Dead Souls
resorted to remonstrance, but was met with the reply, “How could we not
do our best for our barin? You yourself saw how well we laboured at the
ploughing and the sowing, for you gave us mugs of vodka for our pains.”
“Then why have things turned out so badly?” the barin persisted.
“Who can say? It must be that a grub has eaten the crop from below.
Besides, what a summer has it been--never a drop of rain!”
Nevertheless, the barin noted that no grub had eaten the PEASANTS’
crops, as well as that the rain had fallen in the most curious
fashion--namely, in patches. It had obliged the muzhiks, but had shed a
mere sprinkling for the barin.
Still more difficult did he find it to deal with the peasant women.
Ever and anon they would beg to be excused from work, or start making
complaints of the severity of the barstchina. Indeed, they were terrible
folk! However, Tientietnikov abolished the majority of the tithes of
linen, hedge fruit, mushrooms, and nuts, and also reduced by one-half
other tasks proper to the women, in the hope that they would devote
their spare time to their own domestic concerns--namely, to sewing and
mending, and to making clothes for their husbands, and to increasing
the area of their kitchen gardens. Yet no such result came about. On the
contrary, such a pitch did the idleness, the quarrelsomeness, and the
intriguing and caballing of the fair sex attain that their helpmeets
were for ever coming to the barin with a request that he would rid one
or another of his wife, since she had become a nuisance, and to live
with her was impossible.
Next, hardening his heart, the barin attempted severity. But of what
avail was severity? The peasant woman remained always the peasant
woman, and would come and whine that she was sick and ailing, and keep
pitifully hugging to herself the mean and filthy rags which she had
donned for the occasion. And when poor Tientietnikov found himself
unable to say more to her than just, “Get out of my sight, and may the
Lord go with you!” the next item in the comedy would be that he would
see her, even as she was leaving his gates, fall to contending with a
neighbour for, say, the possession of a turnip, and dealing out slaps
in the face such as even a strong, healthy man could scarcely have
compassed!
Again, amongst other things, Tientietnikov conceived the idea of
establishing a school for his people; but the scheme resulted in a farce
which left him in sackcloth and ashes. In the same way he found that,
when it came to a question of dispensing justice and of adjusting
disputes, the host of juridical subtleties with which the professors had
provided him proved absolutely useless. That is to say, the one party
lied, and the other party lied, and only the devil could have decided
between them. Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of
mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and
philosophical maxims in the world could do. He lacked something; and
though he could not divine what it was, the situation brought about was
the common one of the barin failing to understand the peasant, and the
peasant failing to understand the barin, and both becoming disaffected.
In the end, these difficulties so chilled Tientietnikov’s enthusiasm
that he took to supervising the labours of the field with greatly
diminished attention. That is to say, no matter whether the scythes were
softly swishing through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts
were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and
to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after
strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its
beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow
it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one
not yet in possession of a fish, was engaged in watching the doings of
its mate. Lastly, with eyebrows knitted, and face turned to scan the
zenith, he would drink in the smell of the fields, and fall to listening
to the winged population of the air as from earth and sky alike the
manifold music of winged creatures combined in a single harmonious
chorus. In the rye the quail would be calling, and, in the grass, the
corncrake, and over them would be wheeling flocks of twittering linnets.
Also, the jacksnipe would be uttering its croak, and the lark executing
its roulades where it had become lost in the sunshine, and cranes
sending forth their trumpet-like challenge as they deployed towards the
zenith in triangle-shaped flocks. In fact, the neighbourhood would seem
to have become converted into one great concert of melody. O Creator,
how fair is Thy world where, in remote, rural seclusion, it lies apart
from cities and from highways!
But soon even this began to pall upon Tientietnikov, and he ceased
altogether to visit his fields, or to do aught but shut himself up
in his rooms, where he refused to receive even the bailiff when that
functionary called with his reports. Again, although, until now, he had
to a certain extent associated with a retired colonel of hussars--a man
saturated with tobacco smoke--and also with a student of pronounced, but
immature, opinions who culled the bulk of his wisdom from contemporary
newspapers and pamphlets, he found, as time went on, that these
companions proved as tedious as the rest, and came to think their
conversation superficial, and their European method of comporting
themselves--that is to say, the method of conversing with much slapping
of knees and a great deal of bowing and gesticulation--too direct and
unadorned. So these and every one else he decided to “drop,” and carried
this resolution into effect with a certain amount of rudeness. On the
next occasion that Varvar Nikolaievitch Vishnepokromov called to indulge
in a free-and-easy symposium on politics, philosophy, literature,
morals, and the state of financial affairs in England (he was, in all
matters which admit of superficial discussion, the pleasantest fellow
alive, seeing that he was a typical representative both of the retired
fire-eater and of the school of thought which is now becoming the
rage)--when, I say, this next happened, Tientietnikov merely sent out
to say that he was not at home, and then carefully showed himself at the
window. Host and guest exchanged glances, and, while the one muttered
through his teeth “The cur!” the other relieved his feelings with a
remark or two on swine. Thus the acquaintance came to an abrupt end, and
from that time forth no visitor called at the mansion.
Tientietnikov in no way regretted this, for he could now devote himself
wholly to the projection of a great work on Russia. Of the scale on
which this composition was conceived the reader is already aware. The
reader also knows how strange, how unsystematic, was the system employed
in it. Yet to say that Tientietnikov never awoke from his lethargy
would not be altogether true. On the contrary, when the post brought him
newspapers and reviews, and he saw in their printed pages, perhaps, the
well-known name of some former comrade who had succeeded in the great
field of Public Service, or had conferred upon science and the
world’s work some notable contribution, he would succumb to secret and
suppressed grief, and involuntarily there would burst from his soul
an expression of aching, voiceless regret that he himself had done so
little. And at these times his existence would seem to him odious and
repellent; at these times there would uprise before him the memory of
his school days, and the figure of Alexander Petrovitch, as vivid as in
life. And, slowly welling, the tears would course over Tientietnikov’s
cheeks.
What meant these repinings? Was there not disclosed in them the secret
of his galling spiritual pain--the fact that he had failed to order his
life aright, to confirm the lofty aims with which he had started his
course; the fact that, always poorly equipped with experience, he
had failed to attain the better and the higher state, and there to
strengthen himself for the overcoming of hindrances and obstacles; the
fact that, dissolving like overheated metal, his bounteous store of
superior instincts had failed to take the final tempering; the fact that
the tutor of his boyhood, a man in a thousand, had prematurely died, and
left to Tientietnikov no one who could restore to him the moral
strength shattered by vacillation and the will power weakened by want
of virility--no one, in short, who could cry hearteningly to his soul
“Forward!”--the word for which the Russian of every degree, of every
class, of every occupation, of every school of thought, is for ever
hungering.
Indeed, WHERE is the man who can cry aloud for any of us, in the Russian
tongue dear to our soul, the all-compelling command “Forward!”? Who is
there who, knowing the strength and the nature and the inmost depths of
the Russian genius, can by a single magic incantation divert our ideals
to the higher life? Were there such a man, with what tears, with what
affection, would not the grateful sons of Russia repay him! Yet age
succeeds to age, and our callow youth still lies wrapped in shameful
sloth, or strives and struggles to no purpose. God has not yet given us
the man able to sound the call.
One circumstance which almost aroused Tientietnikov, which almost
brought about a revolution in his character, was the fact that he came
very near to falling in love. Yet even this resulted in nothing. Ten
versts away there lived the general whom we have heard expressing
himself in highly uncomplimentary terms concerning Tientietnikov. He
maintained a General-like establishment, dispensed hospitality (that
is to say, was glad when his neighbours came to pay him their respects,
though he himself never went out), spoke always in a hoarse voice, read
a certain number of books, and had a daughter--a curious, unfamiliar
type, but full of life as life itself. This maiden’s name was Ulinka,
and she had been strangely brought up, for, losing her mother in early
childhood, she had subsequently received instruction at the hands of an
English governess who knew not a single word of Russian. Moreover her
father, though excessively fond of her, treated her always as a toy;
with the result that, as she grew to years of discretion, she became
wholly wayward and spoilt. Indeed, had any one seen the sudden rage
which would gather on her beautiful young forehead when she was engaged
in a heated dispute with her father, he would have thought her one of
the most capricious beings in the world. Yet that rage gathered only
when she had heard of injustice or harsh treatment, and never because
she desired to argue on her own behalf, or to attempt to justify her own
conduct. Also, that anger would disappear as soon as ever she saw any
one whom she had formerly disliked fall upon evil times, and, at his
first request for alms would, without consideration or subsequent
regret, hand him her purse and its whole contents. Yes, her every act
was strenuous, and when she spoke her whole personality seemed to be
following hot-foot upon her thought--both her expression of face and her
diction and the movements of her hands. Nay, the very folds of her frock
had a similar appearance of striving; until one would have thought
that all her self were flying in pursuit of her words. Nor did she know
reticence: before any one she would disclose her mind, and no force
could compel her to maintain silence when she desired to speak. Also,
her enchanting, peculiar gait--a gait which belonged to her alone--was
so absolutely free and unfettered that every one involuntarily gave her
way. Lastly, in her presence churls seemed to become confused and fall
to silence, and even the roughest and most outspoken would lose their