Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“Turn over the page—‘The Proboscis of the House Fly as Seen through the Microscope.’ Goodness what a fly! I wonder what a bedbug would look like under the microscope, eh? How disgusting!”

The ancient hall clock coughed rather than struck ten times, as if it were afflicted with a cold. Into the dining-room came Anna the cook and fell flop at her master’s feet.

“Forgive me my sins, master, for Christ’s sake!” she cried and got up again very red in the face.

“Forgive me mine, too, for Christ’s sake!” answered Pavel Vasilitch calmly.

Anna then fell down at the feet of every member of the family in turn and asked forgiveness for her sins, omitting only Markovna, who, not being high-born, was unworthy of a prostration.

Another half-hour passed in silence and peace. The _Neva_ was tossed aside onto the sofa and Pavel Vasilitch, with one finger raised aloft, was reciting Latin poetry he had learned in his youth. Stepa was watching his father’s finger with its wedding-ring and dozing as he listened to the words he could not understand. He rubbed his heavy eyes with his fist but they kept closing tighter and tighter each time.

“I’m going to bed!” he said at last, stretching and yawning.

“What? To bed?” cried Pelagia Ivanovna. “Won’t you eat your meat for the last time before Lent?”

“I don’t want any meat.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” his startled mother exclaimed. “How can you say that? You won’t have any meat after to-night for the whole of Lent!”

Pavel Vasilitch was startled, too.

“Yes, yes, sonny,” he cried. “Your mother will give you nothing but Lenten fare for seven weeks after to-night. This won’t do. You must eat your meat!”

“But I want to go to bed!” whimpered Stepa.

“Then bring in the supper quick!” cried Pavel Vasilitch in a flutter. “Anna, what are you doing in there, you old slow-coach? Come quick and bring in the supper!”

Pelagia Ivanovna threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen as if the house were afire.

“Hurry! Hurry!” rang through the house. “Stepa wants to go to bed! Anna! Oh, heavens, what is the matter? Hurry!”

In five minutes the supper was on the table. The cats appeared once more, stretching and arching their backs, with their tails in the air. The family applied themselves to their meal. No one was hungry, all were surfeited to the point of bursting, but they felt it was their duty to eat.

IN PASSION WEEK

“Run, the church-bells are ringing! Be a good boy in church and don’t play! If you do, God will punish you!”

My mother slipped a few copper coins into my hand and then forgot all about me, as she ran into the kitchen with an iron that was growing cold. I knew I should not be allowed to eat or drink after confession, so before leaving home I choked down a crust of bread and drank two glasses of water. Spring was at its height. The street was a sea of brown mud through which ruts were already in process of being worn; the housetops and sidewalks were dry, and the tender young green of springtime was pushing up through last year’s dry grass under the fence rows. Muddy rivulets were babbling and murmuring down the gutters in which the sun did not disdain to lave its rays. Chips, bits of straw, and nutshells were floating swiftly down with the current, twisting and turning and catching on the dirty foam flakes. Whither, whither were they drifting? Would they not be swept from the gutter into the river, from the river into the sea, and from the sea into the mighty ocean? I tried to picture to myself the long and terrible journey before them, but my imagination failed even before reaching the river.

A cab drove by. The cabman was clucking to his horse and slapping the reins, unaware of two street-urchins hanging from the springs of his little carriage. I wanted to join these boys, but straightway remembered that I was on my way to confession, whereupon the boys appeared to me to be very wicked sinners indeed.

“God will ask them on the Last Judgment Day why they played tricks on a poor cabman,” I thought. “They will begin to make excuses, but the devil will grab them and throw them into eternal fire. But if they obey their fathers and mothers and give pennies and bread to the beggars, God will have mercy on them and will let them into Paradise.”

The church porch was sunny and dry. Not a soul was there; I opened the church door irresolutely and entered the building. There, in the dim light more fraught with melancholy and gloom for me than ever before, I became overwhelmed by the consciousness of my wickedness and sin. The first object that met my sight was a huge crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist on either side of the cross. The lustres and shutters were hung with mourning black, the icon lamps were glimmering faintly, and the sun seemed to be purposely avoiding the church windows. The Mother of God and the favourite Disciple were depicted in profile silently gazing at that unutterable agony upon the cross, oblivious of my presence. I felt that I was a stranger to them, paltry and vile; that I could not help them by word or deed; that I was a horrid, worthless boy, fit only to chatter and be naughty and rough. I called to mind all my acquaintances, and they all seemed to me to be trivial and silly and wicked, incapable of consoling one atom the terrible grief before me. The murky twilight deepened, the Mother of God and John the Baptist seemed very lonely.

Behind the lectern where the candles were sold stood the old soldier Prokofi, now churchwarden’s assistant.

His eyebrows were raised and he was stroking his beard and whispering to an old woman.

“The service will begin directly after vespers this evening. There will be prayers after matins to-morrow at eight o’clock. Do you hear me? At eight o’clock.”

Between two large pillars near the rood-screen the penitents were standing in line waiting their turn for confession. Among them was Mitka, a ragged little brat with an ugly, shaven head, protruding ears, and small, wicked eyes. He was the son of Nastasia the washerwoman, and was a bully and a thief who filched apples from the fruit-stalls and had more than once made away with my knuckle-bones. He was now staring crossly at me and seemed to be exulting in the fact that he was going to confession before me. My heart swelled with rage and I tried not to look at him. From the bottom of my soul I was furious that this boy’s sins were about to be forgiven.

In front of him stood a richly dressed lady with a white plume in her hat. Clearly she was deeply agitated and tensely expectant, and one of her cheeks was burning with a feverish flush.

I waited five minutes, ten minutes—then a well-dressed young man with a long, thin neck came out from behind the screen. He had on high rubber goloshes, and I at once began dreaming of the day when I should buy a pair of goloshes like his for myself. I decided that I would certainly do so. And now came the lady’s turn. She shuddered and went behind the screen.

Through a crack I could see her approach the altar, prostrate herself, rise, and bow her head expectantly without looking at the priest. The priest’s back was turned toward the screen, and all I could see of him was his broad shoulders, his curly grey hair, and the chain around his neck from which a cross was suspended. Sighing, without looking at the lady, he began nodding his head and whispering rapidly, now raising, now lowering his voice. The lady listened meekly, guiltily almost, with downcast eyes, and answered him in a few words.

“What can be her sin?” I wondered, looking reverently at her beautiful, gentle face. “Forgive her, God, and make her happy!”

But now the priest was covering her head with the stole.

“I, Thy unworthy servant,” his voice rang out, “by the power vouchsafed me, forgive this woman and absolve her from sin——”

The lady prostrated herself once more, kissed the cross, and retired. Both her cheeks were flushed now, but her face was calm, and unclouded, and joyous.

“She is happy now,” I thought, my eye wandering from her to the priest pronouncing the absolution. “But how happy he must be who is able to forgive sin!”

It was Mitka’s turn next, and my heart suddenly boiled over with hatred for the little thief. I wanted to go behind the screen ahead of him, I wanted to be first. Mitka noticed the movement, and hit me on the head with a candle. I paid him back in his own coin, and for a moment sounds of panting and the breaking of candles were heard in the church. We were forcibly parted, and my enemy nervously and stiffly approached the altar and bowed to the ground, but what happened after that I was unable to see. All I could think of was that I was going next, after Mitka, and at that thought the objects around me danced and swam before my eyes. Mitka’s protruding ears grew larger than ever and melted into the back of his neck, the priest swayed, and the floor rocked under my feet.

The priest’s voice rang out:

“I, Thy unworthy servant——”

I found myself moving toward the screen. My feet seemed to be treading on air. I felt as if I were floating. I reached the altar, which was higher than my head. The weary, dispassionate face of the priest flashed for a moment across my vision, but after that I saw only his blue-lined sleeves and one corner of the stole. I felt his near presence, smelled the odour of his cassock, and heard his stern voice, and the cheek that was turned toward him began to burn. I lost much of what he said from excitement, but I answered him earnestly, in a voice that sounded to me as if it were not my own. I thought of the lonely Mother of God, and the Disciple, and the crucifixion, and my mother, and wanted to cry and ask for forgiveness.

“What is your name?” asked the priest, laying the stole over my head.

How relieved I now felt, and how light of heart! My sins were gone, I was sanctified. I could enter into Paradise. It seemed to me that I exhaled the same odour as the priest’s cassock, and I sniffed my sleeve as I came out from behind the screen and went to the deacon to register. The dim half-light of the church no longer struck me as gloomy, and I could now look calmly and without anger at Mitka.

“What is your name?” asked the deacon.

“Fedia.”

“Fedia, what?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your daddy’s name?”

“Ivan.”

“And his other name?”

I was silent.

“How old are you?”

“Nine years old.”

On reaching home I went straight to bed to avoid seeing my family at supper. Shutting my eyes, I lay thinking of how glorious it would be to be martyred by Herod or some one; to live in a desert feeding bears like the hermit Seraphim; to pass one’s life in a cell with nothing to eat but wafers; to give away all one possessed to the poor; to make a pilgrimage to Kief. I could hear them laying the table in the dining-room; supper would soon be ready! There would be pickles and cabbage pasties and baked fish—oh, how hungry I was! I now felt willing to endure any torture whatsoever, to live in the desert without my mother, feeding bears out of my own hands, if only I could have just one little cabbage pasty first!

“Purify my heart, O God!” I prayed, pulling the bedclothes up over my head. “O guardian angels, save me from sin!”

Next morning, Thursday, I woke with a heart as serene and joyful as a spring day. I walked gaily and manfully to church, conscious that I was now a communicant and that I was wearing a beautiful and expensive shirt made from a silk dress left me by my grandmamma. Everything in church spoke of joy and happiness and springtime. The Mother of God and John the Baptist looked less sad than they had the evening before, and the faces of the communicants were radiant with anticipation. The past, it seemed, was all forgiven and forgotten. Mitka was there, washed and dressed in his Sunday best. I looked cheerfully at his protruding ears, and, to show that I bore him no malice, I said:

“You look fine to-day. If your hair didn’t stick up so and you weren’t so poorly dressed one might almost think your mother was a lady instead of a washerwoman. Come and play knuckle-bones with me on Easter Day!”

Mitka looked suspiciously at me and secretly threatened me with his fist.

The lady of yesterday was radiantly beautiful. She wore a light blue dress fastened with a large, flashing brooch shaped like a horseshoe.

I stood and admired her, thinking that when I grew to be a man I should certainly marry a woman like her, but, remembering suddenly that to think of marriage was shameful, I stopped, and moved toward the choir where the deacon was already reading the prayers that concluded the service.

AN INCIDENT

It was morning. Bright rays of sunlight were streaming into the nursery through the lacy curtain that the frost had drawn across the panes of the windows. Vania, a boy of six with a shaven head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a chubby, curly-haired girl of four, woke from their sleep and stared crossly at one another through the bars of their cribs.

“Oh, shame, shame!” grumbled nursie. “All good folks have had breakfast by now and your eyes are still half-closed!”

The sun’s rays were chasing each other merrily across the carpet, the walls, and the tail of nursie’s dress, and seemed to be inviting the children to a romp, but they did not notice the sun, they had waked in a bad humour. Nina pouted, made a wry face, and began to whine:

“Tea, nursie, I want my tea!”

Vania frowned and wondered how he could manage to quarrel and so find an excuse to bawl. He was already winking his eyes and opening his mouth when mamma’s voice came from the dining-room saying:

“Don’t forget to give the cat some milk; she has kittens now!”

Vania and Nina pulled long faces and looked dubiously at one another; then they both screamed, jumped out of bed, and scampered into the kitchen as they were, barefooted and in their little nightgowns, filling the air with shrill squeals as they ran.

“The cat has kittens! The cat has kittens!” they shrieked.

Under a bench in the kitchen stood a box, the same box which Stepan used for carrying coal when fires were lighted in the fire-places. Out of this box peered the cat. Profound weariness was manifested in her face, and her green eyes with their narrow black pupils wore an expression both languid and sentimental. One could see from her mien that if “he,” the father of her children, were but with her, her happiness would be complete. She opened her mouth wide and tried to mew but her throat only emitted a wheezing sound. The squeaking of her kittens came from inside the box.

The children squatted down on their heels near the box, motionless, holding their breath, their eyes riveted on the cat. They were dumb with wonder and amazement and did not hear their nurse as she grumblingly pursued them. Unaffected pleasure shone in the eyes of both.

In the lives and education of children domestic animals play a useful if inconspicuous part. Who does not remember some strong, noble watch-dog of his childhood, some petted spaniel, or the birds that died in captivity? Who does not recall the stupid, arrogant turkeys, and the meek old tabby-cats that were always ready to forgive us even when we stepped on their tails for fun and caused them the keenest pain? I sometimes think that the loyalty, patience, capacity for forgiveness, and fidelity of our domestic animals have a far greater and more potent influence over the minds of children than the long discourses of some pale, prosy German tutor or the hazy explanations of a governess who tries to tell them that water is compounded of oxygen and hydrogen.

“Oh, how tiny they are!” cried Nina, staring at the kittens round-eyed and breaking into a merry peal of laughter—“They look like mice!”

“One, two, three—” counted Vania. “Three kittens. That means one for me and one for you and one for some one else.”

“Murrm-murr-r-r-m,” purred the cat, flattered at receiving so much attention. “Murr-r-m.”

When they were tired of looking at the kittens, the children took them out from under the cat and began squeezing and pinching them; then, not satisfied with this, they wrapped them in the hems of their nightgowns and ran with them into the drawing-room.

Their mother was sitting there with a strange man. When she saw the children come in not dressed, not washed, with their nightgowns in the air she blushed and looked sternly at them.

“For shame! Let your nightgowns down!” she cried. “Go away or else I shall have to punish you!”

But the children heeded neither the threats of their mother nor the presence of the stranger. They laid the kittens down on the carpet and raised their voices in shrill vociferation. The mother cat roamed about at their feet and mewed beseechingly. A moment later the children were seized and borne off into the nursery to be dressed and fed and to say their prayers, but their hearts were full of passionate longing to have done with these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and to escape once more into the kitchen.

Their usual games and occupations faded into the background.

By their arrival in the world the kittens had eclipsed everything else and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain without a moment’s hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious, absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in the cellar where there were so many rats.

“But why don’t they open their eyes?” Nina puzzled. “They are blind, like beggars!”

Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that was put under their little noses.

“Come on, let’s make some little houses for the kitties!” Vania suggested. “Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old kitty can come and visit them.”

They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face, the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their former nest.

“Kitty is their mother,” Vania reflected. “But who is their father?”

“Yes, who is their father?” Nina repeated.

“They _must_ have a father,” both decided.

Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.

“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they behave themselves!”

Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as if he had sprung from the floor.

“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.

“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”

“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy, you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”

To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him, he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:

“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”

At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.

“Nina, leave the table at once!” cried her father angrily. “Stepan, throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute! I won’t have such filth in the house!”

Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or touch the kittens.

When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.

“Uncle Peter,” they begged. “Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into the nursery! Do tell her!”

“All right, all right!” their uncle consented to get rid of them.

Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity. He ignored the children and thumped them with his tail as he stalked by them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.

“Do you know what, Nina?” said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. “Let’s make Nero their father instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive.”

They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing the children—the happy moment had come!

“Come on!” Vania whispered to his sister.

But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:

“Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!”

Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.

“Indeed he has!” chuckled the butler. “He has found the box and eaten every one!”

The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing pitifully.

“Children, it’s ten o’clock! Go to bed!” cried mamma.

Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.

A MATTER OF CLASSICS

Before going to take his Greek examination, Vania Ottopeloff devoutly kissed every icon in the house. He felt a load on his chest and his blood ran cold, while his heart beat madly and sank into his boots for fear of the unknown. What would become of him to-day? Would he get a B or a C? He asked his mother’s blessing six times over, and, as he left the house, he begged his aunt to pray for him. On his way to school he gave two copecks to a beggar, hoping that these two coins might redeem him from ignorance and that God would not let those numeral nouns with their terrible “Tessarakontas” and “Oktokaidekas” get in his way.

He came back from school late, at five o’clock, and went silently to his room to lie down. His thin cheeks were white and dark circles surrounded his eyes.

“Well? What happened? What did you get?” asked his mother coming to his bedside.

Vania blinked, made a wry face, and burst into tears. Mamma’s jaw dropped, she grew pale and threw up her hands, letting fall a pair of trousers which she had been mending.

“What are you crying for? You have failed, I suppose?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve—I’ve been plucked. I got a C.”

“I knew that would happen, I had a presentiment that it would!” his mother exclaimed. “The Lord have mercy on us! What did you fail in?”

“In Greek—Oh, mother—they asked me the future of Phero and, instead of answering Oisomai, I answered Opsomai; and then—and then the accent is not used if the last syllable is a diphthong, but—but I got confused, I forgot that the alpha was long and put on the accent. Then we had to decline Artaxerxes and I got muddled and made a mistake in the ablative—so he gave me a C—Oh, I’m the unhappiest boy in the whole world! I worked all last night—I have got up at four every morning this week——”

“No, it is not you who are unhappy, you good-for-nothing boy, it is I! You have worn me as thin as a rail, you monster, you thorn in my flesh, you wicked burden on your parents! I have wept for you, I have broken my back working for you, you worthless trifler, and what is my reward? Have you learned a thing?”

“I—I study—all night—you see that yourself——”

“I have prayed God to send death to deliver me, poor sinner, but death will not come. You bane of my existence! Other people have decent children, but my only child isn’t worth a pin. Shall I beat you? I would if I could, but where shall I get the strength to do it? Mother of God, where shall I get the strength?”

Mamma covered her face with the hem of her dress and burst into tears. Vania squirmed with grief and pressed his forehead against the wall. His aunt came in.

“There, now, I had a presentiment of this!” she exclaimed, turning pale and throwing up her hands as she guessed at once what had happened. “I felt low in my mind all this morning; I knew we should have trouble, and here it is!”

“You viper! You bane of my existence!” exclaimed Vania’s mother.

“Why do you abuse him?” the boy’s aunt scolded the mother, nervously pulling off the coffee-coloured kerchief she wore on her head. “How is he to blame? It is your fault! Yours! Why did you send him to that school? What sort of lady are you? Do you want to climb up among the gentlefolk? Aha! You will certainly get there at this rate! If you had done as I told you, you would have put him into business as I did my Kuzia. There’s Kuzia now making five hundred roubles a year. Is that such a trifle that you can afford to laugh at it? You have tortured yourself and tortured the boy with all this book-learning, worse luck to it! See how thin he is! Hear him cough! He is thirteen years old and he looks more like ten.”

“No, Nastenka, no, darling, I haven’t beaten that tormentor of mine much, and beating is what he needs. Ugh! You Jesuit! You Mohammedan! You thorn in my flesh!” she cried, raising her hand as if to strike her son. “I should thrash you if I had the strength. People used to say to me when he was still little: ‘Beat him! Beat him!’ But I didn’t listen to them, unhappy woman that I am! So now I have to suffer for it. But wait a bit, I’ll have your ears boxed! Wait a bit——”

His mother shook her fist at him and went weeping into the room occupied by her lodger, Eftiki Kuporosoff. The lodger was sitting at his table reading “Dancing Self-Taught.” This Kuporosoff was considered a clever and learned person. He spoke through his nose, washed with scented soap that made every one in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast-days, and was looking for an enlightened wife; for these reasons he thought himself an extremely intellectual lodger. He also possessed a tenor voice.

“Dear me!” cried Vania’s mother, running into his room with the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do be so very kind as to thrash my boy! Oh, _do_ do me that favour! He has failed in his examinations! Oh, misery me! Can you believe it, he has failed! I can’t punish him myself on account of being so weak and in bad health, so do thrash him for me! Be kind, be chivalrous and do it for me, Mr. Kuporosoff! Have mercy on a sick woman!”

Kuporosoff frowned and heaved a very deep sigh through his nostrils. He reflected, drummed on the table with his fingers, sighed once more, and went into Vania’s room.

“Look here!” he began his harangue. “Your parents are trying to educate you, aren’t they, and give you a start in life, you miserable young man? Then why do you act like this?”

He held forth for a long time, he made quite a speech. He referred to science, and to darkness and light.

“Yes, indeed, young man!” he exclaimed from time to time.

When he had concluded, he took off his belt and caught hold of Vania’s ear.

“This is the only way to treat you!” he exclaimed.

Vania knelt down obediently and put his head on Kuporosoff’s knees. His large pink ears rubbed against Kuporosoff’s new brown-striped trousers.

Vania made not a sound. That evening at a family conclave it was decided to put him into business at once.

THE TUTOR

The high-school boy Gregory Ziboroff condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete Udodoff. Pete, a chubby youngster of twelve with bristling hair, red cheeks, and a low forehead, dressed in a little grey suit, bows and scrapes, and reaches into the cupboard for his books. The lesson begins.

According to an agreement made with Udodoff, the father, Ziboroff is to help Pete with his lessons for two hours each day, in return for which he is to receive six roubles a month. He is preparing the boy for the second grade of the high-school. He prepared him for the first grade last year, but little Pete failed to pass his examinations.

“Very well,” begins Ziboroff lighting a cigarette. “You had the fourth declension to study. Decline fructus!”

Peter begins to decline it.

“There, you haven’t studied again!” cries Ziboroff rising. “This is the sixth time I have given you the fourth declension to learn, and you can’t get it through your head! For heaven’s sake, when will you ever begin to study your lessons?”

“What, you haven’t studied again?” exclaims a wheezing voice in the next room and Pete’s papa, a retired civil servant, enters. “Why haven’t you studied? Oh, you little donkey! Just think, Gregory, I had to thrash him again yesterday!”

Sighing profoundly, Udodoff sits down beside his son and opens the boy’s ragged grammar. Ziboroff begins examining Pete before his father, thinking to himself: “I’ll just show that stupid father what a stupid son he has!” The high-school boy is seized with the fury of the examiner and is ready to beat the little red-cheeked numskull before him, he hates and despises him so. He is even annoyed when the youngster hits on the right answer to one of his questions. How odious this little Pete seems to him!

“You don’t even know the second declension! You don’t even know the first! This is the way you learn your lessons! Come, tell me, what is the vocative of meus filius?”

“The vocative of meus filius? Why the vocative of meus filius is—it is——”

Pete stares hard at the ceiling and moves his lips inaudibly. No answer comes.

“What is the dative of dea?”

“Deabus—filiabus!” Pete bursts out.

Old Udodoff nods approvingly. The high-school boy, who was not expecting a correct answer, feels annoyed.

“What other nouns have their dative in abus?” he asks.

It appears that anima, the soul, has its dative in abus, something that is not to be found in any grammar.

“What a melodious language Latin is!” observes Udodoff. “Alontron—bonus—anthropos—how marvellous! It is all very important!” he concludes with a sigh.

“The old brute is interrupting the lesson,” thinks Ziboroff. “Sitting over us like an inspector—I hate to be bossed! Now, then!” he cries to Pete. “You must learn that same lesson over again for next time. Next we’ll do some arithmetic. Fetch your slate! I want you to do this problem.”

Pete spits on his slate and rubs it dry with his sleeve. His tutor picks up the arithmetic and dictates the following problem to him.

“‘If a merchant buys 138 yards of cloth, some of which is black and some blue, for 540 roubles, how many yards of each did he buy if the blue cloth cost 5 roubles a yard and the black cloth 3?’ Repeat what I have just said.”

Peter repeats the problem and instantly and silently begins to divide 540 by 138.

“What are you doing? Wait a moment! No, no, go ahead! Is there a remainder? There ought not to be. Here, let me do it!”

Ziboroff divides 540 by 138, and finds that it goes three times and something over. He quickly rubs out the sum.

“How queer!” he thinks, ruffling his hair and flushing. “How should it be done? H’m—this is an indeterminate equation and not a sum in arithmetic at all——”

The tutor looks in the back of the book and finds that the answer is 75 and 63.

“H’m—that’s queer. Ought I to add 5 and 3 and divide 540 by 8? Is that right? No that’s not it. Come, do the sum!” he says to Pete.

“What’s the matter with you? That’s an easy problem!” cries Udodoff to Peter. “What a goose you are, sonny! Do it for him, Mr. Ziboroff!”

Gregory takes the pencil and begins figuring. He hiccoughs and flushes and pales.

“The fact is, this is an algebraical problem,” he says. “It ought to be solved with _x_ and _y_. But it can be done in this way, too. Very well, I divide this by this, do you understand? Now then, I subtract it from this, see? Or, no, let me tell you, suppose you do this sum yourself for to-morrow. Think it out alone!”

Pete smiles maliciously. Udodoff smiles, too. Both realize the tutor’s perplexity. The high-school boy becomes still more violently embarrassed, rises, and begins to walk up and down.

“That sum can be done without the help of algebra,” says Udodoff, sighing and reaching for the counting board. “Look here!”

He rattles the counting board for a moment, and produces the answer 75 and 63, which is correct.

“That’s how we ignorant folks do it.”

The tutor falls a prey to the most unbearably painful sensations. He looks at the clock with a sinking heart, and sees that it still lacks an hour and a quarter to the end of the lesson. What an eternity that is!

“Now we will have some dictation,” he says.

After the dictation comes a lesson in geography; after that, Bible study; after Bible study, Russian—there is so much to learn in this world! At last the two hours’ lesson is over, Ziboroff reaches for his cap, condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete, and takes his leave of Udodoff.

“Could you let me have a little money to-day?” he asks timidly. “I must pay my school bill to-morrow. You owe me for six months’ lessons.”

“Oh, do I really? Oh, yes, yes—” mutters Udodoff. “I would certainly let you have the money with pleasure, but I’m sorry to say I haven’t any just now. Perhaps in a week—or two.”

Ziboroff acquiesces, puts on his heavy goloshes, and goes out to give his next lesson.

OUT OF SORTS

Simon Pratchkin, a commissioner of the rural police, was walking up and down the floor of his room trying to smother a host of disagreeable sensations. He had gone to see the chief of police on business the evening before, and had unexpectedly sat down to a game of cards at which he had lost eight roubles. The amount was a trifle, but the demons of greed and avarice were whispering in his ear the accusation that he was a spendthrift.

“Eight roubles—a mere nothing!” cried Pratchkin, trying to drown the voices of the demons. “People often lose more than that without minding it at all. Besides, money is made to spend. One trip to the factory, one visit to Piloff’s tavern, and eight roubles would have been but a drop in a bucket!”

“It is winter; horse and peasant——”

monotonously murmured Pratchkin’s son Vania, in the next room.

“Down the road triumphant go—triumphant go——”

“Triumphant!” Pratchkin went on, pursuing the train of his thoughts. “If he had been stuck for a dozen roubles he wouldn’t have been so triumphant! What is he so triumphant about? Let him pay his debts on time! Eight roubles—what a trifle! That’s not eight thousand roubles. One can always win eight roubles back again.”

“And the pony trots his swiftest
For he feels the coming snow—
For he feels the coming snow.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be likely to go at a gallop, would he? Was he supposed to be a race-horse? He was a hack, a broken-down old hack! Foolish, drunken peasants always want to go at breakneck speed, and then, when they fall into an ice-hole, or down a precipice, some one has to haul them out and doctor them. If I had my way, I’d prescribe a kind of turpentine for them that they wouldn’t forget in a hurry! And why did I lead a low card? If I had led the ace of clubs, I wouldn’t have fallen into a hole myself——”

“O’er the furrows soft and crumbling
Flies the sleigh so free and wild—
O’er the furrows soft and crumbling——”

“Crumbling—crumbling furrows—what stuff that is! People will let those writers scribble anything. It was that ten-spot that made all the trouble. Why the devil did it have to turn up just at that moment?”

“When a little boy comes tumbling—comes tumbling
Down the road a merry child—a merry child.”

“If the boy was running he must have been overeating himself and been naughty. Parents never will put their children to work. Instead of playing, that boy ought to have been splitting kindling, or reading the Bible—and I hadn’t the sense to come away! What an ass I was to stay after supper! Why didn’t I have my meal and go home?”

“At the window stands his mother,
Shakes her finger—shakes her finger at the boy——”

“She shakes her finger at him, does she? The trouble with her is, she is too lazy to go out-of-doors and punish him. She ought to catch him by his little coat and give him a good spanking. It would do him more good than shaking her finger at him. If she doesn’t take care, he will grow up to be a drunkard. Who wrote that?” asked Pratchkin aloud.

“Pushkin, papa.”

“Pushkin? H’m. What an ass he is! People like that simply write without knowing themselves what they are saying.”

“Papa, here’s a peasant with a load of flour!” cried Vania.

“Let some one take charge of it!”

The arrival of the flour failed to cheer Pratchkin. The more he tried to console himself, the more poignant grew his sense of loss, and he regretted those eight roubles as keenly as if they had in reality been eight thousand. When Vania finished studying his lesson and silence fell, Pratchkin was standing gloomily at the window, his mournful gaze fixed upon the snowdrifts in the garden. But the sight of the snowdrifts only opened wider the wound in his breast. They reminded him of yesterday’s expedition to the chief of police. His spleen rose and embittered his heart. The need to vent his sorrow reached such a pitch that it would brook no delay. He could endure it no longer.

“Vania!” he shouted. “Come here and let me whip you for breaking that window-pane yesterday!”

STORIES OF YOUTH

A JOKE

It was noon of a bright winter’s day. The air was crisp with frost, and Nadia, who was walking beside me, found her curls and the delicate down on her upper lip silvered with her own breath. We stood at the summit of a high hill. The ground fell away at our feet in a steep incline which reflected the sun’s rays like a mirror. Near us lay a little sled brightly upholstered with red.

“Let us coast down, Nadia!” I begged. “Just once! I promise you nothing will happen.”

But Nadia was timid. The long slope, from where her little overshoes were planted to the foot of the ice-clad hill, looked to her like the wall of a terrible, yawning chasm. Her heart stopped beating, and she held her breath as she gazed into that abyss while I urged her to take her seat on the sled. What might not happen were she to risk a flight over that precipice! She would die, she would go mad!

“Come, I implore you!” I urged her again. “Don’t be afraid! It is cowardly to fear, to be timid.”

At last Nadia consented to go, but I could see from her face that she did so, she thought, at the peril of her life. I seated her, all pale and trembling, in the little sled, put my arm around her, and together we plunged into the abyss.

The sled flew like a shot out of a gun. The riven wind lashed our faces; it howled and whistled in our ears, and plucked furiously at us, trying to wrench our heads from our shoulders; its pressure stifled us; we felt as if the devil himself had seized us in his talons, and were snatching us with a shriek down into the infernal regions. The objects on either hand melted into a long and madly flying streak. Another second, and it seemed we must be lost!

“I love you, Nadia!” I whispered.

And now the sled began to slacken its pace, the howling of the wind and the swish of the runners sounded less terrible, we breathed again, and found ourselves at the foot of the mountain at last. Nadia, more dead than alive, was breathless and pale. I helped her to her feet.

“Not for anything in the world would I do that again!” she said, gazing at me with wide, terror-stricken eyes. “Not for anything on earth. I nearly died!”

In a few minutes, however, she was herself again, and already her inquiring eyes were asking the question of mine:

“Had I really uttered those four words, or had she only fancied she heard them in the tumult of the wind?”

I stood beside her smoking a cigarette and looking attentively at my glove.

She took my arm and we strolled about for a long time at the foot of the hill. It was obvious that the riddle gave her no peace. Had I spoken those words or not? It was for her a question of pride, of honour, of happiness, of life itself, a very important question, the most important one in the whole world. Nadia looked at me now impatiently, now sorrowfully, now searchingly; she answered my questions at random and waited for me to speak. Oh, what a pretty play of expression flitted across her sweet face! I saw that she was struggling with herself; she longed to say something, to ask some question, but the words would not come; she was terrified and embarrassed and happy.

“Let me tell you something,” she said, without looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Let us—let us slide down the hill again!”

We mounted the steps that led to the top of the hill. Once more I seated Nadia, pale and trembling, in the little sled, once more we plunged into that terrible abyss; once more the wind howled, and the runners hissed, and once more, at the wildest and most tumultuous moment of our descent, I whispered:

“I love you, Nadia!”

When the sleigh had come to a standstill, Nadia threw a backward look at the hill down which we had just sped, and then gazed for a long time into my face, listening to the calm, even tones of my voice. Every inch of her, even her muff and her hood, every line of her little frame expressed the utmost uncertainty. On her face was written the question:

“What can it have been? Who spoke those words? Was it he, or was it only my fancy?”

The uncertainty of it was troubling her, and her patience was becoming exhausted. The poor girl had stopped answering my questions, she was pouting and ready to cry.

“Had we not better go home?” I asked.

“I—I love coasting!” she answered with a blush. “Shall we not slide down once more?”

She “loved” coasting, and yet, as she took her seat on the sled, she was as trembling and pale as before and scarcely could breathe for terror!

We coasted down for the third time and I saw her watching my face and following the movements of my lips with her eyes. But I put my handkerchief to my mouth and coughed, and when we were half-way down I managed to say:

“I love you, Nadia!”

So the riddle remained unsolved! Nadia was left pensive and silent. I escorted her home, and as she walked she shortened her steps and tried to go slowly, waiting for me to say those words. I was aware of the struggle going on in her breast, and of how she was forcing herself not to exclaim:

“The wind could not have said those words! I don’t want to think that it said them!”

Next day I received the following note:

“If you are going coasting, to-day, call for me. N.”

Thenceforth Nadia and I went coasting every day, and each time that we sped down the hill on our little sled I whispered the words:

“I love you, Nadia!”

Nadia soon grew to crave this phrase as some people crave morphine or wine. She could no longer live without hearing it! Though to fly down the hill was as terrible to her as ever, danger and fear lent a strange fascination to those words of love, words which remained a riddle to torture her heart. Both the wind and I were suspected; which of us two was confessing our love for her now seemed not to matter; let the draught but be hers, and she cared not for the goblet that held it!

One day, at noon, I went to our hill alone. There I perceived Nadia. She approached the hill, seeking me with her eyes, and at last I saw her timidly mounting the steps that led to the summit. Oh, how fearful, how terrifying she found it to make that journey alone! Her face was as white as the snow, and she shook as if she were going to her doom, but up she climbed, firmly, without one backward look. Clearly she had determined to discover once for all whether those wondrously sweet words would reach her ears if I were not there. I saw her seat herself on the sled with a pale face and lips parted with horror, saw her shut her eyes and push off, bidding farewell for ever to this world. “zzzzzzz!” hissed the runners. What did she hear? I know not—I only saw her rise tired and trembling from the sled, and it was clear from her expression that she could not herself have said what she had heard; on her downward rush terror had robbed her of the power of distinguishing the sounds that came to her ears.

And now, with March, came the spring. The sun’s rays grew warmer and brighter. Our snowy hillside grew darker and duller, and the ice crust finally melted away. Our coasting came to an end.

Nowhere could poor Nadia now hear the beautiful words, for there was no one to say them; the wind was silent and I was preparing to go to St. Petersburg for a long time, perhaps for ever.

One evening, two days before my departure, I sat in the twilight in a little garden separated from the garden where Nadia lived by a high fence surmounted by iron spikes. It was cold and the snow was still on the ground, the trees were lifeless, but the scent of spring was in the air, and the rooks were cawing noisily as they settled themselves for the night. I approached the fence, and for a long time peered through a chink in the boards. I saw Nadia come out of the house and stand on the door-step, gazing with anguish and longing at the sky. The spring wind was blowing directly into her pale, sorrowful face. It reminded her of the wind that had howled for us on the hillside when she had heard those four words, and with that recollection her face grew very sad indeed, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. The poor child held out her arms as if to implore the wind to bring those words to her ears once more. And I, waiting for a gust to carry them to her, said softly:

“I love you, Nadia!”

Heavens, what an effect my words had on Nadia! She cried out and stretched forth her arms to the wind, blissful, radiant, beautiful....

And I went to pack up my things. All this happened a long time ago. Nadia married, whether for love or not matters little. Her husband is an official of the nobility, and she now has three children. But she has not forgotten how we coasted together and how the wind whispered to her:

“I love you, Nadia!”

That memory is for her the happiest, the most touching, the most beautiful one of her life.

But as for me, now that I have grown older, I can no longer understand why I said those words and why I jested with Nadia.

AFTER THE THEATRE

When Nadia Zelenia came home with her mother from the theatre, where they had been to see “Evgeni Onegin,” and found herself in her own room once more, she took off her dress, loosened her hair, and hastened to sit down at her desk in her petticoat and little white bodice, to write a letter in the style of Tatiana.

“I love you,” she wrote, “but you do not, no, you do not love me!”

As she wrote this she began to laugh.

She was only sixteen and had never been in love in her life. She knew that the officer Gorni and the student Gruzdieff both loved her, but now, after seeing the opera, she did not want to believe it. How attractive it would be to be wretched and spurned! It was, somehow, so poetical, so beautiful and touching, when one loved while the other remained cold and indifferent! Onegin was arresting because he did not love Tatiana, but Tatiana was enchanting because she loved so ardently. Had they both loved one another equally well and been happy, might not both have been uninteresting?