A Desperate Character and Other Stories

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As I have said already, Alexey Sergeitch went out nowhere, and saw very
little of his neighbours, though he liked society, for he was very fond
of talking! It is true that he had society in plenty in his own house;
various Nikanor Nikanoritchs, Sevastiey Sevastietchs, Fedulitchs,
Miheitchs, all poor gentlemen in shabby cossack coats and camisoles,
often from the master's wardrobe, lived under his roof, to say nothing
of the poor gentlewomen in chintz gowns, black kerchiefs thrown over
their shoulders, and worsted reticules in their tightly clenched
fingers--all sorts of Avdotia Savishnas, Pelagea Mironovnas, and plain
Feklushkas and Arinkas, who found a home in the women's quarters. Never
less than fifteen persons sat down to Alexey Sergeitch's table.... He
was such a hospitable man! Among all those dependants two were
particularly conspicuous: a dwarf, nicknamed Janus, or the Double-faced,
of Danish--or, as some maintained, Jewish--extraction, and the mad
Prince L. Contrary to what was customary in those days, the dwarf did
nothing to amuse the master or mistress, and was not a jester--quite the
opposite; he was always silent, had an ill-tempered and sullen
appearance, and scowled and gnashed his teeth directly a question was
addressed to him. Alexey Sergeitch called him a philosopher, and
positively respected him; at table the dishes were handed to him first,
after the guests and master and mistress. 'God has afflicted him,'
Alexey Sergeitch used to say; 'such is His Divine will; but it's not for
me to afflict him further.' 'How is he a philosopher?' I asked him once.
(Janus didn't take to me; if I went near him he would fly into a rage,
and mutter thickly, 'Stranger! keep off!') 'Eh, God bless me! isn't he a
philosopher?' answered Alexey Sergeitch. 'Look ye, little sir, how
wisely he holds his tongue!' 'But why is he double-faced?' 'Because,
little sir, he has one face on the outside--and so you, surface-gazers,
judge him.... But the other, the real face he hides. And that face I
know, and no one else--and I love him for it ... because that face is
good. You, for instance, look and see nothing ... but I see without a
word: he is blaming me for something; for he's a severe critic! And it's
always with good reason. That, little sir, you can't understand; but you
may believe an old man like me!' The real history of the two-faced
Janus--where he came from, and how he came into Alexey Sergeitch's
hands--no one knew; but the story of Prince L. was well known to every
one. He went, a lad of twenty, of a wealthy and distinguished family, to
Petersburg, to serve in a regiment of the Guards. At the first levee the
Empress Catherine noticed him, stood still before him, and, pointing at
him with her fan, she said aloud, addressing one of her courtiers, who
happened to be near, 'Look, Adam Vassilievitch, what a pretty fellow! a
perfect doll!' The poor boy's head was completely turned; when he got
home he ordered his coach out, and, putting on a ribbon of St. Anne,
proceeded to drive all over the town, as though he had reached the
pinnacle of fortune. 'Drive over every one,' he shouted to his coachman,
'who does not move out of the way!' All this was promptly reported to
the empress: the decree went forth that he should be declared insane,
and put under the guardianship of two of his brothers; and they, without
a moment's delay, carried him off to the country, and flung him into a
stone cell in chains. As they wanted to get the benefit of his property,
they did not let the poor wretch out, even when he had completely
recovered his balance, and positively kept him locked up till he really
did go out of his mind. But their evil doings did not prosper; Prince L.
outlived his brothers, and, after long years of adversity, he came into
the charge of Alexey Sergeitch, whose kinsman he was. He was a stout,
completely bald man, with a long, thin nose and prominent blue eyes. He
had quite forgotten how to talk--he simply uttered a sort of
inarticulate grumbling; but he sang old-fashioned Russian ballads
beautifully, preserving the silvery freshness of his voice to extreme
old age; and, while he was singing, he pronounced each word clearly and
distinctly. He had attacks at times of a sort of fury, and then he
became terrible: he would stand in the corner, with his face to the
wall, and all perspiring and red--red all down his bald head and down
his neck--he used to go off into vicious chuckles, and, stamping with
his feet, order some one--his brothers probably--to be punished. 'Beat
'em!' he growled hoarsely, coughing and choking with laughter; 'flog
'em, don't spare 'em! beat, beat, beat the monsters, my oppressors!
That's it! That's it!' On the day before his death he greatly alarmed
and astonished Alexey Sergeitch. He came, pale and subdued, into his
room, and, making him a low obeisance, first thanked him for his care
and kindness, and then asked him to send for a priest, for death had
come to him--he had seen death, and he must forgive every one and purify
his soul. 'How did you see death?' muttered Alexey Sergeitch in
bewilderment at hearing connected speech from him for the first time.
'In what shape? with a scythe?' 'No,' answered Prince L.; 'a simple old
woman in a jacket, but with only one eye in her forehead, and that eye
without an eyelid.' And the next day Prince L. actually did die, duly
performing everything, and taking leave of every one in a rational and
affecting manner. 'That's just how I shall die,' Alexey Sergeitch would
sometimes observe. And, as a fact, something of the same sort did happen
with him--but of that later.

But now let us go back to our story. Of the neighbours, as I have stated
already, Alexey Sergeitch saw little; and they did not care much for
him, called him a queer fish, stuck up, and a scoffer, and even a
'martiniste' who recognised no authorities, though they had no clear
idea of the meaning of this term. To a certain extent the neighbours
were right: Alexey Sergeitch had lived in his Suhodol for almost seventy
years on end, and had had hardly anything whatever to do with the
existing authorities, with the police or the law-courts. 'Police-courts
are for the robber, and discipline for the soldier,' he used to say;
'but I, thank God, am neither robber nor soldier!' Rather queer Alexey
Sergeitch certainly was, but the soul within him was by no means a petty
one. I will tell you something about him.

To tell the truth, I never knew what were his political opinions, if an
expression so modern can be used in reference to him; but, in his own
way, he was an aristocrat--more an aristocrat than a typical Russian
country gentleman. More than once he expressed his regret that God had
not given him a son and heir, 'for the honour of our name, to keep up
the family.' In his own room there hung on the wall the family-tree of
the Teliegins, with many branches, and a multitude of little circles
like apples in a golden frame. 'We Teliegins,' he used to say, 'are an
ancient line, from long, long ago: however many there've been of us
Teliegins, we have never hung about great men's ante-rooms; we've never
bent our backs, or stood about in waiting, nor picked up a living in the
courts, nor run after decorations; we've never gone trailing off to
Moscow, nor intriguing in Petersburg; we've sat at home, each in his
hole, his own man on his own land ... home-keeping birds, sir!--I
myself, though I did serve in the Guards--but not for long, thank you.'
Alexey Sergeitch preferred the old days. 'There was more freedom in
those days, more decorum; on my honour, I assure you! but since the year
eighteen hundred' (why from that year, precisely, he did not explain),
'militarism, the soldiery, have got the upper hand. Our soldier
gentlemen stuck some sort of turbans of cocks' feathers on their heads
then, and turned like cocks themselves; began binding their necks up as
stiff as could be ... they croak, and roll their eyes--how could they
help it, indeed? The other day a police corporal came to me; "I've come
to you," says he, "honourable sir," ... (fancy his thinking to surprise
me with that! ... I know I'm honourable without his telling me!) "I have
business with you." And I said to him, "My good sir, you'd better first
unfasten the hooks on your collar. Or else, God have mercy on us--you'll
sneeze. Ah, what would happen to you! what would happen to you! You'd
break off, like a mushroom ... and I should have to answer for it!" And
they do drink, these military gentlemen--oh, oh, oh! I generally order
home-made champagne to be given them, because to them, good wine or
poor, it's all the same; it runs so smoothly, so quickly, down their
throats--how can they distinguish it? And, another thing, they've
started sucking at a pap-bottle, smoking a tobacco-pipe. Your military
gentleman thrusts his pap-bottle under his moustaches, between his lips,
and puffs the smoke out of his nose, his mouth, and even his ears--and
fancies himself a hero! There are my sons-in-law--though one of them's a
senator, and the other some sort of an administrator over there--they
suck the pap-bottle, and they reckon themselves clever fellows too!'

Alexey Sergeitch could not endure smoking; and moreover, he could not
endure dogs, especially little dogs. 'If you're a Frenchman, to be sure,
you may well keep a lapdog: you run and you skip about here and there,
and it runs after you with its tail up ... but what's the use of it to
people like us?' He was exceedingly neat and particular. Of the Empress
Catherine he never spoke but with enthusiasm, and in exalted, rather
bookish phraseology: 'Half divine she was, not human! Only look, little
sir, at that smile,' he would add, pointing reverentially to Lampi's
portrait, 'and you will agree: half divine! I was so fortunate in my
life as to be deemed worthy to behold that smile close, and never will
it be effaced from my heart!' And thereupon he would relate anecdotes of
the life of Catherine, such as I have never happened to read or hear
elsewhere. Here is one of them. Alexey Sergeitch did not permit the
slightest allusion to the weaknesses of the great Tsaritsa. 'And,
besides,' he exclaimed, 'can one judge of her as of other people?'

One day while she was sitting in her peignoir during her morning
toilette, she commanded her hair to be combed.... And what do you
think? The lady-in-waiting passed the comb through, and sparks of
electricity simply showered out! Then she summoned to her presence the
court physician Rogerson, who happened to be in waiting at the court,
and said to him: 'I am, I know, censured for certain actions; but do
you see this electricity? Consequently, as such is my nature and
constitution, you can judge for yourself, as you are a doctor, that it
is unjust for them to censure me, and they ought to comprehend me!' The
following incident remained indelible in Alexey Sergeitch's memory. He
was standing one day on guard indoors, in the palace--he was only
sixteen at the time--and behold the empress comes walking past him; he
salutes ... 'and she,' Alexey Sergeitch would exclaim at this point
with much feeling, 'smiling at my youth and my zeal, deigned to give me
her hand to kiss and patted my cheek, and asked me "who I was? where I
came from? of what family?" and then' ... here the old man's voice
usually broke ... 'then she bade me greet my mother in her name and
thank her for having brought up her children so well. And whether I was
on earth or in heaven, and how and where she deigned to vanish, whether
she floated away into the heights or went her way into the other
apartments ... to this day I do not know!'

More than once I tried to question Alexey Sergeitch about those far-away
times, about the people who made up the empress's circle.... But for the
most part he edged off the subject. 'What's the use of talking about old
times?' he used to say ... 'it's only making one's self miserable,
remembering that then one was a fine young fellow, and now one hasn't a
tooth left in one's head. And what is there to say? They were good old
times ... but there, enough of them! And as for those folks--you were
asking, you troublesome boy, about the lucky ones!--haven't you seen how
a bubble comes up on the water? As long as it lasts and is whole, what
colours play upon it! Red, and blue, and yellow--a perfect rainbow or
diamond you'd say it was! Only it soon bursts, and there's no trace of
it left. And so it was with those folks.'

'But how about Potiomkin?' I once inquired.

Alexey Sergeitch looked grave. 'Potiomkin, Grigory Alexandrovitch, was a
statesman, a theologian, a pupil of Catherine's, her cherished creation,
one must say.... But enough of that, little sir!'

Alexey Sergeitch was a very devout man, and, though it was a great
effort, he attended church regularly. Superstition was not noticeable in
him; he laughed at omens, the evil eye, and such 'nonsense,' but he did
not like a hare to run across his path, and to meet a priest was not
altogether agreeable to him. For all that, he was very respectful to
clerical persons, and went up to receive their blessing, and even kissed
the priest's hand every time, but he was not willing to enter into
conversation with them. 'Such an extremely strong odour comes from
them,' he explained: 'and I, poor sinner, am fastidious beyond reason;
they've such long hair, and all oily, and they comb it out on all
sides--they think they show me respect by so doing, and they clear their
throats so loudly when they talk--from shyness may be, or I dare say
they want to show respect in that way too. And besides, they make one
think of one's last hour. And, I don't know how it is, but I still want
to go on living. Only, my little sir, don't you repeat my words; we must
respect the clergy--it's only fools that don't respect them; and I'm to
blame to babble nonsense in my old age.'

Alexey Sergeitch, like most of the noblemen of his day, had received a
very slight education; but he had, to some extent, made good the
deficiency himself by reading. He read none but Russian books of the end
of last century; the more modern authors he thought insipid and
deficient in style.... While he read, he had placed at his side on a
round, one-legged table, a silver tankard of frothing spiced kvas of a
special sort, which sent an agreeable fragrance all over the house. He
used to put on the end of his nose a pair of big, round spectacles, but
in latter years he did not so much read as gaze dreamily over the rims
of his spectacles, lifting his eyebrows, chewing his lips, and sighing.
Once I caught him weeping with a book on his knees, greatly, I own, to
my surprise.

He had recalled these lines:

'O pitiful race of man!
Peace is unknown to thee!
Thou canst not find it save
In the dust of the grave....
Bitter, bitter is that sleep!
Rest, rest in death ... but living weep!'

These lines were the composition of a certain Gormitch-Gormitsky, a
wandering poet, to whom Alexey Sergeitch had given a home in his house,
as he struck him as a man of delicate feeling and even of subtlety; he
wore slippers adorned with ribbons, spoke with a broad accent, and
frequently sighed, turning his eyes to heaven; in addition to all these
qualifications, Gormitch-Gormitsky spoke French decently, having been
educated in a Jesuit college, while Alexey Sergeitch only 'followed
conversation.' But having once got terribly drunk at the tavern, that
same subtle Gormitsky showed a turbulence beyond all bounds; he gave a
fearful thrashing to Alexey Sergeitch's valet, the man cook, two
laundry-maids who chanced to get in his way, and a carpenter from
another village, and he broke several panes in the windows, screaming
furiously all the while: 'There, I'll show them, these Russian loafers,
rough-hewn billy-goats!'

And the strength the frail-looking creature put forth! It was hard work
for eight men to master him! For this violent proceeding Alexey
Sergeitch ordered the poet to be turned out of the house, after being
put, as a preliminary measure, in the snow--it was winter-time--to
sober him.

'Yes,' Alexey Sergeitch used to say, 'my day is over; I was a spirited
steed, but I've run my last race now. Then, I used to keep poets at my
expense, and I used to buy pictures and books of the Jews, geese of the
best breeds, and pouter-pigeons of pure blood.... I used to go in for
everything! Though dogs I never did care for keeping, because it goes
with drinking, foulness, and buffoonery! I was a young man of spirit,
not to be outdone. That there should be anything of Teliegin's and not
first-rate ... why, it was not to be thought of! And I had a splendid
stud of horses. And my horses came--from what stock do you think, young
sir? Why, from none other than the celebrated stables of the Tsar, Ivan
Alexeitch, brother of Peter the Great ... it's the truth I'm telling
you! All fawn-coloured stallions, sleek--their manes to their knees,
their tails to their hoofs.... Lions! And all that was--and is buried in
the past. Vanity of vanities--and every kind of vanity! But still--why
regret it? Every man has his limits set him. There's no flying above the
sky, no living in the water, no getting away from the earth.... We'll
live a bit longer, anyway!'

And the old man would smile again and sniff his Spanish snuff.

The peasants liked him; he was, in their words, a kind master, not
easily angered. Only they, too, repeated that he was a worn-out steed.
In former days Alexey Sergeitch used to go into everything himself--he
used to drive out to the fields, and to the mill, and to the dairy, and
peep into the granaries and the peasants' huts; every one knew his
racing droshky, upholstered in crimson plush, and drawn by a tall mare,
with a broad white star all over her forehead, called 'Beacon,' of the
same famous breed. Alexey Sergeitch used to drive her himself, the ends
of the reins crushed up in his fists. But when his seventieth year came,
the old man let everything go, and handed over the management of the
estate to the bailiff Antip, of whom he was secretly afraid, and whom he
called Micromegas (a reminiscence of Voltaire!), or simply, plunderer.
'Well, plunderer, what have you to say? Have you stacked a great deal in
the barn?' he would ask with a smile, looking straight into the
plunderer's eyes. 'All, by your good favour, please your honour,' Antip
would respond cheerfully. 'Favour's all very well, only you mind what I
say, Micromegas! don't you dare touch the peasants, my subjects, out of
my sight! If they come to complain ... I've a cane, you see, not far
off!' 'Your cane, your honour, Alexey Sergeitch, I always keep well in
mind,' Antip Micromegas would respond, stroking his beard. 'All right,
don't forget it.' And the master and the bailiff would laugh in each
other's faces. With the servants, and with the serfs in general, his
'subjects' (Alexey Sergeitch liked that word) he was gentle in his
behaviour. 'Because, think a little, nephew; nothing of their own, but
the cross on their neck--and that copper--and daren't hanker after other
people's goods ... how can one expect sense of them?' It is needless to
state that of the so-called 'serf question' no one even dreamed in those
days; it could not disturb the peace of mind of Alexey Sergeitch: he was
quite happy in the possession of his 'subjects'; but he was severe in
his censure of bad masters, and used to call them the enemies of their
order. He divided the nobles generally into three classes: the prudent,
'of whom there are too few'; the prodigal, 'of whom there are quite
enough'; and the senseless, 'of whom there are shoals and shoals.'

'And if any one of them is harsh and oppressive with his subjects'--he
would say--'then he sins against God, and is guilty before men!'

Yes, the house-serfs had an easy life of it with the old man; the
'subjects out of sight' no doubt fared worse, in spite of the cane with
which he threatened Micromegas. And what a lot there were of them, those
house-serfs, in his house! And for the most part sinewy, hairy,
grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen
coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging
to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter
of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called
Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out
call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there
of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, God
forbid!' And what used to surprise me was that whatever time Alexey
Sergeitch called his valet, he always promptly made his appearance, as
though he had sprung out of the earth, and with a scrape of his heels,
his hands behind his back, would stand before his master, a surly, as it
were angry, but devoted servant!

Alexey Sergeitch was liberal beyond his means; but he did not like to be
called 'benefactor.' 'Benefactor to you, indeed, sir! ... I'm doing
myself a benefit, and not you, sir!' (when he was angry or indignant, he
always addressed people with greater formality). 'Give to a beggar
once,' he used to say, 'and give him twice, and three times.... And--if
he should come a fourth time, give to him still--only then you might say
too: "It's time, my good man, you found work for something else, not
only for your mouth."' 'But, uncle,' one asked, sometimes, 'suppose even
after that the beggar came again, a fifth time?' 'Oh, well, give again
the fifth time.' He used to have the sick, who came to him for aid,
treated at his expense, though he had no faith in doctors himself, and
never sent for them. 'My mother,' he declared, 'used to cure illnesses
of all sorts with oil and salt--she gave it internally, and rubbed it on
too--it always answered splendidly. And who was my mother? She was born
in the days of Peter the Great--only fancy that!'

Alexey Sergeitch was a Russian in everything; he liked none but Russian
dishes, he was fond of Russian songs, but the harmonica--a
'manufactured contrivance'--he hated; he liked looking at the
serf-girls' dances and the peasant-women's jigs; in his youth, I was
told, he had been an enthusiastic singer and a dashing dancer; he liked
steaming himself in the bath, and steamed himself so vigorously that
Irinarh, who, serving him as bathman, used to beat him with a bundle of
birch-twigs steeped in beer, to rub him with a handful of tow, and then
with a woollen cloth--the truly devoted Irinarh used to say every time,
as he crept off his shelf red as a 'new copper image': 'Well, this time
I, the servant of God, Irinarh Tolobiev, have come out alive. How will
it be next time?'

And Alexey Sergeitch spoke excellent Russian, a little old-fashioned,
but choice and pure as spring water, continually interspersing his
remarks with favourite expressions: ''Pon my honour, please God,
howsoever that may be, sir, and young sir....'

But enough of him. Let us talk a little about Alexey Sergeitch's wife,
Malania Pavlovna. Malania Pavlovna was born at Moscow.

She had been famous as the greatest beauty in Moscow--_la Venus de
Moscou_. I knew her as a thin old woman with delicate but insignificant
features, with crooked teeth, like a hare's, in a tiny little mouth,
with a multitude of finely crimped little yellow curls on her forehead,
and painted eyebrows. She invariably wore a pyramidal cap with pink
ribbons, a high ruff round her neck, a short white dress, and prunella
slippers with red heels; and over her dress she wore a jacket of blue
satin, with a sleeve hanging loose from her right shoulder. This was
precisely the costume in which she was arrayed on St. Peter's Day in the
year 1789! On that day she went, being still a girl, with her relations
to the Hodinskoe field to see the famous boxing-match arranged by Orlov.
'And Count Alexey Grigorievitch' (oh, how often I used to hear this
story!) 'noticing me, approached, bowed very low, taking his hat in both
hands, and said: "Peerless beauty," said he, "why have you hung that
sleeve from your shoulder? Do you, too, wish to try a tussle with me? ...
By all means; only I will tell you beforehand you have vanquished me--I
give in! And I am your captive." And every one was looking at us and
wondering.' And that very costume she had worn continually ever since.
'Only I didn't wear a cap, but a hat _a la bergere de Trianon_; and
though I was powdered, yet my hair shone through it, positively shone
through it like gold!' Malania Pavlovna was foolish to the point of
'holy innocence,' as it is called; she chattered quite at random, as
though she were hardly aware herself of what dropped from her lips--and
mostly about Orlov. Orlov had become, one might say, the principal
interest of her life. She usually walked ... or rather swam, into the
room with a rhythmic movement of the head, like a peacock, stood still
in the middle, with one foot strangely turned out, and two fingers
holding the tip of the loose sleeve (I suppose this pose, too, must once
have charmed Orlov); she would glance about her with haughty
nonchalance, as befits a beauty--and with a positive sniff, and a murmur
of 'What next!' as though some importunate gallant were besieging her
with compliments, she would go out again, tapping her heels and
shrugging her shoulders. She used, too, to take Spanish snuff out of a
tiny bonbonniere, picking it up with a tiny golden spoon; and from time
to time, especially when any one unknown to her was present, she would
hold up--not to her eyes, she had splendid sight, but to her nose--a
double eyeglass in the shape of a half-moon, with a coquettish turn of
her little white hand, one finger held out separate from the rest. How
often has Malania Pavlovna described to me her wedding in the church of
the Ascension, in Arbaty--such a fine church!--and how all Moscow was
there ... 'and the crush there was!--awful! Carriages with teams, golden
coaches, outriders ... one outrider of Count Zavadovsky got run over!
and we were married by the archbishop himself--and what a sermon he gave
us! every one was crying--wherever I looked I saw tears ... and the
governor-general's horses were tawny, like tigers. And the flowers, the
flowers that were brought! ... Simply loads of flowers!' And how on that
day a foreigner, a wealthy, tremendously wealthy person, had shot
himself from love--and how Orlov too had been there.... And going up to
Alexey Sergeitch, he had congratulated him and called him a lucky
man.... 'A lucky man you are, you silly fellow!' said he. And how in
answer to these words Alexey Sergeitch had made a wonderful bow, and had
swept the floor from left to right with the plumes of his hat, as if he
would say: 'Your Excellency, there is a line now between you and my
spouse, which you will not overstep!' And Orlov, Alexey Grigorievitch
understood at once, and commended him. 'Oh! that was a man! such a man!'
And how, 'One day, Alexis and I were at his house at a ball--I was
married then--and he had the most marvellous diamond buttons! And I
could not resist it, I admired them. "What marvellous diamonds you have,
Count!" said I. And he, taking up a knife from the table, at once cut
off a button and presented it to me and said: "In your eyes, my charmer,
the diamonds are a hundred times brighter; stand before the
looking-glass and compare them." And I stood so, and he stood beside me.
"Well, who's right?" said he, while he simply rolled his eyes, looking
me up and down. And Alexey Sergeitch was very much put out about it, but
I said to him: "Alexis," said I, "please don't you be put out; you ought
to know me better!" And he answered me: "Don't disturb yourself,
Melanie!" And these very diamonds are now round my medallion of Alexey
Grigorievitch--you've seen it, I dare say, my dear;--I wear it on
feast-days on a St. George ribbon, because he was a brave hero, a
knight of St. George: he burned the Turks.'

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