of ordering things he saw advertised in the newspapers. . . . He lent money to whoever asked for it, without any demur not uttering a single word about when it was to be returned. It was not possible either by hook or by crook to eradicate in him his heedless trust in people's conscientiousness, and this confidence was even more apparent in his constantly ordering things that were lauded in newspaper advertisements. . . . He wrote for everything, the necessary and the unnecessary. He wrote for books, telescopes, humorous magazines, dinner services “composed of 100 articles,” chronometers. . . . And it was not surprising that the patients who came to Pavel Ivanovich mistook his room for an arsenal or for a museum. He had always been cheated, but his trust was as strong and unshakable as ever. He was a capital fellow, and we shall meet him more than once on the pages of this novel.

“Good gracious! What a time I have been sitting here!” he exclaimed suddenly, looking at the cheap watch with one lid he had ordered from Moscow, and which was “guaranteed for five years,” but had already been repaired twice. “I must be off, friend! Good-bye! And mark my words, these sprees of the Count's will lead to no good! To say nothing about your health. . . . Oh, by-the-by! Shall you go to Tenevo to-morrow?”

“What's up there to-morrow?”

“The fête of the Church! Everybody will be there, so come too! You must positively come! I have promised that you will come. Don't make me a liar!”

It was not necessary to ask to whom he had given his word. We understood each other. The doctor then took leave, put on his well-worn overcoat, and went away.

I remained alone. . . . In order to drown the unpleasant thoughts that began to swarm in my head, I went to my writing-table and trying not to think nor to call myself to account, I began to open my post. The first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:

“My Darling Serezha,

“Forgive me for troubling you, but I am so surprised that I don't know to whom to apply. . . . It is shameful! Of course, now it will be impossible to get it back, and I'm not sorry, but judge for yourself: if thieves are to enjoy indulgence, a respectable woman cannot feel safe anywhere. After you left I awoke on the divan and found many of my things were missing. Somebody had stolen my bracelet, my gold studs, ten pearls out of my necklace, and had taken about a hundred roubles out of my purse. I wanted to complain to the Count, but he was asleep, so I went away without doing so. This is very wrong! The Count's house—and they steal as in a tavern! Tell the Count. I send you much love and kisses.

“Your loving, “Tina.”

That his Excellency's house was swarming with thieves was nothing new to me; and I added Tina's letter to the information I had already in my memory on this count. Sooner or later I would be obliged to use this intelligence in a case. . . . I knew who the thieves were.

VIII

Black-eyed Tina's letter, her large sprawling handwriting, reminded me of the mosaic room and aroused in me desires such as a drunkard has for more drink; but I overcame them, and by the strength of my will I forced myself to work. At first I found it unspeakably dull to decipher the bold handwriting of the various commissaries, but gradually my attention became fixed on a burglary, and I began to work with delight. All day long I sat working at my table, and Polycarp passed behind me from time to time and looked suspiciously at my work. He had no confidence in my sobriety, and at any moment he expected to see me rise from the table and order Zorka to be saddled; but towards evening, seeing my persistence, he began to give credence to my good intentions, and the expression of moroseness on his face gave place to one of satisfaction. . . . He began to walk about on tiptoe and to speak in whispers. . . . When some young fellows passed my house, playing on the accordion, he went into the street and shouted:

“What do you young devils mean by making such a row here? Can't you go another way? Don't you know, you Mahommedans, that the master is working?”

In the evening when he served the samovar in the dining-room, he quietly opened my door and called me graciously to come to tea.

“Will you please come to tea?” he said, sighing gently and smiling respectfully.

And while I was drinking my tea he came up behind me and kissed me on the shoulder.

“Now that's better, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “Why don't you let that white-eyebrowed devil be hanged, may he be. . . . Is it possible with your high understanding and your education to occupy yourself with pusillanimousness? Your work is noble. . . . Everybody must glorify you, be afraid of you; but if you break people's heads with that devil and bathe in the lake in all your clothes, everyone will say: ‘He has no sense! He's an empty-headed fellow!’ And so that reputation will be noised about the whole world! Foolhardiness is suitable for merchants, but not for noblemen. . . . Noblemen require science and office. . . .”

“All right! Enough, enough. . . .”

“Sergey Petrovich, don't keep company with that Count. If you want to have a friend, who could be better than Doctor Pavel Ivanovich? He goes about shabbily dressed, but how clever he is!”

I was melted by Polycarp's sincerity. . . . I wanted to say an affectionate word to him. . . .

“What novel are you reading now?” I asked.

“‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ That's a Count for you! That's a real Count! Not like your smut-Count!”

After tea I again sat down to work and worked until my eyelids began to droop and close my tired eyes. . . . When I went to bed I ordered Polycarp to wake me at five o'clock.

The next morning, before six o'clock, whistling gaily and knocking off the heads of the field flowers, I was walking towards Tenevo, where the fête of the church to which my friend “Screw” had invited me to come was being celebrated that day. It was a glorious morning. Happiness itself appeared to be hanging above the earth, and reflected in every dewdrop, enticed the soul of the passer-by to itself. The woods enwrapped in morning light, were quiet and motionless as if listening to my footsteps, and the chirping brotherhood of birds met me with expressions of mistrust and alarm. . . . The air, impregnated with the evaporations of the fresh green, caressed my healthy lungs with its softness. I breathed it in, and casting my enraptured eyes over the whole distant prospect, I felt the spring and youth, and it seemed to me that the young birches, the grass at the roadside, and the ceaselessly humming cockchafers shared these feelings with me.

“Why is it that there in the world men crowd together in their miserable hovels, in their narrow and limited ideas,” I thought, “while they have here so much space for life and thought? Why do they not come here?”

And my poetic imagination refused to be disturbed by thoughts of winter and of bread, those two sorrows that drive poets into cold, prosaic Petersburg and uncleanly Moscow, where fees are paid for verse, but no inspiration can be found.

Peasants' carts and landowners' britzkas hurrying to the liturgy or to market passed me constantly as I trudged along. All the time I had to take off my cap in answer to the courteous bows of the muzhiks and the landowners of my acquaintance. They all offered to give me a lift, but to walk was pleasanter than to drive, and I refused all their offers. Among others the Count's gardener, Franz, in a blue jacket and a jockey cap, passed me on a racing droshky. . . . He looked lazily at me with his sleepy, sour eyes and touched his cap in a still more lazy fashion. Behind him a twelve-gallon barrel with iron hoops, evidently for vodka, was tied to the droshky. . . . Franz's disagreeable phiz and his barrel somewhat disturbed my poetical mood, but very soon poetry triumphed again when I heard the sound of wheels behind me, and looking round I saw a heavy wagonette drawn by a pair of bays, and in the heavy wagonette, on a leathern cushion on a sort of box seat, was my new acquaintance, “the girl in red,” who two days before had spoken to me about the “electricity that had killed her mother.” Olenka's pretty, freshly washed and somewhat sleepy face beamed and blushed slightly when she saw me striding along the footpath that separated the wood from the road. She nodded merrily to me and smiled in the affable manner of an old acquaintance.

“Good morning!” I shouted to her.

She kissed her hand to me and disappeared from my sight, together with her heavy wagonette, without giving me enough time to admire her fresh, pretty face. This day she was not dressed in red. She wore a sort of dark green costume with large buttons and a broad-brimmed straw hat, but even in this garb she pleased me no less than she had done before. I would have talked to her with pleasure, and I would gladly have heard her voice. I wanted to gaze into her deep eyes in the brilliancy of the sun, as I had gazed into them that night by the flashes of lightning. I wanted to take her down from the ugly wagonette and propose that she should walk beside me for the rest of the way, and I certainly would have done so if it had not been for the “rules of society.” For some reason it appeared to me that she would have gladly agreed to this proposal. It was not without some cause that she had twice looked back at me as the wagonette disappeared behind some old alders! . . .

It was about six versts from the place of my abode to Tenevo—nothing of a distance for a young man on a fine morning. Shortly after six I was already making my way between loaded carts and the booths of the fair towards the Tenevo church. Notwithstanding the early hour and the fact that the liturgy in the church was not over as yet, the noise of trade was already in the air. The squeaking of cart wheels, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, and the sounds of toy trumpets were intermixed with the cries of gipsy horse-dealers and the songs of muzhiks, who had already found time to get drunk. What numbers of gay, idle faces! What types! What beauty there was in the movements of these masses, bright with brilliant coloured dresses, on which the morning sun poured its light! All this many-thousand-headed crowd swarmed, moved, made a noise in order to finish the business they had to do in a few hours, and to disperse by the evening, leaving after them, on the market place as a sort of remembrance, refuse of hay, oats spilt here and there, and nutshells. . . . The people, in dense crowds, were going to and coming from the church.

The cross that surmounts the church emitted golden rays, bright as those of the sun. It glittered and seemed to be aflame with golden fire. Beneath it the cupola of the church was burning with the same fire, and the freshly painted green dome shone in the sun, and beyond the sparkling cross the clear blue sky stretched out in the far distance. I passed through the crowds in the churchyard and entered the church. The liturgy had only just begun and the Gospel was being read. The silence of the church was only broken by the voice of the reader and the footsteps of the incensing deacon. The people stood silent and immovable, gazing with reverence through the wide-open holy gates of the altar and listening to the drawling voice of the reader. Village decorum, or, to speak more correctly, village propriety, strictly represses every inclination to violate the reverend quiet of the church. I always felt ashamed when in a church anything caused me to smile or speak. Unfortunately it is but seldom that I do not meet some of my acquaintances who, I regret to say, are only too numerous, and it generally happens that I have hardly entered the church before I am accosted by one of the “intelligentsia” who, after a long introduction about the weather, begins a conversation on his own trivial affairs. I answer “yes” and “no,” but I am too considerate to refuse to give him any attention. My consideration often costs me dear. While I talk I glance bashfully at my neighbours who are praying, fearing that my idle chatter may wound them.

This time, as usual, I did not escape from acquaintances. When I entered the church I saw my heroine standing close to the door—that same “girl in red” whom I had met on the way to Tenevo.

Poor little thing! There she stood, red as a crawfish, and perspiring in the midst of the crowd, casting imploring glances on all those faces in the search for a deliverer. She had stuck fast in the densest crowd and, unable to move either forward or backward, looked like a bird who was being tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she smiled bitterly and began nodding her pretty chin.

“For God's sake, escort me to the front!” she said, seizing hold of my sleeve. “It is terribly stuffy here—and so crowded. . . . I beg you!”

“In front it will be as crowded,” I replied.

“But there, all the people are well dressed and respectable. . . . Here are only common people. A place is reserved for us in front. . . . You, too, ought to be there. . . .”

Consequently she was red not because it was stuffy and crowded in the church. Her little head was troubled by the question of precedence. I granted the vain girl's prayer, and by carefully pressing aside the people I was able to conduct her to the very dais near the altar on which the flower of our district _beau-monde_ was collected. Having placed Olenka in a position that was in accordance with her aristocratic desires, I took up a post at the back of the _beau-monde_ and began an inspection.

As usual, the men and women were whispering and giggling. The Justice of the Peace, Kalinin, gesticulating with his hands and shaking his head, was telling the landowner, Deryaev, in an undertone all about his ailments. Deryaev was abusing the doctors almost aloud and advising the justice of the peace to be treated by a certain Evstrat Ivanych. The ladies, perceiving Olenka, pounced upon her as a good subject for their criticism and began whispering. There was only one girl who evidently was praying.

She was kneeling, with her black eyes fixed in front of her; she was moving her lips. She did not notice a curl of hair that had got loose under her hat and was hanging in disorder over her temple. . . . She did not notice that Olenka and I had stopped beside her.

She was Nadezhda Nikolaevna, Justice Kalinin's daughter. When I spoke above of the woman, who, like a black cat, had run between the doctor and me, I was speaking of her. . . . The doctor loved her as only such noble natures as my dear “Screw's” are able to love. Now he was standing beside her, as stiff as a pikestaff, with his hands at his sides and his neck stretched out. From time to time his loving eyes glanced inquiringly at her concentrated face. He seemed to be watching her prayer and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate longing to be the object of her prayers. But, to his grief, he knew for whom she was praying. . . . It was not for him. . . .

I made a sign to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round at me, and we both left the church.

“Let's stroll about the market,” I proposed.

We lighted our cigarettes and went towards the booths.

IX

“How is Nadezhda Nikolaevna?” I asked the doctor as we entered a tent where playthings were sold.

“Pretty well. . . . I think she's all right . . .” the doctor replied, frowning at a little soldier with a lilac face and a crimson uniform. “She asked about you. . . .”

“What did she ask about me?”

“Things in general. . . . She is angry that you have not been to see them for so long . . . she wants to see you and to inquire the cause of your sudden coldness towards their house. . . . You used to go there nearly every day and then—dropped them! As if cut off. . . . You don't even bow.”

“That's not true, Screw. . . . Want of leisure is really the cause of my ceasing to go to the Kalinins. What's true is true! My connexion with that family is as excellent as formerly. . . . I always bow if I happen to meet any one of them.”

“However, last Thursday, when you met her father, for some reason you did not return his bow.”

“I don't like that old blockhead of a Justice,” I said, “and I can't look with equanimity at his phiz; but I still have the strength to bow to him and to press the hand he stretches out to me. Perhaps I did not notice him on Thursday, or I did not recognize him. You're not in a good humour to-day, Screwy, and are trying to pick a quarrel.”

“I love you, my dear boy,” Pavel Ivanovich sighed; “but I don't believe you. . . . ‘Did not notice, did not recognize’! . . . I don't require your justifications nor your evasions. . . . What's the use of them when there's so little truth in them? You're an excellent, a good man, but there's a little bit of a screw sticking in your sick brain that—forgive me for saying it—is capable of any offence.”

“I'm humbly obliged.”

“Don't be offended, golubchek. . . . God grant that I may be mistaken, but you appear to me to be somewhat of a psychopath. Sometimes, quite in spite of your will and the dictates of your excellent nature, you have attacks of such desires and commit such acts that all who know you as a respectable man are quite nonplussed. You make one marvel how your highly moral principles, which I have the honour of knowing, can exist together with your sudden impulses, which, in the end, produce the most screaming abominations! . . . What animal is this?” Pavel Ivanovich asked the salesman abruptly in quite another tone, lifting close to his eyes a wooden animal with a man's nose, a mane, and a grey stripe down its back.

“A lion,” the salesman answered, yawning. “Or perhaps some other sort of creature. The deuce only knows!”

From the toy booths we went to the shops where textiles were sold and trade was already very brisk.

“These toys only mislead children,” the doctor said. “They give the falsest ideas of flora and fauna. For example, this lion . . . striped, purple, and squeaking. . . . Whoever heard of a lion that squeaks?”

“I say, Screwy,” I began, “you evidently want to say something to me and you seem not to be able. . . . Go ahead! . . . I like to hear you, even when you tell me unpleasant things. . . .”

“Whether pleasant or unpleasant, friend, you must listen to me. There is much I want to talk to you about.”

“Begin. . . . I am transformed into one very large ear.”

“I have already mentioned to you my supposition that you are a psychopath. Now have the goodness to listen to the proofs. . . . I will speak quite frankly, perhaps sometimes sharply. . . . My words may jar on you, but don't be angry, friend. . . . You know my feelings for you: I like you better than anybody else in the district. . . . I speak not to reprove, nor to blame, nor to slay you. Let us both be objective, friend. . . . Let us examine your psyche with an unprejudiced eye, as if it were a liver or a stomach. . . .”

“All right, let's be objective,” I agreed.