The Bet, and other stories
necessarily be reflected in the character of the young generation of
writers, and therefore I’m not at all surprised that in the new books
which have been added to our _belles lettres_ in the last ten or
fifteen years, the heroes drink a great deal of vodka and the heroines
are not sufficiently chaste.
I read French books and look out of the window, which is open--I see
the pointed palings of my little garden, two or three skinny trees,
and there, beyond the garden, the road, fields, then a wide strip of
young pine-forest. I often delight in watching a little boy and girl,
both white-haired and ragged, climb on the garden fence and laugh at
my baldness. In their shining little eyes I read, “Come out, thou
bald-head.” These are almost the only people who don’t care a bit about
my reputation or my title.
I don’t have visitors everyday now. I’ll mention only the visits of
Nicolas and Piotr Ignatievich. Nicolas comes to me usually on holidays,
pretending to come on business, but really to see me. He is very
hilarious, a thing which never happens to him in the winter.
“Well, what have you got to say?” I ask him, coming out into the
passage.
“Your Excellency!” he says, pressing his hand to his heart and looking
at me with a lover’s rapture. “Your Excellency! So help me God! God
strike me where I stand! _Gaudeamus igitur juvenestus._”
And he kisses me eagerly on the shoulders, on my sleeves, and buttons.
“Is everything all right over there?” I ask.
“Your Excellency! I swear to God....”
He never stops swearing, quite unnecessarily, and I soon get bored, and
send him to the kitchen, where they give him dinner. Piotr Ignatievich
also comes on holidays specially to visit me and communicate his
thoughts to me. He usually sits by the table in my room, modest,
clean, judicious, without daring to cross his legs or lean his elbows
on the table, all the while telling me in a quiet, even voice what
he considers very piquant items of news gathered from journals and
pamphlets.
These items are all alike and can be reduced to the following type: A
Frenchman made a discovery. Another--a German--exposed him by showing
that this discovery had been made as long ago as 1870 by some American.
Then a third--also a German--outwitted them both by showing that
both of them had been confused, by taking spherules of air under a
microscope for dark pigment. Even when he wants to make me laugh, Piotr
Ignatievich tells his story at great length, very much as though he
were defending a thesis, enumerating his literary sources in detail,
with every effort to avoid mistakes in the dates, the particular number
of the journal and the names. Moreover, he does not say Petit simply
but inevitably, Jean Jacques Petit. If he happens to stay to dinner, he
will tell the same sort of piquant stories and drive all the company
to despondency. If Gnekker and Liza begin to speak of fugues and
counter-fugues in his presence he modestly lowers his eyes, and his
face falls. He is ashamed that such trivialities should be spoken of in
the presence of such serious men as him and me.
In my present state of mind five minutes are enough for him to bore
me as though I had seen and listened to him for a whole eternity. I
hate the poor man. I wither away beneath his quiet, even voice and
his bookish language. His stories make me stupid.... He cherishes the
kindliest feelings towards me and talks to me only to give me pleasure.
I reward him by staring at his face as if I wanted to hypnotise him,
and thinking “Go away. Go, go....” But he is proof against my mental
suggestion and sits, sits, sits....
While he sits with me I cannot rid myself of the idea: “When I die,
it’s quite possible that he will be appointed in my place.” Then my
poor audience appears to me as an oasis where the stream has dried,
up, and I am unkind to Piotr Ignatievich, and silent and morose as if
he were guilty of such thoughts and not I myself. When he begins, as
usual, to glorify the German scholars, I no longer jest good-naturedly,
but murmur sternly:
“They’re fools, your Germans....”
It’s like the late Professor Nikita Krylov when he was bathing with
Pirogov at Reval. He got angry with the water, which was very cold,
and swore about “These scoundrelly Germans.” I behave badly to Piotr
Ignatievich; and it’s only when he is going away and I see through the
window his grey hat disappearing behind the garden fence, that I want
to call him back and say: “Forgive me, my dear fellow.”
The dinner goes yet more wearily than in winter. The same Gnekker,
whom I now hate and despise, dines with me every day. Before, I
used to suffer his presence in silence, but now I say biting things
to him, which make my wife and Liza blush. Carried away by an evil
feeling, I often say things that are merely foolish, and don’t know
why I say them. Thus it happened once that after looking at Gnekker
contemptuously for a long while, I suddenly fired off, for no reason at
all:
“Eagles than barnyard-fowls may lower bend;
But fowls shall never to the heav’ns ascend.”
More’s the pity that the fowl Gnekker shows himself more clever than
the eagle professor. Knowing my wife and daughter are on his side he
maintains these tactics. He replies to my shafts with a condescending
silence (“The old man’s off his head.... What’s the good of talking to
him?”), or makes good-humoured fun of me. It is amazing to what depths
of pettiness a man may descend. During the whole dinner I can dream how
Gnekker will be shown to be an adventurer, how Liza and my wife will
realise their mistake, and I will tease them--ridiculous dreams like
these at a time when I have one foot in the grave.
Now there occur misunderstandings, of a kind which I formerly knew only
by hearsay. Though it is painful I will describe one which occurred
after dinner the other day. I sit in my room smoking a little pipe.
Enters my wife, as usual, sits down and begins to talk. What a good
idea it would be to go to Kharkov now while the weather is warm and
there is the time, and inquire what kind of man our Gnekker is.
“Very well. I’ll go,” I agree.
My wife gets up, pleased with me, and walks to the door; but
immediately returns:
“By-the bye, I’ve one more favour to ask. I know you’ll be angry;
but it’s my duty to warn you.... Forgive me, Nicolai,--but all
our neighbours have begun to talk about the way you go to Katy’s
continually. I don’t deny that she’s clever and educated. It’s pleasant
to spend the time with her. But at your age and in your position it’s
rather strange to find pleasure in her society.... Besides she has a
reputation enough to....”
All my blood rushes instantly from my brain. My eyes flash fire. I
catch hold of my hair, and stamp and cry, in a voice that is not mine:
“Leave me alone, leave me, leave me....”
My face is probably terrible, and my voice strange, for my wife
suddenly gets pale, and calls aloud, with a despairing voice, also not
her own. At our cries rush in Liza and Gnekker, then Yegor.
My feet grow numb, as though they did not exist. I feel that I am
falling into somebody’s arms. Then I hear crying for a little while
and sink into a faint which lasts for two or three hours.
Now for Katy. She comes to see me before evening every day, which of
course must be noticed by my neighbours and my friends. After a minute
she takes me with her for a drive. She has her own horse and a new
buggy she bought this summer. Generally she lives like a princess. She
has taken an expensive detached bungalow with a big garden, and put
into it all her town furniture. She has two maids and a coachman. I
often ask her:
“Katy, what will you live on when you’ve spent all your father’s money?”
“We’ll see, then,” she answers.
“But this money deserves to be treated more seriously, my dear. It was
earned by a good man and honest labour.”
“You’ve told me that before. I know.”
First we drive by the field, then by a young pine forest, which you
can see from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as she used,
although the devil whispers to me that all these pines and firs, the
birds and white clouds in the sky will not notice my absence in three
or four months when I am dead. Katy likes to take the reins, and it is
good that the weather is fine and I am sitting by her side. She is in a
happy mood, and does not say bitter things.
“You’re a very good man, Nicolai,” she says. “You are a rare bird.
There’s no actor who could play your part. Mine or Mikhail’s, for
instance--even a bad actor could manage, but yours--there’s nobody. I
envy you, envy you terribly! What am I? What?”
She thinks for a moment, and asks:
“I’m a negative phenomenon, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“H’m ... what’s to be done then?”
What answer can I give? It’s easy to say “Work,” or “Give your property
to the poor,” or “Know yourself,” and because it’s so easy to say this
I don’t know what to answer.
My therapeutist colleagues, when teaching methods of cure, advise one
“to individualise each particular case.” This advice must be followed
in order to convince one’s self that the remedies recommended in the
text-books as the best and most thoroughly suitable as a general
rule, are quite unsuitable in particular cases. It applies to moral
affections as well. But I must answer something. So I say:
“You’ve too much time on your hands, my dear. You must take up
something.... In fact, why shouldn’t you go on the stage again, if you
have a vocation.”
“I can’t.”
“You have the manner and tone of a victim. I don’t like it, my dear.
You have yourself to blame. Remember, you began by getting angry with
people and things in general; but you never did anything to improve
either of them. You didn’t put up a struggle against the evil. You got
tired. You’re not a victim of the struggle but of your own weakness.
Certainly you were young then and inexperienced. But now everything can
be different. Come on, be an actress. You will work; you will serve in
the temple of art.”...
“Don’t be so clever, Nicolai,” she interrupts. “Let’s agree once for
all: let’s speak about actors, actresses, writers, but let us leave art
out of it. You’re a rare and excellent man. But you don’t understand
enough about art to consider it truly sacred. You have no _flair,_ no
ear for art. You’ve been busy all your life, and you never had time to
acquire the _flair._ Really ... I don’t love these conversations about
art!” she continues nervously. “I don’t love them. They’ve vulgarised
it enough already, thank you.”
“Who’s vulgarised it?”
“_They_ vulgarised it by their drunkenness, newspapers by their
over-familiarity, clever people by philosophy.”
“What’s philosophy got to do with it?”
“A great deal. If a man philosophises, it means he doesn’t understand.”
So that it should not come to bitter words, I hasten to change the
subject, and then keep silence for a long while. It’s not till we come
out of the forest and drive towards Katy’s bungalow, I return to the
subject and ask:
“Still, you haven’t answered me why you don’t want to go on the stage?”
“Really, it’s cruel,” she cries out, and suddenly blushes all over.
“You want me to tell you the truth outright. Very well if ... if you
will have it! I’ve no talent! No talent and ... much ambition! There
you are!”
After this confession, she turns her face away from me, and to hide the
trembling of her hands, tugs at the reins.
As we approach her bungalow, from a distance we see Mikhail already,
walking about by the gate, impatiently awaiting us.
“This Fiodorovich again,” Katy says with annoyance. “Please take him
away from me. I’m sick of him. He’s flat.... Let him go to the deuce.”
Mikhail Fiodorovich ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he has