A Desperate Character and Other Stories

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Musa was greatly changed--in face, in voice, and in manners; but her
eyes were changed most of all. In old times they had darted about like
live creatures, those malicious, beautiful eyes; they had gleamed
stealthily, but brilliantly; their glance had pierced, like a
pin-prick.... Now they looked at one directly, calmly, steadily; their
black centres had lost their lustre. 'I am broken in, I am tame, I am
good,' her soft and dull gaze seemed to say. Her continued, submissive
smile told the same story. And her dress, too, was subdued; brown, with
little spots on it. She came up to me, asked me whether I knew her. She
obviously felt no embarrassment, and not because she had lost a sense of
shame or memory of the past, but simply because all petty
self-consciousness had left her.

Musa talked a great deal about Punin, talked in an even voice, which too
had lost its fire. I learned that of late years he had become very
feeble, had almost sunk into childishness, so much so that he was
miserable if he had not toys to play with; they persuaded him, it is
true, that he made them out of waste stuff for sale ... but he really
played with them himself. His passion for poetry, however, never died
out, and he kept his memory for nothing but verses; a few days before
his death he recited a passage from the _Rossiad_; but Pushkin he
feared, as children fear bogies. His devotion to Baburin had also
remained undiminished; he worshipped him as much as ever, and even at
the last, wrapped about by the chill and dark of the end, he had
faltered with halting tongue, 'benefactor!' I learned also from Musa
that soon after the Moscow episode, it had been Baburin's fate once more
to wander all over Russia, continually tossed from one private situation
to another; that in Petersburg, too, he had been again in a situation,
in a private business, which situation he had, however, been obliged to
leave a few days before, owing to some unpleasantness with his employer:
Baburin had ventured to stand up for the workpeople.... The invariable
smile, with which Musa accompanied her words, set me musing mournfully;
it put the finishing touch to the impression made on me by her husband's
appearance. They had hard work, the two of them, to make a bare
living--there was no doubt of it. He took very little part in our
conversation; he seemed more preoccupied than grieved.... Something was
worrying him.

'Paramon Semyonitch, come here,' said the cook, suddenly appearing in
the doorway.

'What is it? what's wanted?' he asked in alarm.

'Come here,' the cook repeated insistently and meaningly. Baburin
buttoned up his coat and went out.

When I was left alone with Musa, she looked at me with a somewhat
changed glance, and observed in a voice which was also changed, and with
no smile: 'I don't know, Piotr Petrovitch, what you think of me now, but
I dare say you remember what I used to be.... I was self-confident,
light-hearted ... and not good; I wanted to live for my own pleasure.
But I want to tell you this: when I was abandoned, and was like one
lost, and was only waiting for God to take me, or to pluck up spirit to
make an end of myself,--once more, just as in Voronezh, I met with
Paramon Semyonitch--and he saved me once again.... Not a word that could
wound me did I hear from him, not a word of reproach; he asked nothing
of me--I was not worthy of that; but he loved me ... and I became his
wife. What was I to do? I had failed of dying; and I could not live
either after my own choice....What was I to do with myself? Even so--it
was a mercy to be thankful for. That is all.'

She ceased, turned away for an instant ... the same submissive smile
came back to her lips. 'Whether life's easy for me, you needn't ask,'
was the meaning I fancied now in that smile.

The conversation passed to ordinary subjects. Musa told me that Punin
had left a cat that he had been very fond of, and that ever since his
death she had gone up to the attic and stayed there, mewing
incessantly, as though she were calling some one ... the neighbours
were very much scared, and fancied that it was Punin's soul that had
passed into the cat.

'Paramon Semyonitch is worried about something,' I said at last.

'Oh, you noticed it?'--Musa sighed. 'He cannot help being worried. I
need hardly tell you that Paramon Semyonitch has remained faithful to
his principles.... The present condition of affairs can but strengthen
them.' (Musa expressed herself quite differently now from in the old
days in Moscow; there was a literary, bookish flavour in her phrases.)
'I don't know, though, whether I can rely upon you, and how you will
receive ...'

'Why should you imagine you cannot rely upon me?'

'Well, you are in the government service--you are an official.'

'Well, what of that?'

'You are, consequently, loyal to the government.'

I marvelled inwardly ... at Musa's innocence. 'As to my attitude to the
government, which is not even aware of my existence, I won't enlarge
upon that,' I observed; 'but you may set your mind at rest. I will make
no bad use of your confidence. I sympathise with your husband's
ideas ... more than you suppose.'

Musa shook her head.

'Yes; that's all so,' she began, not without hesitation; 'but you see
it's like this. Paramon Semyonitch's ideas will shortly, it may be, find
expression in action. They can no longer be hidden under a bushel. There
are comrades whom we cannot now abandon ...'

Musa suddenly ceased speaking, as though she had bitten her tongue. Her
last words had amazed and a little alarmed me. Most likely my face
showed what I was feeling--and Musa noticed it.

As I have said already, our interview took place in the year 1849. Many
people still remember what a disturbed and difficult time that was, and
by what incidents it was signalised in St. Petersburg. I had been struck
myself by certain peculiarities in Baburin's behaviour, in his whole
demeanour. Twice he had referred to governmental action, to personages
in high authority, with such intense bitterness and hatred, with such
loathing, that I had been dumbfoundered....

'Well?' he asked me suddenly: 'did you set your peasants free?'

I was obliged to confess I had not.

'Why, I suppose your granny's dead, isn't she?'

I was obliged to admit that she was.

'To be sure, you noble gentlemen,' Baburin muttered between his teeth,
'... use other men's hands ... to poke up your fire ... that's what
you like.'

In the most conspicuous place in his room hung the well-known lithograph
portrait of Belinsky; on the table lay a volume of the old _Polar Star_,
edited by Bestuzhev.

A long time passed, and Baburin did not come back after the cook had
called him away. Musa looked several times uneasily towards the door by
which he had gone out. At last she could bear it no longer; she got up,
and with an apology she too went out by the same door. A quarter of an
hour later she came back with her husband; the faces of both, so at
least I thought, looked troubled. But all of a sudden Baburin's face
assumed a different, an intensely bitter, almost frenzied expression.

'What will be the end of it?' he began all at once in a jerky, sobbing
voice, utterly unlike him, while his wild eyes shifted restlessly about
him. 'One goes on living and living, and hoping that maybe it'll be
better, that one will breathe more freely; but it's quite the other
way--everything gets worse and worse! They have _squeezed_ us right up
to the wall! In my youth I bore all with patience; they ... maybe ...
beat me ... even ... yes!' he added, turning sharply round on his heels
and swooping down as it were, upon me: 'I, a man of full age, was
subjected to corporal punishment ... yes;--of other wrongs I will not
speak.... But is there really nothing before us but to go back to those
old times again? The way they are treating the young people now! ...
Yes, it breaks down all endurance at last.... It breaks it down! Yes!
Wait a bit!'

I had never seen Baburin in such a condition. Musa turned positively
white.... Baburin suddenly cleared his throat, and sank down into a
seat. Not wishing to constrain either him or Musa by my presence, I
decided to go, and was just saying good-bye to them, when the door
into the next room suddenly opened, and a head appeared.... It was not
the cook's head, but the dishevelled and terrified-looking head of a
young man.

'Something's wrong, Baburin, something's wrong!' he faltered hurriedly,
then vanished at once on perceiving my unfamiliar figure.

Baburin rushed after the young man. I pressed Musa's hand warmly, and
withdrew, with presentiments of evil in my heart.

'Come to-morrow,' she whispered anxiously.

'I certainly will come,' I answered.

* * * * *

I was still in bed next morning, when my man handed me a letter
from Musa.

'Dear Piotr Petrovitch!' she wrote: 'Paramon Semyonitch has been this
night arrested by the police and carried off to the fortress, or I don't
know where; they did not tell me. They ransacked all our papers, sealed
up a great many, and took them away with them. It has been the same with
our books and letters. They say a mass of people have been arrested in
the town. You can fancy how I feel. It is well Nikander Vavilitch did
not live to see it! He was taken just in time. Advise me what I am to
do. For myself I am not afraid--I shall not die of starvation--but the
thought of Paramon Semyonitch gives me no rest. Come, please, if only
you are not afraid to visit people in our position.--Yours faithfully,

MUSA BABURIN.'

* * * * *

Half an hour later I was with Musa. On seeing me she held out her
hand, and, though she did not utter a word, a look of gratitude
flitted over her face. She was wearing the same clothes as on the
previous day; there was every sign that she had not been to bed or
slept all night. Her eyes were red, but from sleeplessness, not from
tears. She had not been crying. She was in no mood for weeping. She
wanted to act, wanted to struggle with the calamity that had fallen
upon them: the old, energetic, self-willed Musa had risen up in her
again. She had no time even to be indignant, though she was choking
with indignation. How to assist Baburin, to whom to appeal so as to
soften his lot--she could think of nothing else. She wanted to go
instantly, ... to petition, ... demand.... But where to go, whom to
petition, what to demand--this was what she wanted to hear from me,
this was what she wanted to consult me about.

I began by counselling her ... to have patience. For the first moment
there was nothing left to be done but to wait, and, as far as might be,
to make inquiries; and to take any decisive step now when the affair had
scarcely begun, and hardly yet taken shape, would be simply senseless,
irrational. To hope for any success was irrational, even if I had been a
person of much more importance and influence, ... but what could I, a
petty official, do? As for her, she was absolutely without any powerful
friends....

It was no easy matter to make all this plain to her ... but at last she
understood my arguments; she understood, too, that I was not prompted by
egoistic feeling, when I showed her the uselessness of all efforts. 'But
tell me, Musa Pavlovna,' I began, when she sank at last into a chair
(till then she had been standing up, as though on the point of setting
off at once to the aid of Baburin),'how Paramon Semyonitch, at his age,
comes to be mixed up in such an affair? I feel sure that there are none
but young people implicated in it, like the one who came in yesterday to
warn you....'

'Those young people are our friends!' cried Musa, and her eyes flashed
and darted as of old. Something strong, irrepressible, seemed, as it
were, to rise up from the bottom of her soul, ... and I suddenly recalled
the expression 'a new type,' which Tarhov had once used of her. 'Years
are of no consequence when it is a matter of political principles!' Musa
laid a special stress on these last two words. One might fancy that in
all her sorrow it was not unpleasing to her to show herself before me in
this new, unlooked-for character--in the character of a cultivated and
mature woman, fit wife of a republican! ... 'Some old men are younger
than some young ones,' she pursued, 'more capable of sacrifice.... But
that's not the point.'

'I think, Musa Pavlovna,' I observed, 'that you are exaggerating a
little. Knowing the character of Paramon Semyonitch, I should have felt
sure beforehand that he would sympathise with every ... sincere
impulse; but, on the other hand, I have always regarded him as a man of
sense.... Surely he cannot fail to realise all the impracticability,
all the absurdity of conspiracies in Russia? In his position, in his
calling ...'

'Oh, of course,' Musa interrupted, with bitterness in her voice, 'he is
a working man; and in Russia it is only permissible for noblemen to take
part in conspiracies, ... as, for instance, in that of the fourteenth of
December, ... that's what you meant to say.'

'In that case, what do you complain of now?' almost broke from my
lips, ... but I restrained myself. 'Do you consider that the result of
the fourteenth of December was such as to encourage other such
attempts?' I said aloud.

Musa frowned. 'It is no good talking to you about it,' was what I read
in her downcast face.

'Is Paramon Semyonitch very seriously compromised?' I ventured to ask
her. Musa made no reply.... A hungry, savage mewing was heard from
the attic.

Musa started. 'Ah, it is a good thing Nikander Vavilitch did not see all
this!' she moaned almost despairingly. 'He did not see how violently in
the night they seized his benefactor, our benefactor--maybe, the best
and truest man in the whole world,--he did not see how they treated that
noble man at his age, how rudely they addressed him, ... how they
threatened him, and the threats they used to him!--only because he was a
working man! That young officer, too, was no doubt just such an
unprincipled, heartless wretch as I have known in my life....'

Musa's voice broke. She was quivering all over like a leaf.

Her long-suppressed indignation broke out at last; old memories stirred
up, brought to the surface by the general tumult of her soul, showed
themselves alive within her.... But the conviction I carried off at that
moment was that the 'new type' was still the same, still the same
passionate, impulsive nature.... Only the impulses by which Musa was
carried away were not the same as in the days of her youth. What on my
first visit I had taken for resignation, for meekness, and what really
was so--the subdued, lustreless glance, the cold voice, the quietness
and simplicity--all that had significance only in relation to the past,
to what would never return....

Now it was the present asserted itself.

I tried to soothe Musa, tried to put our conversation on a more
practical level. Some steps must be taken that could not be postponed;
we must find out exactly where Baburin was; and then secure both for him
and for Musa the means of subsistence. All this presented no
inconsiderable difficulty; what was needed was not to find money, but
work, which is, as we all know, a far more complicated problem....

I left Musa with a perfect swarm of reflections in my head.

I soon learned that Baburin was in the fortress.

The proceedings began, ... dragged on. I saw Musa several times every
week. She had several interviews with her husband. But just at the
moment of the decision of the whole melancholy affair, I was not in
Petersburg. Unforeseen business had obliged me to set off to the
south of Russia. During my absence I heard that Baburin had been
acquitted at the trial; it appeared that all that could be proved
against him was, that young people regarding him as a person unlikely
to awaken suspicion, had sometimes held meetings at his house, and he
had been present at their meetings; he was, however, by
administrative order sent into exile in one of the western provinces
of Siberia. Musa went with him.

'Paramon Semyonitch did not wish it,' she wrote to me; 'as, according to
his ideas, no one ought to sacrifice self for another person, and not
for a cause; but I told him there was no question of sacrifice at all.
When I said to him in Moscow that I would be his wife, I thought to
myself--for ever, indissolubly! So indissoluble it must be till the end
of our days....'

IV

1861

Twelve more years passed by.... Every one in Russia knows, and will ever
remember, what passed between the years 1849 and 1861. In my personal
life, too, many changes took place, on which, however, there is no need
to enlarge. New interests came into it, new cares.... The Baburin couple
first fell into the background, then passed out of my mind altogether.
Yet I kept up a correspondence with Musa--at very long intervals,
however. Sometimes more than a year passed without any tidings of her or
of her husband. I heard that soon after 1855 he received permission to
return to Russia; but that he preferred to remain in the little Siberian
town, where he had been flung by destiny, and where he had apparently
made himself a home, and found a haven and a sphere of activity....

And, lo and behold! towards the end of March in 1861, I received the
following letter from Musa:--

'It is so long since I have written to you, most honoured Piotr
Petrovitch, that I do not even know whether you are still living; and if
you are living, have you not forgotten our existence? But no matter; I
cannot resist writing to you to-day. Everything till now has gone on
with us in the same old way: Paramon Semyonitch and I have been always
busy with our schools, which are gradually making good progress; besides
that, Paramon Semyonitch was taken up with reading and correspondence
and his usual discussions with the Old-believers, members of the clergy,
and Polish exiles; his health has been fairly good.... So has mine. But
yesterday! the manifesto of the 19th of February reached us! We had long
been on the look-out for it. Rumours had reached us long before of what
was being done among you in Petersburg, ... but yet I can't describe what
it was! You know my husband well; he was not in the least changed by his
misfortune; on the contrary, he has grown even stronger and more
energetic, and has a will as strong as iron, but at this he could not
restrain himself! His hands shook as he read it; then he embraced me
three times, and three times he kissed me, tried to say something--but
no! he could not! and ended by bursting into tears, which was very
astounding to see, and suddenly he shouted, "Hurrah! hurrah! God save
the Tsar!" Yes, Piotr Petrovitch, those were his very words! Then he
went on: "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart" ... and again: "This is
the first step, others are bound to follow it"; and, just as he was,
bareheaded, ran to tell the great news to our friends. There was a
bitter frost, and even a snowstorm coming on. I tried to prevent him,
but he would not listen to me. And when he came home, he was all covered
with snow, his hair, his face, and his beard--he has a beard right down
to his chest now--and the tears were positively frozen on his cheeks!
But he was very lively and cheerful, and told me to uncork a bottle of
home-made champagne, and he drank with our friends that he had brought
back with him, to the health of the Tsar and of Russia, and all free
Russians; and taking the glass, and fixing his eyes on the ground, he
said: "Nikander, Nikander, do you hear? There are no slaves in Russia
any more! Rejoice in the grave, old comrade!" And much more he said; to
the effect that his "expectations were fulfilled!" He said, too, that
now there could be no turning back; that this was in its way a pledge or
promise.... I don't remember everything, but it is long since I have
seen him so happy. And so I made up my mind to write to you, so that you
might know how we have been rejoicing and exulting in the remote
Siberian wilds, so that you might rejoice with us....'

This letter I received at the end of March. At the beginning of May
another very brief letter arrived from Musa. She informed me that her
husband, Paramon Semyonitch Baburin, had taken cold on the very day of
the arrival of the manifesto, and died on the 12th of April of
inflammation of the lungs, in the 67th year of his age. She added that
she intended to remain where his body lay at rest, and to go on with the
work he had bequeathed her, since such was the last wish of Paramon
Semyonitch, and that was her only law.

Since then I have heard no more of Musa.

PARIS, 1874.

OLD PORTRAITS

About thirty miles from our village there lived, many years ago, a
distant cousin of my mother's, a retired officer of the Guards, and
rather wealthy landowner, Alexey Sergeitch Teliegin. He lived on his
estate and birth-place, Suhodol, did not go out anywhere, and so did not
visit us; but I used to be sent, twice a year, to pay him my
respects--at first with my tutor, but later on alone. Alexey Sergeitch
always gave me a very cordial reception, and I used to stay three or
four days at a time with him. He was an old man even when I first made
his acquaintance; I was twelve, I remember, on my first visit, and he
was then over seventy. He was born in the days of the Empress
Elisabeth--in the last year of her reign. He lived alone with his wife,
Malania Pavlovna; she was ten years younger than he. They had two
daughters; but their daughters had been long married, and rarely visited
Suhodol; they were not on the best of terms with their parents, and
Alexey Sergeitch hardly ever mentioned their names.

I see, even now, the old-fashioned house, a typical manor-house of the
steppes. One story in height, with immense attics, it was built at the
beginning of this century, of amazingly thick beams of pine,--such beams
came in plenty in those days from the Zhizdrinsky pine-forests; they
have passed out of memory now! It was very spacious, and contained a
great number of rooms, rather low-pitched and dark, it is true; the
windows in the walls had been made small for the sake of greater warmth.
In the usual fashion (I ought rather to say, in what was then the usual
fashion), the offices and house-serfs' huts surrounded the manorial
house on all sides, and the garden was close to it--a small garden, but
containing fine fruit-trees, juicy apples, and pipless pears. The flat
steppe of rich, black earth stretched for ten miles round. No lofty
object for the eye; not a tree, nor even a belfry; somewhere, maybe,
jutting up, a windmill, with rents in its sails; truly, well-named
Suhodol, or Dry-flat! Inside the house the rooms were filled with
ordinary, simple furniture; somewhat unusual was the milestone-post that
stood in the window of the drawing-room, with the following
inscription:--'If you walk sixty-eight times round this drawing-room you
will have gone a mile; if you walk eighty-seven times from the furthest
corner of the parlour to the right-hand corner of the billiard-room, you
will have gone a mile,' and so on. But what most of all impressed a
guest at the house for the first time was the immense collection of
pictures hanging on the walls, for the most part works of the so-called
Italian masters: all old-fashioned landscapes of a sort, or mythological
and religious subjects. But all these pictures were very dark, and even
cracked with age;--in one, all that met the eye was some patches of
flesh-colour; in another, undulating red draperies on an unseen body; or
an arch which seemed to be suspended in the air; or a dishevelled tree
with blue foliage; or the bosom of a nymph with an immense breast, like
the lid of a soup-tureen; a cut water-melon, with black seeds; a turban,
with a feather in it, above a horse's head; or the gigantic brown leg of
an apostle, suddenly thrust out, with a muscular calf, and toes turned
upwards. In the drawing-room in the place of honour hung a portrait of
the Empress Catherine II., full length; a copy of the famous portrait by
Lampi--an object of the special reverence, one might say the adoration,
of the master of the house. From the ceiling hung glass lustres in
bronze settings, very small and very dusty.

Alexey Sergeitch himself was a stumpy, paunchy little old man, with a
chubby face of one uniform tint, yet pleasant, with drawn-in lips, and
very lively little eyes under high eyebrows. He wore his scanty locks
combed to the back of his head; it was only since 1812 that he had given
up wearing powder. Alexey Sergeitch invariably wore a grey 'redingote,'
with three capes falling over his shoulders, a striped waistcoat,
chamois-leather breeches, and high boots of dark red morocco, with
heart-shaped scallops and tassels at the tops; he wore a white muslin
cravat, a jabot, lace cuffs, and two gold English 'turnip watches,' one
in each pocket of his waistcoat. In his right hand he usually carried an
enamelled snuff-box full of 'Spanish' snuff, and his left hand leaned on
a cane with a silver-chased knob, worn smooth by long use. Alexey
Sergeitch had a little nasal, piping voice, and an invariable
smile--kindly, but, as it were, condescending, and not without a certain
self-complacent dignity. His laugh, too, was kindly--a shrill little
laugh that tinkled like glass beads. Courteous and affable he was to the
last degree--in the old-fashioned manner of the days of Catherine--and
he moved his hands with slow, rounded gestures, also in the old style.
His legs were so weak that he could not walk, but ran with hurried
little steps from one armchair to another, in which he would suddenly
sit down, or rather fall softly, like a cushion.

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