Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 



   The Privy Councillor

    At  the  beginning of April in 1870 my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow
of  a  lieutenant,  received  from  her  brother  Ivan,  a  privy councillor in
Petersburg,  a  letter in which, among other things, this passage occurred: "My
liver  trouble forces me to spend every summer abroad, and as I have not at the
moment  the  money  in  hand for a trip to Marienbad, it is very possible, dear
sister, that I may spend this summer with you at Kotchuevko..."
    On  reading  the letter my mother turned pale and began trembling all over;
then  an expression of mingled tears and laughter came into her face. She began
crying  and  laughing. This conflict of tears and laughter always reminds me of
the  flickering and spluttering of a brightly burning candle when one sprinkles
it  with  water.  Reading  the letter once more, mother called together all the
household, and in a voice broken with emotion began explaining to us that there
had  been  four Gundasov brothers: one Gundasov had died as a baby; another had
gone to the war, and he, too, was dead; the third, without offence to him be it
said, was an actor; the fourth...
    "The  fourth  has risen far above us," my mother brought out tearfully. "My
own  brother,  we  grew  up  together;  and  I  am  all  of a tremble, all of a
tremble!.. A privy councillor with the rank of a general! How shall I meet him,
my  angel  brother? What can I, a foolish, uneducated woman, talk to him about?
It's  fifteen years since I've seen him! Andryushenka," my mother turned to me,
"you  must  rejoice,  little  stupid!  It's a piece of luck for you that God is
sending him to us!"
    After  we  had  heard a detailed history of the Gundasovs, there followed a
fuss  and  bustle in the place such as I had been accustomed to see only before
Christmas  and  Easter.  The sky above and the water in the river were all that
escaped;  everything  else  was  subjected to a merciless cleansing, scrubbing,
painting. If the sky had been lower and smaller and the river had not flowed so
swiftly,  they  would  have scoured them, too, with bath-brick and rubbed them,
too,  with tow. Our walls were as white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the
floors were bright and shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail
(as  a small child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used
for chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried off
to  the  kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if any of the
dogs  came  near the front-door "God would punish him." But no one was so badly
treated  as  the poor sofas, easy-chairs, and rugs! They had never, before been
so  violently  beaten  as  on  this occasion in preparation for our visitor. My
pigeons took fright at the loud thud of the sticks, and were continually flying
up into the sky.

    The  tailor Spiridon, the only tailor in the whole district who ventured to
make for the gentry, came over from Novostroevka. He was a hard-working capable
man who did not drink and was not without a certain fancy and feeling for form,
but  yet  he  was an atrocious tailor. His work was ruined by hesitation... The
idea  that  his cut was not fashionable enough made him alter everything half a
dozen  times,  walk all the way to the town simply to study the dandies, and in
the  end dress us in suits that even a caricaturist would have called outre and
grotesque.  We  cut  a  dash  in  impossibly  narrow trousers and in such short
jackets that we always felt quite abashed in the presence of young ladies.
    This  Spiridon spent a long time taking my measure. He measured me all over
lengthways  and  crossways,  as  though  he  meant to put hoops round me like a
barrel;  then  he  spent  a  long time noting down my measurements with a thick
pencil  on  a bit of paper, and ticked off all the measurements with triangular
signs.  When  he  had  finished  with  me  he  set  to  work on my tutor, Yegor
Alexyevitch  Pobyedimsky. My beloved tutor was then at the stage when young men
watch  the  growth of their moustache and are critical of their clothes, and so
you  can  imagine  the  devout  awe  with  which Spiridon approached him. Yegor
Alexyevitch  had  to throw back his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted
V,  first  lift  up his arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several
times,  walking  round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its
mate,  going down on one knee, bending double... My mother, weary, exhausted by
her  exertions  and  heated  by ironing, watched these lengthy proceedings, and
said:
    "Mind now, Spiridon, you will have to answer for it to God if you spoil the
cloth! And it will be the worse for you if you don't make them fit!"
    Mother's words threw Spiridon first into a fever, then into a perspiration,
for  he  was  convinced that he would not make them fit. He received one rouble
twenty  kopecks  for  making my suit, and for Pobyedimsky's two roubles, but we
provided the cloth, the lining, and the buttons. The price cannot be considered
excessive,  as  Novostroevka was about seven miles from us, and the tailor came
to  fit  us  four  times.  When  he  came  to try the things on and we squeezed
ourselves  into  the  tight  trousers and jackets adorned with basting threads,
mother always frowned contemptuously and expressed her surprise:
    "Goodness  knows  what the fashions are coming to nowadays! I am positively
ashamed to look at them. If brother were not used to Petersburg I would not get
you fashionable clothes!"
    Spiridon, relieved that the blame was thrown on the fashion and not on him,
shrugged his shoulders and sighed, as though to say:
    "There's no help for it; it's the spirit of the age!"
    The  excitement  with which we awaited the arrival of our guest can only be
compared  with  the strained suspense with which spiritualists wait from minute
to  minute  the  appearance of a ghost. Mother went about with a sick headache,
and  was  continually  melting into tears. I lost my appetite, slept badly, and
did  not  learn  my  lessons.  Even  in my dreams I was haunted by an impatient
longing  to  see  a general - that is, a man with epaulettes and an embroidered
collar  sticking  up  to his ears, and with a naked sword in his hands, exactly
like  the  one  who  hung  over  the  sofa  in the drawing-room and glared with
terrible  black eyes at everybody who dared to look at him. Pobyedimsky was the
only  one  who  felt  himself  in  his  element.  He  was neither terrified nor
delighted,  and  merely  from  time  to  time, when he heard the history of the
Gundasov family, said:
    "Yes, it will be pleasant to have some one fresh to talk to."
    My  tutor was looked upon among us as an exceptional nature. He was a young
man  of  twenty,  with  a  pimply  face,  shaggy  locks, a low forehead, and an
unusually  long  nose. His nose was so big that when he wanted to look close at
anything he had to put his head on one side like a bird. To our thinking, there
was  not  a  man in the province cleverer, more cultivated, or more stylish. He
had  left  the high-school in the class next to the top, and had then entered a
veterinary  college,  from  which  he  was expelled before the end of the first
half-year.  The  reason  of his expulsion he carefully concealed, which enabled
any  one  who  wished  to do so to look upon my instructor as an injured and to
some  extent  a  mysterious  person.  He spoke little, and only of intellectual
subjects;  he  ate  meat  during  the  fasts,  and  looked  with  contempt  and
condescension  on  the  life  going  on  around him, which did not prevent him,
however,  from  taking  presents, such as suits of clothes, from my mother, and
drawing  funny  faces  with  red teeth on my kites. Mother disliked him for his
"pride," but stood in awe of his cleverness.
    Our  visitor  did  not  keep  us  long waiting. At the beginning of May two
wagon-loads  of  big  boxes  arrived  from  the  station. These boxes looked so
majestic that the drivers instinctively took off their hats as they lifted them
down.
    "There must be uniforms and gunpowder in those boxes," I thought.
    Why "gunpowder"? Probably the conception of a general was closely connected
in my mind with cannons and gunpowder.
    When  I  woke  up  on  the  morning of the tenth of May, nurse told me in a
whisper  that  "my  uncle  had  come."  I dressed rapidly, and, washing after a
fashion,  flew  out of my bedroom without saying my prayers. In the vestibule I
came   upon   a   tall,   solid  gentleman  with  fashionable  whiskers  and  a
foppish-looking  overcoat.  Half  dead  with  devout awe, I went up to him and,
remembering  the  ceremonial  mother  had  impressed upon me, I scraped my foot
before  him,  made a very low bow, and craned forward to kiss his hand; but the
gentleman  did not allow me to kiss his hand: he informed me that he was not my
uncle,  but my uncle's footman, Pyotr. The appearance of this Pyotr, far better
dressed  than  Pobyedimsky or me, excited in me the utmost astonishment, which,
to  tell  the  truth,  has  lasted to this day. Can such dignified, respectable
people with stern and intellectual faces really be footmen? And what for?
    Pyotr told me that my uncle was in the garden with my mother. I rushed into
the garden.
    Nature,  knowing nothing of the history of the Gundasov family and the rank
of  my  uncle,  felt  far  more  at  ease and unconstrained than I. There was a
clamour  going  on  in  the  garden  such as one only bears at fairs. Masses of
starlings  flitting  through  the  air and hopping about the walks were noisily
chattering as they hunted for cockchafers. There were swarms of sparrows in the
lilac-bushes,  which  threw  their  tender, fragrant blossoms straight in one's
face.  Wherever  one  turned,  from every direction came the note of the golden
oriole and the shrill cry of the hoopoe and the red-legged falcon. At any other
time  I  should  have  begun  chasing dragon-flies or throwing stones at a crow
which  was  sitting  on  a  low  mound under an aspen-tree, with his blunt beak
turned  away;  but  at  that moment I was in no mood for mischief. My heart was
throbbing,  and  I felt a cold sinking at my stomach; I was preparing myself to
confront  a  gentleman  with  epaulettes, with a naked sword, and with terrible
eyes!
    But  imagine  my disappointment! A dapper little foppish gentleman in white
silk  trousers,  with  a white cap on his head, was walking beside my mother in
the  garden.  With his hands behind him and his head thrown back, every now and
then  running on ahead of mother, he looked quite young. There was so much life
and  movement in his whole figure that I could only detect the treachery of age
when  I  came close up behind and saw beneath his cap a fringe of close-cropped
silver  hair. Instead of the staid dignity and stolidity of a general, I saw an
almost schoolboyish nimbleness; instead of a collar sticking up to his ears, an
ordinary  light  blue  necktie.  Mother and my uncle were walking in the avenue
talking  together.  I went softly up to them from behind, and waited for one of
them to look round.
    "What  a  delightful  place  you  have  here, Klavdia!" said my uncle. "How
charming  and  lovely  it  is!  Had I known before that you had such a charming
place, nothing would have induced me to go abroad all these years."
    My  uncle  stooped  down  rapidly and sniffed at a tulip. Everything he saw
moved him to rapture and excitement, as though he had never been in a garden on
a sunny day before. The queer man moved about as though he were on springs, and
chattered incessantly, without allowing mother to utter a single word. All of a
sudden Pobyedimsky came into sight from behind an elder-tree at the turn of the
avenue.  His  appearance was so unexpected that my uncle positively started and
stepped  back  a  pace.  On  this  occasion  my  tutor  was attired in his best
Inverness  cape  with  sleeves,  in  which,  especially  back-view,  he  looked
remarkably  like a windmill. He had a solemn and majestic air. Pressing his hat
to  his  bosom in Spanish style, he took a step towards my uncle and made a bow
such as a marquis makes in a melodrama, bending forward, a little to one side.
    "I  have  the  honour  to  present myself to your high excellency," he said
aloud:  "the  teacher  and  instructor  of your nephew, formerly a pupil of the
veterinary institute, and a nobleman by birth, Pobyedimsky!"
    This  politeness  on  the part of my tutor pleased my mother very much. She
gave  a  smile,  and  waited  in thrilled suspense to hear what clever thing he
would  say  next;  but my tutor, expecting his dignified address to be answered
with  equal  dignity  -- that is, that my uncle would say "H'm!" like a general
and  hold  out  two  fingers - was greatly confused and abashed when the latter
laughed  genially  and  shook hands with him. He muttered something incoherent,
cleared his throat, and walked away.
    "Come!  isn't that charming?" laughed my uncle. "Just look! he has made his
little  flourish and thinks he's a very clever fellow! I do like that - upon my
soul  I  do! What youthful aplomb, what life in that foolish flourish! And what
boy is this?" he asked, suddenly turning and looking at me.
    "That  is  my Andryushenka," my mother introduced me, flushing crimson. "My
consolation..."
    I made a scrape with my foot on the sand and dropped a low bow.
    "A fine fellow... a fine fellow..." muttered my uncle, taking his hand from
my  lips  and  stroking  me on the head. "So your name is Andrusha? Yes, yes...
H'm!.. upon my soul!.. Do you learn lessons?"
    My  mother,  exaggerating  and  embellishing  as  all  mothers do, began to
describe  my  achievements  in the sciences and the excellence of my behaviour,
and  I  walked round my uncle and, following the ceremonial laid down for me, I
continued making low bows. Then my mother began throwing out hints that with my
remarkable  abilities  it  would  not  be  amiss  for  me  to  get a government
nomination  to the cadet school; but at the point when I was to have burst into
tears and begged for my uncle's protection, my uncle suddenly stopped and flung
up his hands in amazement.
    "My goo-oodness! What's that?" he asked.
    Tatyana  Ivanovna,  the  wife  of  our bailiff, Fyodor Petrovna, was coming
towards   us.   She  was  carrying  a  starched  white  petticoat  and  a  long
ironing-board.  As  she  passed  us she looked shyly at the visitor through her
eyelashes and flushed crimson.
    "Wonders  will never cease..." my uncle filtered through his teeth, looking
after  her  with  friendly  interest. "You have a fresh surprise at every step,
sister... upon my soul!"
    "She's  a  beauty..."  said  mother. "They chose her as a bride for Fyodor,
though she lived over seventy miles from here..."
    Not  every  one  would have called Tatyana a beauty. She was a plump little
woman  of  twenty,  with  black eyebrows and a graceful figure, always rosy and
attractive-looking,  but  in her face and in her whole person there was not one
striking  feature,  not  one  bold  line to catch the eye, as though nature had
lacked  inspiration and confidence when creating her. Tatyana Ivanovna was shy,
bashful,  and  modest  in  her  behaviour;  she moved softly and smoothly, said
little,  seldom  laughed,  and her whole life was as regular as her face and as
flat  as her smooth, tidy hair. My uncle screwed up his eyes looking after her,
and smiled. Mother looked intently at his smiling face and grew serious.
    "And so, brother, you've never married!" she sighed.
    "No; I've not married."
    "Why not?" asked mother softly.
    "How  can  I  tell  you?  It has happened so. In my youth I was too hard at
work,  I  had no time to live, and when I longed to live - I looked round - and
there  I  had  fifty years on my back already. I was too late! However, talking
about it... is depressing."
    My  mother  and my uncle both sighed at once and walked on, and I left them
and  flew  off  to  find  my tutor, that I might share my impressions with him.
Pobyedimsky was standing in the middle of the yard, looking majestically at the
heavens.
    "One  can see he is a man of culture!" he said, twisting his head round. "I
hope we shall get on together."
    An hour later mother came to us.
    "I  am  in  trouble,  my  dears!"  she began, sighing. "You see brother has
brought  a valet with him, and the valet, God bless him, is not one you can put
in  the  kitchen  or  in the hall; we must give him a room apart. I can't think
what  I  am to do! I tell you what, children, couldn't you move out somewhere -
to  Fyodor's lodge, for instance - and give your room to the valet? What do you
say?"
    We  gave  our  ready consent, for living in the lodge was a great deal more
free than in the house, under mother's eye.
    "It's  a  nuisance, and that's a fact!" said mother. "Brother says he won't
have  dinner in the middle of the day, but between six and seven, as they do in
Petersburg. I am simply distracted with worry! By seven o'clock the dinner will
be  done  to  rags  in  the  oven.  Really, men don't understand anything about
housekeeping,  though  they  have so much intellect. Oh, dear! we shall have to
cook two dinners every day! You will have dinner at midday as before, children,
while  your  poor  old  mother  has  to  wait  till  seven, for the sake of her
brother."
    Then  my  mother heaved a deep sigh, bade me try and please my uncle, whose
coming  was a piece of luck for me for which we must thank God, and hurried off
to  the  kitchen.  Pobyedimsky and I moved into the lodge the same day. We were
installed  in  a  room which formed the passage from the entry to the bailiff's
bedroom.
    Contrary  to  my  expectations,  life  went on just as before, drearily and
monotonously, in spite of my uncle's arrival and our move into new quarters. We
were  excused  lessons "on account of the visitor. "Pobyedimsky, who never read
anything  or occupied himself in any way, spent most of his time sitting on his
bed,  with  his long nose thrust into the air, thinking. Sometimes he would get
up,  try  on his new suit, and sit down again to relapse into contemplation and
silence.  Only  one  thing worried him, the flies, which he used mercilessly to
squash between his hands. After dinner he usually "rested," and his snores were
a  cause  of  annoyance  to  the  whole  household. I ran about the garden from
morning to night, or sat in the lodge sticking my kites together. For the first
two  or  three weeks we did not see my uncle often. For days together he sat in
his  own  room  working,  in spite of the flies and the heat. His extraordinary
capacity  for  sitting as though glued to his table produced upon us the effect
of an inexplicable conjuring trick. To us idlers, knowing nothing of systematic
work, his industry seemed simply miraculous. Getting up at nine, he sat down to
his  table,  and did not leave it till dinner-time; after dinner he set to work
again,  and went on till late at night. Whenever I peeped through the keyhole I
invariably  saw the same thing: my uncle sitting at the table working. The work
consisted  in  his  writing  with one hand while he turned over the leaves of a
book  with  the  other, and, strange to say, he kept moving all over - swinging
his  leg as though it were a pendulum, whistling, and nodding his head in time.
He  had an extremely careless and frivolous expression all the while, as though
he  were  not  working,  but  playing  at noughts and crosses. I always saw him
wearing  a  smart short jacket and a jauntily tied cravat, and he always smelt,
even through the keyhole, of delicate feminine perfumery. He only left his room
for dinner, but he ate little.
    "I  can't make brother out!" mother complained of him. "Every day we kill a
turkey  and pigeons on purpose for him, I make a compote with my own hands, and
he  eats a plateful of broth and a bit of meat the size of a finger and gets up
from the table. I begin begging him to eat; he comes back and drinks a glass of
milk.  And  what  is  there  in  that,  in a glass of milk? It's no better than
washing  up water! You may die of a diet like that... If I try to persuade him,
he  laughs  and  makes  a joke of it... No; he does not care for our fare, poor
dear!"
    We  spent the evenings far more gaily than the days. As a rule, by the time
the  sun was setting and long shadows were lying across the yard, we - that is,
Tatyana  Ivanovna, Pobyedimsky, and I - were sitting on the steps of the lodge.
We  did  not  talk till it grew quite dusk. And, indeed, what is one to talk of
when  every subject has been talked over already? There was only one thing new,
my  uncle's  arrival,  and even that subject was soon exhausted. My tutor never
took his eyes off Tatyana Ivanovna 's face, and frequently heaved deep sighs...
At  the  time I did not understand those sighs, and did not try to fathom their
significance; now they explain a great deal to me.
    When  the  shadows  merged into one thick mass of shade, the bailiff Fyodor
would  come  in  from  shooting  or  from  the  field.  This Fyodor gave me the
impression  of being a fierce and even a terrible man. The son of a Russianized
gipsy from Izyumskoe, swarthy-faced and curly-headed, with big black eyes and a
matted beard, he was never called among our Kotchuevko peasants by any name but
"The  Devil."  And, indeed, there was a great deal of the gipsy about him apart
from his appearance. He could not, for instance, stay at home, and went off for
days  together  into  the  country  or  into the woods to shoot. He was gloomy,
ill-humoured,  taciturn,  was  afraid  of  nobody, and refused to recognize any
authority. He was rude to mother, addressed me familiarly, and was contemptuous
of  Pobyedimsky's  learning.  All  this  we  forgave him, looking upon him as a
hot-tempered  and  nervous man; mother liked him because, in spite of his gipsy
nature,  he  was  ideally honest and industrious. He loved his Tatyana Ivanovna
passionately,  like a gipsy, but this love took in him a gloomy form, as though
it  cost  him suffering. He was never affectionate to his wife in our presence,
but simply rolled his eyes angrily at her and twisted his mouth.
    When  he  came in from the fields he would noisily and angrily put down his
gun,  would  come  out  to us on the steps, and sit down beside his wife. After
resting  a  little,  he  would  ask  his  wife  a few questions about household
matters, and then sink into silence.
    "Let us sing," I would suggest.
    My  tutor  would tune his guitar, and in a deep deacon's bass strike up "In
the  midst  of  the  valley."  We  would begin singing. My tutor took the bass,
Fyodor  sang  in  a  hardly  audible tenor, while I sang soprano in unison with
Tatyana Ivanovna.
    When  the  whole  sky  was  covered  with  stars and the frogs had left off
croaking,  they  would  bring  in our supper from the kitchen. We went into the
lodge  and sat down to the meal. My tutor and the gipsy ate greedily, with such
a  sound  that  it was hard to tell whether it was the bones crunching or their
jaws, and Tatyana Ivanovna and I scarcely succeeded in getting our share. After
supper the lodge was plunged in deep sleep.
    One  evening,  it  was  at  the  end  of May, we were sitting on the steps,
waiting for supper. A shadow suddenly fell across us, and Gundasov stood before
us  as  though he had sprung out of the earth. He looked at us for a long time,
then clasped his hands and laughed gaily.
    "An  idyll!" he said. "They sing and dream in the moonlight! It's charming,
upon my soul! May I sit down and dream with you?"
    We  looked at one another and said nothing. My uncle sat down on the bottom
step,  yawned,  and looked at the sky. A silence followed. Pobyedimsky, who had
for  a  long  time been wanting to talk to somebody fresh, was delighted at the
opportunity,  and  was  the first to break the silence. He had only one subject
for  intellectual  conversation,  the  epizootic diseases. It sometimes happens
that  after  one has been in an immense crowd, only some one countenance of the
thousands  remains  long  imprinted on the memory; in the same way, of all that
Pobyedimsky  had  heard,  during his six months at the veterinary institute, he
remembered only one passage:
    "The  epizootics  do  immense damage to the stock of the country. It is the
duty  of  society  to  work hand in hand with the government in waging war upon
them."
    Before  saying  this  to Gundasov, my tutor cleared his throat three times,
and  several  times, in his excitement, wrapped himself up in his Inverness. On
hearing  about  the epizootics, my uncle looked intently at my tutor and made a
sound between a snort and a laugh.
    "Upon my soul, that's charming!" he said, scrutinizing us as though we were
mannequins.  "This  is actually life... This is really what reality is bound to
be.  Why  are  you  silent,  Pelagea  Ivanovna?"  he  said,  addressing Tatyana 
Ivanovna.
    She coughed, overcome with confusion.
    "Talk,  my  friends,  sing...  play!.. Don't lose time. You know, time, the
rascal,  runs  away and waits for no man! Upon my soul, before you have time to
look  round,  old age is upon you... Then it is too late to live! That's how it
is, Pelagea Ivanovna... We mustn't sit still and be silent..."
    At  that point supper was brought out from the kitchen. Uncle went into the
lodge  with us, and to keep us company ate five curd fritters and the wing of a
duck. He ate and looked at us. He was touched and delighted by us all. Whatever
silly  nonsense my precious tutor talked, and whatever Tatyana Ivanovna did, he
thought charming and delightful. When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly
down  and  took  up  her  knitting,  he  kept his eyes fixed on her fingers and
chatted away without ceasing.
    "Make  all  the  haste you can to live, my friends..." he said. "God forbid
you  should  sacrifice the present for the future! There is youth, health, fire
in  the  present;  the future is smoke and deception! As soon as you are twenty
begin to live."
    Tatyana  Ivanovna  dropped a knitting-needle. My uncle jumped up, picked up
the  needle,  and  handed  it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the first
time  in my life I learnt that there were people in the world more refined than
Pobyedimsky.
    "Yes..."  my uncle went on, "love, marry, do silly things. Foolishness is a
great  deal  more  living  and  healthy  than  our straining and striving after
rational life."
    My  uncle  talked  a  great  deal, so much that he bored us; I sat on a box
listening  to  him and dropping to sleep. It distressed me that he did not once
all  the  evening  pay attention to me. He left the lodge at two o'clock, when,
overcome with drowsiness, I was sound asleep.
    From that time forth my uncle took to coming to the lodge every evening. He
sang  with us, had supper with us, and always stayed on till two o'clock in the
morning,  chatting  incessantly, always about the same subject. His evening and
night  work was given up, and by the end of June, when the privy councillor had
learned  to eat mother's turkey and compote, his work by day was abandoned too.
My  uncle  tore  himself  away  from  his table and plunged into "life." In the
daytime  he  walked  up  and  down  the  garden, he whistled to the workmen and
hindered  them from working, making them tell him their various histories. When
his  eye  fell  on Tatyana Ivanovna he ran up to her, and, if she were carrying
anything, offered his assistance, which embarrassed her dreadfully.
    As the summer advanced my uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile, and
careless. Pobyedimsky was completely disillusioned in regard to him.
    "He is too one-sided," he said. "There is nothing to show that he is in the
very  foremost  ranks  of the service. And he doesn't even know how to talk. At
every word it's 'upon my soul.' No, I don't like him!"
    From the time that my uncle began visiting the lodge there was a noticeable
change  both  in  Fyodor  and my tutor. Fyodor gave up going out shooting, came
home  early, sat more taciturn than ever, and stared with particular ill-humour
at  his wife. In my uncle's presence my tutor gave up talking about epizootics,
frowned, and even laughed sarcastically.
    "Here  comes  our  little  bantam cock!" he growled on one occasion when my
uncle was coming into the lodge.
    I  put down this change in them both to their being offended with my uncle.
My  absent-minded  uncle  mixed  up  their  names,  and  to the very day of his
departure  failed  to  distinguish  which  was  my  tutor and which was Tatyana
Ivanovna's  husband.  Tatyana  Ivanovna  herself  he sometimes called Nastasya,
sometimes  Pelagea,  and  sometimes  Yevdokia.  Touched and delighted by us, he
laughed  and  behaved exactly as though in the company of small children... All
this,  of  course,  might  well offend young men. It was not a case of offended
pride, however, but, as I realize now, subtler feelings.
    I  remember  one evening I was sitting on the box struggling with sleep. My
eyelids  felt  glued  together and my body, tired out by running about all day,
drooped  sideways.  But  I struggled against sleep and tried to look on. It was
about midnight. Tatyana Ivanovna, rosy and unassuming as always, was sitting at
a  little  table  sewing at her husband's shirt. Fyodor, sullen and gloomy, was
staring  at  her  from  one  corner, and in the other sat Pobyedimsky, snorting
angrily  and retreating into the high collar of his shirt. My uncle was walking
up and down the room thinking. Silence reigned; nothing was to be heard but the
rustling  of  the  linen  in  Tatyana Ivanovna's hands. Suddenly my uncle stood
still before Tatyana Ivanovna, and said:
    "You  are  all  so young, so fresh, so nice, you live so peacefully in this
quiet  place, that I envy you. I have become attached to your way of life here;
my  heart  aches  when  I  remember  I have to go away... You may believe in my
sincerity!"
    Sleep  closed my eyes and I lost myself. When some sound waked me, my uncle
was   standing  before  Tatyana  Ivanovna,  looking  at  her  with  a  softened
expression. His cheeks were flushed.
    "My  life  has  been  wasted,"  he said. "I have not lived! Your young face
makes me think of my own lost youth, and I should be ready to sit here watching
you to the day of my death. It would be a pleasure to me to take you with me to
Petersburg."
    "What for?" Fyodor asked in a husky voice.
    "I  should put her under a glass case on my work-table. I should admire her
and show her to other people. You know, Pelagea Ivanovna, we have no women like
you there. Among us there is wealth, distinction, sometimes beauty, but we have
not this true sort of life, this healthy serenity..."
    My uncle sat down facing Tatyana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
    "So  you  won't come with me to Petersburg?" he laughed. "In that case give
me  your  little hand... A charming little hand!.. You won't give it? Come, you
miser! let me kiss it, anyway..."
    At  that moment there was the scrape of a chair. Fyodor jumped up, and with
heavy,  measured  steps  went  up  to  his  wife.  His face was pale, grey, and
quivering.  He  brought  his  fist down on the table with a bang, and said in a
hollow voice:
    "I won't allow it!
    At  the same moment Pobyedimsky jumped up from his chair. He, too, pale and
angry, went up to Tatyana Ivanovna, and he, too,  struck  the  table  with  his 
fist.
    "I... I won't allow it!" he said.
    "What, what's the matter?" asked my uncle in surprise.
    "I won't allow it!" repeated Fyodor, banging on the table.
    My  uncle  jumped  up  and blinked nervously. He tried to speak, but in his
amazement  and  alarm  could  not  utter  a word; with an embarrassed smile, he
shuffled  out of the lodge with the hurried step of an old man, leaving his hat
behind.  When,  a  little  later,  my  mother  ran  into  the lodge, Fyodor and
Pobyedimsky  were  still hammering on the table like blacksmiths and repeating,
"I won't allow it!"
    "What has happened here?" asked mother. "Why has my brother been taken ill?
What's the matter?"
    Looking  at  Tatyana's pale, frightened face and at her infuriated husband,
mother probably guessed what was the matter. She sighed and shook her head.
    "Come!  give  over banging on the table!" she said. "Leave off, Fyodor! And
why are you thumping, Yegor Alexyevitch? What have you got to do with it?"
    Pobyedimsky  was startled and confused. Fyodor looked intently at him, then
at  his wife, and began walking about the room. When mother had gone out of the
lodge,  I  saw  what for long afterwards I looked upon as a dream. I saw Fyodor
seize my tutor, lift him up in the air, and thrust him out of the door.
    When  I  woke  up  in  the morning my tutor's bed was empty. To my question
where he was nurse told me in a whisper that he had been taken off early in the
morning to the hospital, as his arm was broken. Distressed at this intelligence
and  remembering the scene of the previous evening, I went out of doors. It was
a  grey day. The sky was covered with storm-clouds and there was a wind blowing
dust,  bits  of  paper, and feathers along the ground... It felt as though rain
were  coming.  There  was a look of boredom in the servants and in the animals.
When I went into the house I was told not to make such a noise with my feet, as
mother was ill and in bed with a migraine. What was I to do? I went outside the
gate,  sat  down  on the little bench there, and fell to trying to discover the
meaning  of what I had seen and heard the day before. From our gate there was a
road  which,  passing the forge and the pool which never dried up, ran into the
main  road.  I  looked  at the telegraph-posts, about which clouds of dust were
whirling,  and at the sleepy birds sitting on the wires, and I suddenly felt so
dreary that I began to cry.
    A  dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople, probably going to visit the
shrine,  drove  by  along  the main road. The wagonette was hardly out of sight
when  a  light  chaise  with  a  pair  of horses came into view. In it was Akim
Nikititch,  the  police inspector, standing up and holding on to the coachman's
belt.  To  my great surprise, the chaise turned into our road and flew by me in
at  the gate. While I was puzzling why the police inspector had come to see us,
I  heard a noise, and a carriage with three horses came into sight on the road.
In  the  carriage  stood the police captain, directing his coachman towards our
gate.
    "And  why  is  he  coming?" I thought, looking at the dusty police captain.
"Most  probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to him, and they have come
to take him to prison."
    But  the  mystery  was  not  so easily solved. The police inspector and the
police  captain  were  only the first instalment, for five minutes had scarcely
passed  when  a  coach  drove in at our gate. It dashed by me so swiftly that I
could only get a glimpse of a red beard.
    Lost  in  conjecture  and  full  of  misgivings, I ran to the house. In the
passage first of all I saw mother; she was pale and looking with horror towards
the  door,  from  which came the sounds of men's voices. The visitors had taken
her by surprise in the very throes of migraine.
    "Who has come, mother?" I asked.
    "Sister,"  I heard my uncle's voice, "will you send in something to eat for
the governor and me?"
    "It  is  easy  to  say  'something to eat'," whispered my mother, numb with
horror. "What have I time to get ready now? I am put to shame in my old age!"
    Mother clutched at her head and ran into the kitchen. The governor's sudden
visit  stirred  and  overwhelmed  the  whole  household.  A ferocious slaughter
followed.  A  dozen  fowls,  five turkeys, eight ducks, were killed, and in the
fluster  the old gander, the progenitor of our whole flock of geese and a great
favourite of mother's, was beheaded. The coachmen and the cook seemed frenzied,
and  slaughtered  birds at random, without distinction of age or breed. For the
sake  of  some  wretched sauce a pair of valuable pigeons, as dear to me as the
gander  was  to  mother,  were  sacrificed.  It was a long while before I could
forgive the governor their death.
    In  the evening, when the governor and his suite, after a sumptuous dinner,
had  got into their carriages and driven away, I went into the house to look at
the  remains  of  the feast. Glancing into the drawing-room from the passage, I
saw  my  uncle  and  my  mother.  My uncle, with his hands behind his back, was
walking  nervously  up  and  down  close  to the wall, shrugging his shoulders.
Mother,  exhausted  and  looking  much  thinner,  was  sitting  on the sofa and
watching his movements with heavy eyes.
    "Excuse me, sister, but this won't do at all," my uncle grumbled, wrinkling
up  his  face. "I introduced the governor to you, and you didn't offer to shake
hands.  You  covered  him  with  confusion,  poor  fellow! No, that won't do...
Simplicity  is  a  very  good  thing, but there must be limits to it... Upon my
soul!  And then that dinner! How can one give people such things? What was that
mess, for instance, that they served for the fourth course?"
    "That was duck with sweet sauce..." mother answered softly.
    "Duck! Forgive me, sister, but... but here I've got heartburn! I am ill!"
    My uncle made a sour, tearful face, and went on:
    "It  was the devil sent that governor! As though I wanted his visit! Pff!..
heartburn! I can't work or sleep... I am completely out of sorts... And I can't
understand  how  you  can  live here without anything to do... in this boredom!
Here I've got a pain coming under my shoulder-blade!.."
    My uncle frowned, and walked about more rapidly than ever.
    "Brother," my mother inquired softly, "what would it cost to go abroad?"
    "At least three thousand..." my uncle answered in a tearful voice. "I would
go, but where am I to get it? I haven't a farthing. Pff!.. heartburn!"
    My uncle stopped to look dejectedly at the grey, overcast prospect from the
window, and began pacing to and fro again.
    A  silence  followed...  Mother  looked a long while at the ikon, pondering
something, then she began crying, and said:
    "I'll give you the three thousand, brother..."

    Three  days later the majestic boxes went off to the station, and the privy
councillor  drove  off after them. As he said good-bye to mother he shed tears,
and  it was a long time before he took his lips from her hands, but when he got
into his carriage his face beamed with childlike pleasure... Radiant and happy,
he  settled  himself comfortably, kissed his hand to my mother, who was crying,
and  all  at  once  his eye was caught by me. A look of the utmost astonishment
came into his face.
    "What boy is this?" he asked.
    My mother, who had declared my uncle's coming was a piece of luck for which
I must thank God, was bitterly mortified at this question. I was in no mood for
questions.  I  looked  at  my  uncle's  happy  face, and for some reason I felt
fearfully  sorry  for  him.  I  could not resist jumping up to the carriage and
hugging  that  frivolous  man,  weak  as all men are. Looking into his face and
wanting to say something pleasant, I asked:
    "Uncle, have you ever been in a battle?"
    "Ah,  the  dear boy..." laughed my uncle, kissing me. "A charming boy, upon
my soul! How natural, how living it all is, upon my soul!.."
    The  carriage  set  off...  I  looked  after  him, and long afterwards that
farewell "upon my soul" was ringing in my ears.

    1886

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