A Desperate Character and Other Stories

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For all that, Malania Pavlovna was a very kind-hearted woman; she was
easily pleased. 'She's not one to snarl, nor to sneer,' the maids used
to say of her. Malania Pavlovna was passionately fond of sweet
things--and a special old woman who looked after nothing but the jam,
and so was called the jam-maid, would bring her, ten times a day, a
china dish with rose-leaves crystallised in sugar, or barberries in
honey, or sherbet of bananas. Malania Pavlovna was afraid of solitude--
dreadful thoughts are apt to come over one, she would say--and was
almost always surrounded by companions, whom she would urgently implore:
'Talk, talk! why do you sit like that, simply keeping your seats warm!'
and they would begin twittering like canaries. She was no less devout
than Alexey Sergeitch, and was very fond of praying; but as, in her own
words, she had never learned to repeat prayers well, she kept for the
purpose a poor deacon's widow who prayed with such relish! Never
stumbled over a word in her life! And this deacon's widow certainly
could utter the words of prayer in a sort of unbroken flow, not
interrupting the stream to breathe out or draw breath in, while Malania
Pavlovna listened and was much moved. She had another widow in
attendance on her--it was her duty to tell her stories in the night.
'But only the old ones,' Malania Pavlovna would beg--'those I know
already; the new ones are all so far-fetched.' Malania Pavlovna was
flighty in the extreme, and at times she was fanciful too; some
ridiculous notion would suddenly come into her head. She did not like
the dwarf, Janus, for instance; she was always fancying he would
suddenly get up and shout, 'Don't you know who I am? The prince of the
Buriats. Mind, you are to obey me!' Or else that he would set fire to
the house in a fit of spleen. Malania Pavlovna was as liberal as Alexey
Sergeitch; but she never gave money--she did not like to soil her
hands--but kerchiefs, bracelets, dresses, ribbons; or she would send
pies from the table, or a piece of roast meat, or a bottle of wine. She
liked feasting the peasant-women, too, on holidays; they would dance,
and she would tap with her heels and throw herself into attitudes.

Alexey Sergeitch was well aware that his wife was a fool; but almost
from the first year of his marriage he had schooled himself to keep up
the fiction that she was very witty and fond of saying cutting things.
Sometimes when her chatter began to get beyond all bounds, he would
threaten her with his finger, and say as he did so: 'Ah, the tongue, the
tongue! what it will have to answer for in the other world! It will be
pierced with a redhot pin!'

Malania Pavlovna was not offended, however, at this; on the contrary,
she seemed to feel flattered at hearing a reproof of that sort, as
though she would say, 'Well! is it my fault if I'm naturally witty?'

Malania Pavlovna adored her husband, and had been all her life an
exemplarily faithful wife; but there had been a romance even in her
life--a young cousin, an hussar, killed, as she supposed, in a duel on
her account; but, according to more trustworthy reports, killed by a
blow on the head from a billiard-cue in a tavern brawl. A water-colour
portrait of this object of her affections was kept by her in a secret
drawer. Malania Pavlovna always blushed up to her ears when she
mentioned Kapiton--such was the name of the young hero--and Alexey
Sergeitch would designedly scowl, shake his finger at his wife again,
and say: 'No trusting a horse in the field nor a woman in the house.
Don't talk to me of Kapiton, he's Cupidon!' Then Malania Pavlovna would
be all of a flutter and say: 'Alexis, Alexis, it's too bad of you! In
your young days you flirted, I've no doubt, with all sorts of misses and
madams--and so now you imagine....' 'Come, that's enough, that's enough,
my dear Malania,' Alexey Sergeitch interrupted with a smile. 'Your gown
is white--but whiter still your soul!' 'Yes, Alexis, it is whiter!' 'Ah,
what a tongue, what a tongue!' Alexis would repeat, patting her hand.

To speak of 'views' in the case of Malania Pavlovna would be even more
inappropriate than in the case of Alexey Sergeitch; yet I once chanced
to witness a strange manifestation of my aunt's secret feelings. In the
course of conversation I once somehow mentioned the famous chief of
police, Sheshkovsky; Malania Pavlovna turned suddenly livid--positively
livid, green, in spite of her rouge and paint--and in a thick and
perfectly unaffected voice (a very rare thing with her--she usually
minced a little, intoned, and lisped) she said: 'Oh, what a name to
utter! And towards nightfall, too! Don't utter that name!' I was
astonished; what kind of significance could his name have for such a
harmless and inoffensive creature, incapable--not merely of doing--even
of thinking of anything not permissible? Anything but cheerful
reflections were aroused in me by this terror, manifesting itself after
almost half a century.

Alexey Sergeitch died in his eighty-eighth year--in the year 1848, which
apparently disturbed even him. His death, too, was rather strange. He
had felt well the same morning, though by that time he never left his
easy-chair. And all of a sudden he called his wife: 'Malania, my dear,
come here.' 'What is it, Alexis?' 'It's time for me to die, my dear,
that's what it is.' 'Mercy on you, Alexey Sergeitch! What for?'
'Because, first of all, one must know when to take leave; and, besides,
I was looking the other day at my feet.... Look at my feet ... they
are not mine ... say what you like ... look at my hands, look at my
stomach ... that stomach's not mine--so really I'm using up another man's
life. Send for the priest; and meanwhile, put me to bed--from which I
shall not get up again.' Malania Pavlovna was terribly upset; however, she
put the old man to bed and sent for the priest. Alexey Sergeitch confessed,
took the sacrament, said good-bye to his household, and fell asleep.
Malania Pavlovna was sitting by his bedside. 'Alexis!' she cried
suddenly, 'don't frighten me, don't shut your eyes! Are you in pain?'
The old man looked at his wife: 'No, no pain ... but it's difficult ...
difficult to breathe.' Then after a brief silence: 'Malania,' he said,
'so life has slipped by--and do you remember when we were married ...
what a couple we were?' 'Yes, we were, my handsome, charming Alexis!'
The old man was silent again. 'Malania, my dear, shall we meet again in
the next world?' 'I will pray God for it, Alexis,' and the old woman
burst into tears. 'Come, don't cry, silly; maybe the Lord God will make
us young again then--and again we shall be a fine pair!' 'He will make
us young, Alexis!' 'With the Lord all things are possible,' observed
Alexey Sergeitch. 'He worketh great marvels!--maybe He will make you
sensible.... There, my love, I was joking; come, let me kiss your hand.'
'And I yours.' And the two old people kissed each other's hands
simultaneously.

Alexey Sergeitch began to grow quieter and to sink into forgetfulness.
Malania Pavlovna watched him tenderly, brushing the tears off her
eyelashes with her finger-tips. For two hours she continued sitting
there. 'Is he asleep?' the old woman with the talent for praying
inquired in a whisper, peeping in behind Irinarh, who, immovable as a
post, stood in the doorway, gazing intently at his expiring master. 'He
is asleep,' answered Malania Pavlovna also in a whisper. And suddenly
Alexey Sergeitch opened his eyes. 'My faithful companion,' he faltered,
'my honoured wife, I would bow down at your little feet for all your
love and faithfulness--but how to get up? Let me sign you with the
cross.' Malania Pavlovna moved closer, bent down.... But the hand he had
raised fell back powerless on the quilt, and a few moments later Alexey
Sergeitch was no more.

His daughters arrived only on the day of the funeral with their
husbands; they had no children either of them. Alexey Sergeitch showed
them no animosity in his will, though he never even mentioned them on
his death-bed. 'My heart has grown hard to them,' he once said to me.
Knowing his kindly nature, I was surprised at his words. It is hard to
judge between parents and children. 'A great ravine starts from a little
rift,' Alexey Sergeitch said to me once in this connection: 'a wound a
yard wide may heal; but once cut off even a finger nail, it will not
grow again.'

I fancy the daughters were ashamed of their eccentric old parents.

A month later and Malania Pavlovna too passed away. From the very day of
Alexey Sergeitch's death she had hardly risen from her bed, and had not
put on her usual attire; but they buried her in the blue jacket, and
with Orlov's medallion on her shoulder, only without the diamonds. Those
her daughters divided, on the pretext that the diamonds should be used
in the setting of some holy pictures; in reality, they used them to
adorn their own persons.

And so I can see my old friends as though they were alive and before my
eyes, and pleasant is the memory I preserve of them. And yet on my very
last visit to them (I was a student by then) an incident occurred which
jarred upon the impression of patriarchal harmony always produced in me
by the Teliegin household.

Among the house-serfs there was one Ivan, called 'Suhys' Ivan,' a
coachman or coach-boy, as they called him on account of his small size,
in spite of his being no longer young. He was a tiny little man, brisk,
snub-nosed, curly-headed, with an everlastingly smiling, childish face,
and little eyes, like a mouse's. He was a great joker, a most comic
fellow; he was great at all sorts of tricks--he used to fly kites, let
off fireworks and rockets, to play all sorts of games, gallop standing
up on the horse's back, fly higher than all the rest in the swing, and
could even make Chinese shadows. No one could amuse children better; and
he would gladly spend the whole day looking after them. When he started
laughing, the whole house would seem to liven up; they would answer
him--one would say one thing, one another, but he always made them all
merry.... And even if they abused him, they could not but laugh. Ivan
danced marvellously, especially the so-called 'fish dance.' When the
chorus struck up a dance tune, the fellow would come into the middle of
the ring, and then there would begin such a turning and skipping and
stamping, and then he would fall flat on the ground, and imitate the
movement of a fish brought out of the water on to dry land; such turning
and wriggling, the heels positively clapped up to the head; and then he
would get up and shriek--the earth seemed simply quivering under him. At
times Alexey Sergeitch, who was, as I have said already, exceedingly
fond of watching dancing, could not resist shouting, 'Little Vania,
here! coach-boy! Dance us the fish, smartly now'; and a minute later he
would whisper enthusiastically: 'Ah, what a fellow it is!'

Well, on my last visit, this Ivan Suhih came into my room, and, without
saying a word, fell on his knees. 'Ivan, what's the matter?' 'Save me,
sir.' 'Why, what is it?' And thereupon Ivan told me his trouble.

He was exchanged, twenty years ago, by 'the Suhy family for a serf of
the Teliegins';--simply exchanged without any kind of formality or
written deed: the man given in exchange for him had died, but the Suhys
had forgotten about Ivan, and he had stayed on in Alexey Sergeitch's
house as his own serf; only his nickname had served to recall his
origin. But now his former masters were dead; the estate had passed into
other hands; and the new owner, who was reported to be a cruel and
oppressive man, having learned that one of his serfs was detained
without cause or reason at Alexey Sergeitch's, began to demand him back;
in case of refusal he threatened legal proceedings, and the threat was
not an empty one, as he was himself of the rank of privy councillor, and
had great weight in the province. Ivan had rushed in terror to Alexey
Sergeitch. The old man was sorry for his dancer, and he offered the
privy councillor to buy Ivan for a considerable sum. But the privy
councillor would not hear of it; he was a Little Russian, and obstinate
as the devil. The poor fellow would have to be given up. 'I have spent
my life here, and I'm at home here; I have served here, here I have
eaten my bread, and here I want to die,' Ivan said to me--and there was
no smile on his face now; on the contrary, it looked turned to stone....
'And now I am to go to this wretch.... Am I a dog to be flung from one
kennel to another with a noose round my neck? ... to be told: "There,
get along with you!" Save me, master; beg your uncle, remember how I
always amused you.... Or else there'll be harm come of it; it won't end
without sin.'

'What sort of sin, Ivan?'

'I shall kill that gentleman. I shall simply go and say to him,
"Master, let me go back; or else, mind, be careful of yourself.... I
shall kill you."'

If a siskin or a chaffinch could have spoken, and had begun declaring
that it would peck another bird to death, it would not have reduced me
to greater amazement than did Ivan at that moment. What! Suhys' Vania,
that dancing, jesting, comic fellow, the favourite playfellow of
children, and a child himself, that kindest-hearted of creatures, a
murderer! What ridiculous nonsense! Not for an instant did I believe
him; what astonished me to such a degree was that he was capable of
saying such a thing. Anyway I appealed to Alexey Sergeitch. I did not
repeat what Ivan had said to me, but began asking him whether something
couldn't be done. 'My young sir,' the old man answered, 'I should be
only too happy--but what's to be done? I offered this Little Russian an
immense compensation--I offered him three hundred roubles, 'pon my
honour, I tell you! but he--there's no moving him! what's one to do? The
transaction was not legal, it was done on trust, in the old-fashioned
way ... and now see what mischief's come of it! This Little Russian
fellow, you see, will take Ivan by force, do what we will: his arm is
powerful, the governor eats cabbage-soup at his table; he'll be sending
along soldiers. And I'm afraid of those soldiers! In old days, to be
sure, I would have stood up for Ivan, come what might; but now, look at
me, what a feeble creature I have grown! How can I make a fight for it?'
It was true; on my last visit I found Alexey Sergeitch greatly aged;
even the centres of his eyes had that milky colour that babies' eyes
have, and his lips wore not his old conscious smile, but that unnatural,
mawkish, unconscious grin, which never, even in sleep, leaves the faces
of very decrepit old people.

I told Ivan of Alexey Sergeitch's decision. He stood still, was silent
for a little, shook his head. 'Well,' said he at last, 'what is to be
there's no escaping. Only my mind's made up. There's nothing left, then,
but to play the fool to the end. Something for drink, please!' I gave
him something; he drank himself drunk, and that day danced the 'fish
dance' so that the serf-girls and peasant-women positively shrieked with
delight--he surpassed himself in his antics so wonderfully.

Next day I went home, and three months later, in Petersburg, I heard
that Ivan had kept his word. He had been sent to his new master; his
master had called him into his room, and explained to him that he would
be made coachman, that a team of three ponies would be put in his
charge, and that he would be severely dealt with if he did not look
after them well, and were not punctual in discharging his duties
generally. 'I'm not fond of joking.' Ivan heard the master out, first
bowed down to his feet, and then announced it was as his honour pleased,
but he could not be his servant.

'Let me off for a yearly quit-money, your honour,' said he, 'or send me
for a soldier; or else there'll be mischief come of it!'

The master flew into a rage. 'Ah, what a fellow you are! How dare you
speak to me like that? In the first place, I'm to be called your
excellency, and not your honour; and, secondly, you're beyond the age,
and not of a size to be sent for a soldier; and, lastly, what mischief
do you threaten me with? Do you mean to set the house on fire, eh?'

'No, your excellency, not the house on fire.'

'Murder me, then, eh?'

Ivan was silent. 'I'm not your servant,' he said at last.

'Oh well, I'll show you,' roared the master, 'whether you 're my servant
or not.' And he had Ivan cruelly punished, but yet had the three ponies
put into his charge, and made him coachman in the stables.

Ivan apparently submitted; he began driving about as coachman. As he
drove well, he soon gained favour with the master, especially as Ivan
was very quiet and steady in his behaviour, and the ponies improved so
much in his hands; he turned them out as sound and sleek as
cucumbers--it was quite a sight to see. The master took to driving out
with him oftener than with the other coachmen. Sometimes he would ask
him, 'I say, Ivan, do you remember how badly we got on when we met?
You've got over all that nonsense, eh?' But Ivan never made any response
to such remarks. So one day the master was driving with Ivan to the town
in his three-horse sledge with bells and a highback covered with carpet.
The horses began to walk up the hill, and Ivan got off the box-seat and
went behind the back of the sledge as though he had dropped something.
It was a sharp frost; the master sat wrapped up, with a beaver cap
pulled down on to his ears. Then Ivan took an axe from under his skirt,
came up to the master from behind, knocked off his cap, and saying, 'I
warned you, Piotr Petrovitch--you've yourself to blame now!' he struck
off his head at one blow. Then he stopped the ponies, put the cap on his
dead master, and, getting on the box-seat again, drove him to the town,
straight to the courts of justice.

'Here's the Suhinsky general for you, dead; I have killed him. As I told
him, so I did to him. Put me in fetters.'

They took Ivan, tried him, sentenced him to the knout, and then to hard
labour. The light-hearted, bird-like dancer was sent to the mines, and
there passed out of sight for ever....

Yes; one can but repeat, in another sense, Alexey Sergeitch's words:
'They were good old times ... but enough of them!'

1881.

THE BRIGADIER

I

Reader, do you know those little homesteads of country gentlefolks,
which were plentiful in our Great Russian Oukraine twenty-five or thirty
years ago? Now one rarely comes across them, and in another ten years
the last of them will, I suppose, have disappeared for ever. The running
pond overgrown with reeds and rushes, the favourite haunt of fussy
ducks, among whom one may now and then come across a wary 'teal'; beyond
the pond a garden with avenues of lime-trees, the chief beauty and glory
of our black-earth plains, with smothered rows of 'Spanish'
strawberries, with dense thickets of gooseberries, currants, and
raspberries, in the midst of which, in the languid hour of the stagnant
noonday heat, one would be sure to catch glimpses of a serf-girl's
striped kerchief, and to hear the shrill ring of her voice. Close by
would be a summer-house standing on four legs, a conservatory, a
neglected kitchen garden, with flocks of sparrows hung on stakes, and a
cat curled up on the tumble-down well; a little further, leafy
apple-trees in the high grass, which is green below and grey above,
straggling cherry-trees, pear-trees, on which there is never any fruit;
then flower-beds, poppies, peonies, pansies, milkwort, 'maids in green,'
bushes of Tartar honeysuckle, wild jasmine, lilac and acacia, with the
continual hum of bees and wasps among their thick, fragrant, sticky
branches. At last comes the manor-house, a one-storied building on a
brick foundation, with greenish window-panes in narrow frames, a
sloping, once painted roof, a little balcony from which the vases of the
balustrade are always jutting out, a crooked gable, and a husky old dog
in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard
with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with
doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little
storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with
rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond--the road with
cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of
the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the
cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows.... Is all this familiar to
you, reader? In the house itself everything is a little awry, a little
rickety--but no matter. It stands firm and keeps warm; the stoves are
like elephants, the furniture is of all sorts, home-made. Little paths
of white footmarks run from the doors over the painted floors. In the
hall siskins and larks in tiny cages; in the corner of the dining-room
an immense English clock in the form of a tower, with the inscription,
'Strike--silent'; in the drawing-room portraits of the family, painted
in oils, with an expression of ill-tempered alarm on the brick-coloured
faces, and sometimes too an old warped picture of flowers and fruit or a
mythological subject. Everywhere there is the smell of kvas, of apples,
of linseed-oil and of leather. Flies buzz and hum about the ceiling and
the windows. A daring cockroach suddenly shows his countenance from
behind the looking-glass frame.... No matter, one can live here--and
live very well too.

II

Just such a homestead it was my lot to visit thirty years ago ... it was
in days long past, as you perceive. The little estate in which this
house stood belonged to a friend of mine at the university; it had only
recently come to him on the death of a bachelor cousin, and he was not
living in it himself.... But at no great distance from it there were
wide tracts of steppe bog, in which at the time of summer migration,
when they are on the wing, there are great numbers of snipe; my friend
and I, both enthusiastic sportsmen, agreed therefore to go on St.
Peter's day, he from Moscow, I from my own village, to his little house.
My friend lingered in Moscow, and was two days late; I did not care to
start shooting without him. I was received by an old servant, Narkiz
Semyonov, who had had notice of my coming. This old servant was not in
the least like 'Savelitch' or 'Caleb'; my friend used to call him in
joke 'Marquis.' There was something of conceit, even of affectation,
about him; he looked down on us young men with a certain dignity, but
cherished no particularly respectful sentiments for other landowners
either; of his old master he spoke slightingly, while his own class he
simply scorned for their ignorance. He could read and write, expressed
himself correctly and with judgment, and did not drink. He seldom went
to church, and so was looked upon as a dissenter. In appearance he was
thin and tall, had a long and good-looking face, a sharp nose, and
overhanging eyebrows, which he was continually either knitting or
lifting; he wore a neat, roomy coat, and boots to his knees with
heart-shaped scallops at the tops.

III

On the day of my arrival, Narkiz, having given me lunch and cleared the
table, stood in the doorway, looked intently at me, and with some play
of the eyebrows observed:

'What are you going to do now, sir?'

'Well, really, I don't know. If Nikolai Petrovitch had kept his word and
come, we should have gone shooting together.'

'So you really expected, sir, that he would come at the time he
promised?'

'Of course I did.'

'H'm.' Narkiz looked at me again and shook his head as it were with
commiseration. 'If you 'd care to amuse yourself with reading,' he
continued: 'there are some books left of my old master's; I'll get them
you, if you like; only you won't read them, I expect.'

'Why?'

'They're books of no value; not written for the gentlemen of
these days.'

'Have you read them?'

'If I hadn't read them, I wouldn't have spoken about them. A dream-book,
for instance ... that's not much of a book, is it? There are others too,
of course ... only you won't read them either.'

'Why?'

'They are religious books.'

I was silent for a space.... Narkiz was silent too.

'What vexes me most,' I began, 'is staying in the house in such
weather.'

'Take a walk in the garden; or go into the copse. We've a copse here
beyond the threshing-floor. Are you fond of fishing?'

'Are there fish here?'

'Yes, in the pond. Loaches, sand-eels, and perches are caught there.
Now, to be sure, the best time is over; July's here. But anyway, you
might try.... Shall I get the tackle ready?'

'Yes, do please.'

'I'll send a boy with you ... to put on the worms. Or maybe I 'd better
come myself?' Narkiz obviously doubted whether I knew how to set about
things properly by myself.

'Come, please, come along.'

Narkiz, without a word, grinned from ear to ear, then suddenly knitted
his brows ... and went out of the room.

IV

Half an hour later we set off to catch fish. Narkiz had put on an
extraordinary sort of cap with ears, and was more dignified than ever.
He walked in front with a steady, even step; two rods swayed regularly
up and down on his shoulders; a bare-legged boy followed him carrying a
can and a pot of worms.

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