indifference to Petya's description of the volcanic eruption and the
blizzard in the mountains. But when it came to the tram workers' strike in
Naples, and the meeting with Maxim Gorky, and the emigres, then Gavrik's
eyes sparkled, knots of muscle appeared at the sides of his jaw, and
bringing his fist down on Petya's knee he cried, "Aha! That was grand! That
was well done!"
But when Petya, in a half-whisper, afraid that Gavrik might not believe
him, said that he thought he had seen Rodion Zhukov in Naples, Gavrik not
only believed it, he even nodded and said, "That's right. It was him. We
know about it. You probably saw him when he left the Capri school for
Longjumeau, to go to Ulyanov-Lenin."
Petya stared at his friend in surprise. How he had changed! It was not
only that he was taller and more mature, there was a concentrated
determination about him, an assurance and even-this struck Petya most of
all-a certain confidence and ease. Look how freely and easily he pronounced
the French word Longjumeau, and how ordinary and natural the name
Ulyanov-Lenin sounded when he spoke it.
"Oh, so you know Longjumeau too?" said Petya ingenuously.
"Of course," Gavrik answered, smiling with eyes alone.
"They've got a ... Party school there," Petya went on, not quite sure
of himself and hesitating before the words "Party school."
Gavrik regarded Petya thoughtfully as though weighing him up, then
laughed gaily.
"Seems like you didn't waste your time abroad, brother! You've started
to understand a few things. Good!"
Petya dropped his eyes modestly, then suddenly jumped as though stung.
He had just remembered the incident at the frontier and felt instinctively
that it had something to do with Gavrik's last words or, to be more exact,
with the thought behind them.
"Gavrik, listen," he began excitedly, then glanced at Motya and stopped
uncertainly.
"Motya, you go off and take a walk somewhere," said Gavrik firmly,
patting her on the shoulder over which her fair braid with its bow of cotton
was prettily, flung.
The girl pouted, but rose obediently and went away at once, from which
Petya concluded that this was nothing uncommon in the Chernoivanenko family.
"Well, what is it?" Gavrik asked.
"Osipov wanted his comrades told that he'd .been caught at the
frontier," said Petya, lowering his voice; he then told Gavrik all that had
happened in the customhouse at Volochisk the day they had crossed.
Gavrik listened in silence, with a serious face, then said, "Just a
minute."
He went into the cottage and came out again in a moment, followed by
Terenty.
"Ah, here's our foreign traveller," said Terenty, holding out his hand.
"Welcome home! And thank you very much about the letter. You helped us a
lot, got us out of a hole."
Petya noticed that Terenty too seemed somehow to have changed during
the summer. Although his broad, pock-marked workman's face was as rough-hewn
and frank as before, Petya read a greater firmness and independence in its
features. Like Gavrik he was comfortably barefoot, but his trousers were new
and of good quality, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders and his clean
shirt had a metal stud in a buttonhole at the top, from which it could be
concluded that Terenty wore stiff collars.
He sat down where Motya had sat, beside Petya, flung his strong, heavy
arm round the boy's shoulders, and gave him a hug.
"Well? Let's have it."
Petya repeated the story in great detail.
"A bad business," said Terenty, scratching one bare foot with the
other. "That's the second mail-bag gone wrong. Those students are no good at
all. I said we ought to arrange it through-" Terenty and Gavrik exchanged
meaning looks. "Well, and of course," Terenty turned back to Petya, "you
know all this doesn't concern anyone else."
"He understands a bit already," said Gavrik.
"So much the better," Terenty said casually and then changed the
subject quite definitely. "You won't be going abroad again? Well, all right.
It's not so bad at home, either. And about the letter, thanks again. You did
a big thing for us. Stay here a while, take a walk, maybe, and I'll go back
inside, I've got visitors. I'll be seeing you. Look, the best thing you can
do is to go on the common, Zhenya's there, he's got a new kite. I bought it
at Kolpakchi's. It's the latest construction, and will fly in any wind."
He was clearly anxious to get back to his guests.
"Motya, why've you gone off and left Petya?" he called. "Come and take
him to the common. I've got to go, excuse me."
Terenty walked quickly back into the cottage; through the small windows
Petya could see it was full of people. He had a feeling Terenty wanted to
get rid of him, but before he had time to formulate a feeling of offence
Motya appeared, Gavrik took him by the arm and all three went off to the
common. Eight-year-old Zhenya, Motya's brother, was very much like Gavrik at
the same age, only plumper and better dressed. Surrounded by all the boys of
Near Mills, he was trying to fly a strange kind of kite, not a bit like the
ones which Petya's generation had made out of reeds, newspaper, glue, thread
and coarse grass for a tail.
It was a shop kite that looked like a geometrical drawing, with
canary-yellow calico stretched over it and tight connecting wires that made
it look like the Wright brothers' biplane. Two boys stood on tiptoe
zealously holding the apparatus as high as they could reach, while Zhenya,
holding the thin cord, waited for the best moment to race across the common,
pulling his flying machine after him. At last he screwed up his eyes and ran
into the wind, butting it with his head. The kite shot up, swayed
uncertainly, circled and fell back on the grass.
"The brute just won't fly," Zhenya hissed through his teeth, wiping his
wet, angry, freckled face with the tail of his shirt. Evidently, this was
not the first time the kite had flopped.
All the boys of Near Mills rushed to the kite, whooping and chattering,
but Zhenya pushed them angrily aside. "Keep your hands off," he said and
started untangling the cord.
"Zhora, Kolya, go back and hold it up again. As high as you can, but
don't let it go till I shout. See?"
He seemed used to giving orders, and the others to obeying them,
although he was the youngest there. The real Chernoivanenko breed, thought
Gavrik with a sense of pride, as he watched Zhora and Kolya take their
places again and hold up the kite while Zhenya spat on his index finger and
raised it to gauge the wind.
"This time you're going to fly, see if you don't," he muttered like an
invocation, and took a firm grip of the cord. "Are you ready there?" he
called. "One, two, three- let go!"
The kite shot up-and fell. Mocking laughter came from the boys.
"It won't fly, no good trying," someone shouted.
"Bone-head!" Zhenya replied. "D'you know what kind of kite this is? Dad
bought it at Kolpakchi's on Yekaterininskaya Street; it cost one ruble
forty-five kopeks."
"A lot your Dad knows about kites!"
"You leave my Dad alone, or I'll give you a sock in the jaw!"
"It won't fly anyway, it's got no tail."
"You fool, it's not an ordinary kite, it's from a shop, I'll show you
whether it'll fly or not."
But try as he would, the shop kite flopped back on the ground every
time.
"Your Dad just threw away his money."
It was a painful situation. The disappointed spectators began drifting
away.
"Wait a bit, where are you going, stupids?" cried Zhenya, trying to
smile as he squatted on his heels by the kite. "Come back here, it'll fly
all right this time."
But his authority was now completely gone and like a defeated general,
he could get none to heed him. At first Petya and Gavrik exchanged glances
and contemptuous observations about the shop toy which couldn't come
anywhere near the good old home-made kites. But after a while Gavrik began
to feel the family honour was in danger.
He frowned and paced weightily over to the kite. "Keep off, it's not
yours," whined Zhenya, almost in tears, trying to push his uncle away with
his elbow.
"Is that so?" remarked Gavrik; raising Zhenya by the shoulders, he gave
him a shove with his knee on the seat. Then he walked unhurriedly all round
the kite without touching it, carefully examining all its struts and
fastenings.
"So that's it. Now I see," he said at last and bent a stern look on
Zhenya. "Can't you see where the centre of gravity is, dunderhead?"
"Where?" asked Zhenya.
"Utochkin the flyer," Gavrik scoffed, without condescending to explain.
Once more he bent a keen-eyed gaze on the kite, stooped over it,
refastened a string and moved an aluminium ring a little.
"Now it's a different matter. Come on, let's show 'em." And he winked
at Petya.
Petya and Motya took the ends of the kite and held it over their heads.
Gavrik picked up the ball of string lying on the ground among the withered
immortelles, shouted, "Let go!" and ran against the wind.
The kite slipped out of Petya's and Motya's hands and shot upward-but
this time it did not falter and fall, it hung lightly in the air and
followed the running Gavrik in a graceful curve. Petya and Motya stood there
with hands still raised, as though reaching out to the kite, begging it to
return. But it flew on, drawn by the cord, mounting smoothly higher.
Gavrik stopped and the kite stopped too, almost directly over his head.
"Aha! That's taught you!" he called up, wagging a finger at the kite.
He began carefully twitching the taut line and the kite twitched too, like a
fish on a hook. Then he moved the ball forward and back, carefully unwinding
the line which slid off- arid up in little jerks. The kite obediently rose
higher and higher, catching the wind and repeating the movements of the ball
in Gavrik's hands, but with a smoother, wider sweep. It was so high now that
they had to throw their heads far back to see it.
The kite became smaller, it floated against the deep-blue August sky,
slender and golden, bathed in the warm sunshine, every surface catching the
fresh sea breeze.
Zhenya ran along beside his Uncle Gavrik, begging and pleading to be
allowed to hold the line, but it was no good.
"Keep off, kid," said Gavrik, watching the kite through narrowed eyes.
It was only when the whole line had been paid out and Gavrik had given a
final twitch to the kite as though making sure it was firmly fastened, that
he handed it over to Zhenya.
"Hold it tight, if you let that go you'll not catch it again."
Motya ran home for paper and they began "sending up letters." There was
something magical in the way a fragment of paper with a hole in the middle
threaded on to the stick began hesitantly rising up the line, sometimes
stopping as though it had caught on something. The nearer the "letter" came
to the kite, the faster it climbed until at last it slipped quickly up and
clung to the kite like steel to a magnet, while a second and a third
followed it up, and Petya imagined that letters from him full of love and
complaint were sliding up one after the other into the blue emptiness, to
... Longjumeau.
Suddenly the line slipped out of Zhenya's hands. The kite, liberated,
flew up with the wind, carrying a long garland of "letters." They all had to
run for a long time, jumping ditches and climbing fences, before they found
it at last outside the town, in the steppe, lying in thick silver wormwood.
When they at last came home to Near Mills, it was evening, the big moon
still shed little light but faint ashy shadows were cast by fences and
trees, the air was perfumed with four-o'clocks, and grey moths circled and
fluttered mysteriously in the darkness of the hedges.
As they neared the house, Petya saw a number of people coming out of
the gate. One of them he recognized as Uncle Fedya, the sailor from the
tailor shop at Sabarisky Barracks who had made him the navy blouse. But the
sailor seemed not to recognize him in the dim light.
Petya also noticed a young woman in a hat and a blouse, and an elderly
man in a jacket and top-boots carrying a railwayman's lantern, evidently a
guard or engine-driver. Fragments of talk came to him.
"Levitsky writes in Our Dawn that the failure of the 1905 Revolution
was partly due to the fact that no bourgeois government was formed," the
young woman's voice said.
"Your Levitsky's just a Liberal and nothing more, he only makes a show
of being a Marxist," a man's voice replied. "You read the Star, there's an
article by Lenin, that'll help you to get things straight."
"I propose we keep off discussion out of doors. You can start
quarrelling again next Sunday," said a third voice.
There was smothered laughter and the figures disappeared in the
shadows.
"Who are those visitors?" Petya asked and felt at once that he should
not have asked.
"Oh, just people," said Gavrik reluctantly. "It's a sort of Sunday
school." To change the subject he went on, "On the fourteenth of August I
want to take the exams for three forms. I've been through everything. If
you'll just help me with the Latin a bit." "Of course I will," said Petya.
The Chernoivanenko family would not hear of letting Petya go before supper.
Terenty placed a candle with a glass shade on the table under the mulberry
tree, at once attracting a whole swarm of moths. His wife, washing the
teacups after the visitors, wiped her hands on her apron and went up to
Petya. Of all the Chernoivanenko family she had changed the least. She
greeted the boy country-fashion, holding out her hand with stiff fingers.
Motya brought a big dish covered with a homespun cloth out of the
larder.
"Maybe you'd like to try our plum dumplings, Petya?" she asked shyly.
After supper Petya set off home. Gavrik walked with him almost to the
station. It was a warm summer night, a harvest moon in a misty ring shone
through the dark branches, crickets were shrilling everywhere, on the
outskirts dogs barked as they do in villages, and somewhere a gramophone was
playing. Petya felt a pleasant weariness after this long delightful day
which had imperceptibly opened before him something new, something he had
previously sensed only vaguely.
On that day Petya matured inwardly, as though he had grown older by
several years. Perhaps it was on that day the boy finally became a youth.
Now he no longer had any doubts that it was to a certain extent from
Near Mills, from Terenty's cottage, that this thing called the
"revolutionary movement" came.
The new term opened on the fifteenth of August and some days before
that, Vasily Petrovich went to Faig's school to conduct re-examinations of
pupils who had failed in the end-of-term exams. He came home to dinner in a
radiant mood, for Mr. Faig had been more than affable to him, and had
personally taken him all over the school, showing him the gym and the
physics laboratory fitted up with all the best, modern equipment imported
from abroad. Finally Mr. Faig had taken him home in his own carriage, so
that the whole street had seen Vasily Petrovich in his frock-coat, with
exercise books under his arm, jump rather awkwardly out of the carriage and
bow to Mr. Faig who vouchsafed a glimpse of his dyed side-whiskers and a
wave of a hand in Swiss glove in the window.
At dinner Vasily Petrovich was in high spirits and re-dated a number of
humorous incidents illustrating the ' ways and customs of the Faig school
where certain pupils, the spoiled sons of rich parents, stayed two or even
three years in each form, grew whiskers, married and started families while
still within the walls of that god-forsaken establishment; why, there had
even been a case when a Faig pupil came to school with his own son, the only
difference being that father was in the sixth form, and son in the first.
"Se non e vero e ben trovafo!" cried Vasily Petrovich laughing
infectiously-it's not true, but it's well invented.
Auntie, however, did not appear to share his mood. She kept shaking her
head doubtfully and saying, "Well, well, I somehow can't see you stopping
there long."
In the evening Vasily Petrovich sat down to correct the exercise books.
The boys heard him snort a number of times, and once he muttered, "What the
devil is all this? Disgraceful! It's got to be put a stop to, and at once,"
and threw down his pencil.
Out of the ten boys taking their Russian exam a second time, Vasily
Petrovich failed seven, and although at the teachers' meeting Mr. Faig made
no objections, his expression was one of grieved indignation. This time
Vasily Petrovich came home by horse-tram, and not in high spirits.
At the end of the first term the teaching staff learned that a certain
Blizhensky was to enter the school. This Blizhensky was the son of a
broadcloth millionaire, a young man who had been to a number of high schools
in St. Petersburg, then to others in Moscow and Kharkov, and finally to the
Pavel Galagan College in Kiev, known as a school that accepted the worst
pupils in the Russian Empire, even those who had been expelled in disgrace.
However, strange as it might be, the Pavel Galagan College too had got
rid of this prodigy. So now he was to enter the fifth form at Faig's.
Although entrance examinations in the middle of the year were strictly
prohibited, an exception was made in some roundabout way for the millionaire
Blizhensky's son.
A few days before this examination Mr. Faig, meeting Vasily Petrovich
in the assembly hall before morning prayers, took his arm and walked up and
down the corridor with him, confiding some of his ideas with regard to the
latest West-European pedagogical trends.
"I have a great respect for your strictness," he concluded. "In fact, I
really admire it. I am strict myself- but I am also fair. And I stand by my
principles. You failed seven boys not long ago, and did I ever say a word
against it? But, my dear Vasily Petrovich, let us be frank-" He took a very
thin gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. "There are
times when pedagogical strictness can bring results which are just the
opposite of those desired. Rejected by an establishment of learning,
standing outside its walls, a young man, instead of becoming an educated,
useful member of our young constitutional society, may enter the service of
the police, may perhaps-entre nous soit dit- become an agent of the secret
police, a spy, and in the end fall under the influence of the Black Hundred.
I believe that to you, a Tolstoian and ... h'm ... perhaps a revolutionary,
this would be very undesirable."
"I am not a Tolstoian, still less a revolutionary," said Vasily
Petrovich with a touch of irritation.
"I say it only between ourselves. You may depend on my discretion. But
everybody in this town knows that you have had differences with the
authorities and have perhaps to a certain extent suffered for it. You are a
Red, Vasily Petrovich. I will say no more. Not a word! But I would be
extremely disappointed, nay! grieved, if this young man were to fail in his
entrance examination. He is the only heir to a million, and ... he has
already suffered much. In a word, I beg of you," Mr. Faig concluded in his
softest, gentlest voice, "do not cause me any more unpleasantness. Be strict
but merciful. This, in the interests of our educational establishment which
I hope are as dear to you as to me. I think you understand me."
On this day Vasily Petrovich again rolled home in Mr. Faig's carriage.
For some days he felt as though he had eaten tainted fish.
"To hell with it!" he decided at last. "I'll give the young swine a
bare pass. You can't knock down a wall with a pea-shooter."
When the exam was actually held, however, a few days later, and Vasily
Petrovich saw the "young swine" sitting alone in his glory at a table in the
middle of the assembly hall, before the entire Areopagus of teachers- for he
was to be examined in all subjects simultaneously and briefly-the blood
rushed to his head.
The young man, about twenty years of age, was in the full-dress uniform
of the Pavel Galagan College, and the high, stiff collar constricted his
throat and pushed against his powdered cheeks, making him look as though he
were choking. The back of his clipped neck displayed a liberal amount of
pimples, and his reddish-chestnut hair parted in the middle was so plastered
with brilliantine that his flat, snaky head shone like a mirror. Now, Vasily
Petrovich could not stand men who used lotions, and the smell of
brilliantine made him feel sick. But most of all his sense of what was
proper was outraged by the gold pince-nez which perched most incongruously
on the young man's coarse nose, giving his little pig's eyes a frankly
impudent expression.
What a blockhead, thought Vasily Petrovich, irritated, tossing his head
and fastening all the buttons of his frock-coat.
As he stood to attention to answer the examiners' questions, the young
man thrust out his broad rear, which seemed to be poured into his uniform.
When Vasily Petrovich's turn came, he put a number of simple questions
in an indifferent voice, received answers that brought a melancholy smile
from Mr. Faig, drew the report form towards him with trembling fingers and
put down a fail. The exam ended in funereal silence. Vasily Petrovich went
home on the horse-tram, took off his collar that seemed to have become too
tight, removed his frock-coat and boots, refused any dinner and lay down on
his bed, face to the wall. Neither Auntie nor the boys ventured to ask him
anything, but all understood something very serious must have happened.
In the evening the bell rang, and when Petya opened the door he saw an
old man in a long beaver coat and a young man with gold pince-nez wearing
the smart uniform cap of the Ravel Galagan College.
"Is Vasily Petrovich at home?" the old man asked, and without waiting
for an answer marched straight towards the dining-room in his coat and hat,
pointing towards the half-open door with his ivory-headed stick and asking,
"In there, eh?"
Vasily Petrovich barely had time to get into his frock-coat and boots.
"I'm Blizhensky. Good evening," the old man wheezed. "You failed this
idiot of mine today, and you were quite right. In your place I'd have bashed
his face in as well. Come here, you worthless lout." And he turned round.
The young man emerged from behind his father, took off his cap and held
it in both hands, his glistening head hanging.
"Down on your knees!" his father rasped, striking his stick on the
floor. "Kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand!"
The young man did not kneel, nor did he kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand,
he gulped and then began to cry noisily, rubbing a red nose with his
handkerchief.
"He's sorry, he'll not do it again," the old man said. "Now you will
give him private lessons at home twice a week, and pull him up. As for the
entrance examination, we can settle it like this." The old man felt in the
pocket of his frock-coat, on the lapel of which Vasily Petrovich saw the
silver medal of the Society of Michael the Archangel ( A reactionary
Black-Hundred organization.-Tr.) on its tricolour ribbon, took out a blank
exam report form and handed it to Vasily Petrovich. "Here you will put down
a pass for the young fool, and the old report with God's help we will
destroy. Faig and the other teachers have agreed."
He then took out a note-case and laid two "Peters" on the table-two
five-hundred-ruble notes with a Peter I watermark.
"What is it?" mumbled Vasily Petrovich confusedly, with a weak gesture,
glancing at the money through his pince-nez. Then he realized the outrageous
insult of the proposal. He paled until even his ears were white, he shook
from head to foot so that Petya feared he would die of heart failure now,
this very instant. Then the colour flooded back to his face until it was
purple and he gasped dumbly.
"Sir, you are a scoundrel!" he screamed. He sobbed with rage. "Get out
of here! How dare you?... In my own house!... Get out! Get out this minute!"
The old man, startled and frightened, crossed himself rapidly several
times and then ran at top speed from the room, through the hall and out of
the door, overturning the rickety what-not with its piles of music. And
Vasily Petrovich ran after him, awkwardly pushing at his back, trying to
strike him on the back of the head, while Petya pulled his father's coat,
crying, "Daddy, please! Daddy, don't!"
Altogether, it was a disgraceful scene which ended with the old man and
the young one pelting down the stairs, while Vasily Petrovich on the landing
flung after them the five-hundred-ruble notes which fluttered slowly from
wall to wall of the stair-well.
The two Blizhenskys, father and son, picked up the money, then looked
up, and the old man yelled senselessly, "Mangy Jews!" and threatened with
his ivory-topped stick.
The next day a messenger brought Vasily Petrovich a letter from Mr.
Faig in a long, elegant envelope of thick paper with a fantastic
coat-of-arms embossed on it. In most courteous terms Vasily Petrovich was
informed that in consideration of differences of views on questions of
education, his further services at the school had become superfluous. The
letter was written for some reason in French and ended with the signature:
Baron Faig.
Although this was a terrible blow for the Bachei family, Vasily
Petrovich accepted it with perfect calm. He could have expected nothing
else.
"Well, Tatyana Ivanovna," he said to Auntie, cracking his fingers, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities ..." he smiled ironically, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities are ended and I shall have to seek
some other profession."
"But why?" Auntie asked. "You could give private lessons."
"To swine like that?" cried Vasily Petrovich, his voice rising almost
to a scream. "Never! I'll carry sacks at the port first!"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Auntie could not restrain a
faint, melancholy smile. Vasily Petrovich jumped up as though stung and
began pacing the room.
"Yes, sacks!" he said excitedly. "And I see nothing shameful or amusing
in it. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Russian Empire are
engaged in manual labour. Why should I be any exception?"
"But you are a man of learning."
"Of learning?" said Vasily Petrovich bitterly. "Yes, I don't dispute
it. But I'm not a man, I'm a slave!"
"What did you say?" cried Auntie, raising her hands.
"You heard me. A slave. That's the only word for it. First, I was a
slave of the Ministry of Education as represented by the head of the
Education Department, and he drove me out like a dog because I presumed to
have my own opinion about Tolstoi. Then, I became the slave of Faig, a slimy
scoundrel, and he drove me out like a dog, too, because I was honest and
refused to give a pass to that dolt, that blockhead Blizhensky, for the sole
reason that he was the son of a millionaire, if you please. To hell with
both of them and the whole Russian government into the bargain!" he shouted;
it burst out of him, and for a second he himself was frightened at what he
had said. But he could no longer stop. "And if in this Russia of ours I have
to be somebody's slave," he went on, "then I'd sooner be an ordinary slave
and not an intellectual one. At least I'll keep my inner integrity.... Oh
God," he groaned with sudden tears in his eyes and looked at the icon. "What
a blessing that He in His mercy took my poor Zhenya, that she does not have
to share these indignities with me! How would she have borne it, seeing
nothing left to her husband but to carry sacks down at the port."
"How you keep harping on those sacks," said Auntie, wiping her eyes.
"Yes, sacks, sacks!" Vasily Petrovich repeated defiantly.
Night had fallen. Pavlik was asleep, breathing heavily, but Petya lay
awake, listening to the voices in the dining-room. He had a vivid mental
picture of his father, for some reason without overcoat and hat, in his
frock-coat and old boots, going down the famous Odessa steps to the port and
then dragging about the heavy jute sacks of copra. But there was something
false, artificial about the picture. Petya himself could not take it
seriously, yet nevertheless he was so sorry for his father that he wanted to
weep, to run to him, embrace him and cry, "Never mind, Daddy, it'll be all
right, I'll carry sacks with you too, we'll manage somehow!"
AUNTIE'S NEW IDEA
Of course, Vasily Petrovich did not carry sacks, and although the
situation continued to be dreadful, even tragic, time went on and there was
no outward change to be seen in the life of the Bachei family, except that
Vasily Petrovich spent most of his time at home, trying not to go out
anywhere.
The approach of poverty was so unnoticeable that a kind of tranquillity
settled on them all. As for the outside world-friends and neighbours-the
Faig episode passed unremarked, or rather, it was tacitly agreed that if
Vasily Petrovich had quarrelled with two school principals in the course of
one year, he must be impossible to get on with and he had nobody to blame
but himself.
A factor which helped to distract attention from Vasily Petrovich's
affairs was the murder of Stolypin in Kiev, an event which shook up the
whole Russian Empire. Some were horrified, others felt the rise of vague,
undefined hopes. For a month people talked of nothing but the "Bagrov shot,"
and were quite sure it smelt of revolution, although all knew that Stolypin
had been shot by one of his own body-guards and the incident probably had
nothing to do with revolution at all.
"Say what you like, Vasily Petrovich, but something's got to be done,"
said Auntie very decidedly one day. "We can't go on like this."
"What do you suggest?" Vasily Petrovich asked wearily.
"I've thought of a plan, but I don't know how you will regard it. Not
far from Kovalevsky's country-house there's a really beautiful little
place," said Auntie insinuatingly.
"Never in this world!" cried Vasily Petrovich resolutely.
"Wait a minute," Auntie said gently. "You don't even let me finish."
"Never in this world!" he cut in with still greater resolution.
"But look-"
"Oh, heavens," snapped Vasily Petrovich, frowning. "I know everything
you're going to say."
"Now that's just where you're wrong."
"I'm not. But it's all nonsense. And you're only building castles in
the air. I don't want to hear another word about it. To start off with,
where's the money to come from?"
"We'd hardly need any. Perhaps just a very little."
"Never!" Vasily Petrovich cut her short.
"Now, why not?"
"Because I am against the whole principle of private property in land.
You'll never make me become a real estate owner. The land belongs to God.
Yes, to God and the people who till it. I will not do it, and that's all I
have to say. Besides, it's only empty dreams."
Auntie waited patiently for Vasily Petrovich to finish.
"I've listened to you," she said gently, "and now you listen to me.
After all, it isn't even polite to interrupt in the middle of a sentence."
"Be so kind as to say all you want to say; but I do not wish to own any
real estate whatsoever and I won't. And that's the end of it."
"In the first place, you don't have to own property. Madame
Vasyutinskaya is prepared to rent the place. And secondly, we need pay her
at first only about as much as we're paying for this flat; the rest of the
money will come from the sale of the crop."
Hearing Auntie talk of sales of crops, Vasily Petrovich boiled up
again.
"So that's it! And may I be permitted to inquire where this sale will
take place and what this crop is to be?"
"Black and white cherries, pears, apples and grapes," said Auntie.
"So you suggest that I start trading in fruit?"
"But why not?"
"Well, of all things...." Unable to find words, Vasily Petrovich
shrugged his shoulders.
Auntie ignored his impatient gesture. "We could do very well, and get
out of all our difficulties at once."
"If that's the case, then why doesn't your Madame Vasyutinskaya want to
reap all these benefits for herself?"
"Because she's an old lady and all alone, and she intends to go
abroad."
Vasily Petrovich snorted.
"So your lonely old do-nothing wants to go abroad and shift all her
worries on to our shoulders, is that it?"
"All right, have it your own way," said Auntie shortly, leaving the
final question unanswered. "I thought you'd be attracted by my- idea of
renting a delightful cottage close to town, close to the sea, tilling the
soil, eating the produce of your own labour and at least being independent.
It's completely according to your principles. But if you don't like the
idea...."
"I don't!" said Vasily Petrovich stubbornly, and Auntie dropped the
subject.
She understood her brother-in-law well enough to know that she had said
enough for the present. Let him calm down and think it over, get used to the
idea.
A few days later he opened the subject himself.
"You do get fantastic ideas," he- said. "I've noticed you've always got
something foolish in your head-letting rooms, or cooking dinners-things of
that sort. And nothing ever comes of it all."
"Something will come of this," said Auntie calmly.
"Just another of your castles in the air."
Auntie made no reply.
A few more days passed.
"It's absurd to think that we'd even have the physical strength to run
a place like that."
"The house is quite a small one," Auntie said, "and there are only
thirteen acres of land attached to it." With a faint smile she added, "In
any case, I don't think it would be any harder than carrying sacks down at
the docks."
"That is not funny at all," said Vasily Petrovich flushing.
Again the subject was dropped, but now Auntie knew that Vasily
Petrovich would soon give way. And she was right.
Gradually, imperceptibly, Auntie's idea was capturing his imagination.
It was not such a foolish one after all; in fact, it contained a good deal
of common sense, and Vasily Petrovich was secretly much taken with it, it
fell into line with the views of life which had recently been taking form in
his mind, especially since his visit to Switzerland. These views were still
vague and undefined, a mixture of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Narodniks,
of "going to the people" and of natural education. He pictured a clean,
uncomplicated, patriarchal country life, independent of the state. A
flourishing little patch of soil cultivated by his own hands and those of
his family, without the use of hired labour. Something in the spirit of
Switzerland, of the cantons.
Now it appeared that his dream was close to realization. Everything was
there-the small patch of land, the orchard, even the vineyard which made it
particularly like southern Switzerland. True, there were no mountains, but
there was the sea with bathing and fishing. And most important of
all-freedom, independence from the state. What a wonderful upbringing for
the children!
The end of it was that Vasily Petrovich finally took fire and asked
Auntie to tell him all the details. From her room she brought a plan of the
place. It appeared she had already gone quite a long way in her negotiations
with Madame Vasyutinskaya. The house itself was a five-room affair with an
outside kitchen, then there was a stable, a labourer's hut, a rain-water
cistern and a shed which, Auntie said, held the wine press.
"Why, it's not just a summer cottage, it's a whole manor house!" Vasily
Petrovich cried gaily.
Then they set to work counting the fruit trees and the vines, which
were indicated by circles. Their calculations showed that within a year they
would pay the whole rent and have a solid sum left over. But perhaps all
this was only on paper? Auntie suggested going to see for themselves.
They boarded the little suburban train that passed their house and went
to the sixteenth station, from which a horse-tram took them to the
Kovalevsky country-house. After that, guided by Auntie, they walked a mile
or so across the steppe to "their cottage."
Auntie was evidently familiar with the place. She stroked the dog as it
rattled its chain, and tapped at the watchman's window. A sleepy-looking boy
came out, whom Auntie called Gavrila. He was the last of Madame
Vasyutinskaya's labourers and acted as watchman, stableman and vineyard
tender. Now he showed the Bacheis over the house and grounds.
They saw the vineyard, the orchard, and even more trees than they had
expected, for about three acres of recently planted cherry trees had not
been included in the plan.
Everything was in excellent condition: the vines were bent over and
covered with soil for the winter, and the trunks of the apple trees were
swathed in straw to protect them from rabbits and field mice.
It had been a mild winter with little snow. Some still lay on the
mounds of earth over the vines but it had already thawed on the sunny side.
Near the house, however, where some very thick dark-green fir trees stood,
great snow-drifts still lay on the flower-beds, gilded by the setting sun,
with the clearly etched dark-blue shadows of garden seats and of shrubs
lying in long, wavy lines across them. The windows shone like gold tinsel.
It was exactly like those winter landscapes which Petya saw every year at
the spring exhibitions held by South Russian artists, where Auntie took the
boys to teach them the love of beauty.
With a great rattling Gavrila opened the glass door of the house, and
they went through the empty, cold rooms lighted by slanting rays of frosty
sunshine.
All round about lay the dead, snow-covered steppe, criss-crossed by
rabbit tracks and with nothing but Kovalevsky's house roof and a distant
stretch of sea to catch the eye.
They went through the house and other buildings, then back to the
orchard. Vasily Petrovich noticed that one carelessly wrapped apple tree had
been gnawed. He stopped and turned a stern look on Gavrila.
"Look at that, that won't do," he said. "We'll have the rabbits eating
our whole crop!"
The next day final negotiations began with Ma-dame Vasyutinskayia-and
so did the search for money to pay the initial instalment of rent, the
inevitable expenses attached to removal and starting in a new place.
For the first time Petya discovered that money was not only earned, it
could also be "found." But to find money appeared to be something extremely
complicated, worrying and, worst of all, humiliating. His father was often
out, but now nobody said Vasily Petrovich was at school, or had gone to a
teachers' meeting, they simply said he had "gone to town."
Father and Auntie used new words, words which Petya had never heard
before, such as mutual credit association, short-term loan, pawnbroker, note
of hand, six per cent per annum, and second mortgage.
Very often, after going to town a number of times, Vasily Petrovich
would come home disturbed and upset, refuse any dinner, take off his
frock-coat and lie down on the bed with his face to the wall. That
mysterious lottery-loan bond, part of Mother's dowry, emerged from the
drawer. Up to now Petya had only heard of it once a year, when Vasily
Petrovich crossed himself and opened the Odessa Leaflet to see whether it
had won two hundred thousand.
One day when they came home from school Petya and Pavlik found that the
piano-also part of Mother's dowry-had disappeared from the dining-room,
leaving a patch of floor that looked clean and freshly painted. The room
seemed so bare without it that Petya nearly burst into tears.
Then the rings disappeared from Auntie's fingers.
Finally the day came, a Sunday, when Auntie with trembling fingers
pushed a thick package of bank-notes, notes of hand and a receipt signed by
a notary into her reticule, put on her hat, gloves and best squirrel cape
left by her late sister, and said decisively, "Vasily Petrovich, I'm going!"
"Very well," Vasily Petrovich replied dully through the door.
"Come, Petya," Auntie said resolutely. The boy was to accompany her, in
case anyone tried to rob her on the way.
Auntie clutched the reticule containing their whole possessions to her
chest while Petya walked grimly behind with sharp glances right and left.
But there was nothing to arouse suspicion. It was Lent, the bells rang
funerally over the town, and most of the people they met were old women in
dark clothes returning from morning service with strings of convent-made
bread-rings, soft but very sour-looking.
Madame Vasyutinskaya lived quite nearby, in a time-darkened house of
limestone standing in a quiet side-street near the sea.
Petya saw an old woman in mourning, sunk deep into an old arm-chair. He
had heard it said that Madame Vasyutinskaya was paralyzed and "had lost her
legs," but the last bit seemed to be wrong, for he could quite plainly see
feet in fur slippers on a soft footstool. The room was small and very hot;
it had a tiled stove with brass fittings and a great deal of old-fashioned
mahogany furniture. In the corner numerous lamps burned with blue and
crimson flames before icons hung with a multitude of Easter decorations,
large and small, of crystal, porcelain and gold, dangling on silk ribbons.
Outside the window he could see lilac bushes and a flock of sparrows that
fluttered and squabbled among the grey, bare twigs with their swelling buds.
In front of the old lady stood a Japanese table with a coffee-set, a
round bast box of chocolate halvah and a silver bread-basket with
convent-made bread-rings. The room smelt of coffee and the cigarettes which
Madame Vasyutinskaya smoked. She glanced at Petya, nodded her massive head
in its old-fashioned black bonnet and talked to Auntie a little while about
the weather and politics. Then she rang a silver bell and at once an old
footman in a tailcoat and soft slippers came in on his shaky legs from a
neighbouring room, letting in the monotonous trilling of canaries, and
placed an inlaid rosewood box on the table before his mistress.
Nervous and for some reason flushing, Auntie took the money and notes
of hand from her reticule and handed them to the old woman, who put them in
her box without counting them and gave Auntie a paper folded in four,
bearing a number of coloured stamps-the agreement. Petya noticed that the
box was lined with pink quilted satin like a wedding coach.
The old woman locked the box with a small key that hung round her neck.
The sharp click gave Petya a momentary feeling of fright.
Auntie carefully tucked the agreement into her reticule. Then the old
footman shuffled out noiselessly with the box, and Madame Vasyutinskaya,
puffing, poured three cups of coffee out of the brass pot.
"What a lovely thing!" said Auntie, taking the dark-blue cup with its
gleam of worn gold inside. "It's Gardner, isn't it?"
"Old Popov," the old woman answered in her deep baritone, and emitted
two streams of tobacco smoke from her nose.
"Really? I quite took it for Gardner," said Auntie, and raising her
veil, began drinking coffee in tiny, elegant sips. The old woman put a piece
of chocolate halvah on a saucer and held it out to Petya.
"No, it's old Popov," she said, turning her bloated face to Auntie. "It
was a wedding present from my late husband. He was a man of great taste. We
had an estate near Chernigov, forty hundred acres, but after the peasants
burned the house and killed my husband in 1905, I sold the land and came to
live here. But I think you know all that. Until Stolypin was killed," she
continued in the same wheezing monotonous baritone, "I still preserved some
illusions. Now I have none. Russia needs a firm hand and the late Pyotr
Arkadyevich Stolypin, peace to his soul, was the last real nobleman and
administrator who could have saved the Empire from revolution. That is why
they shot him. But our Emperor, God forgive me, he's worth nothing. A
dish-rag.... Don't you listen," she added sternly, turning to Petya, "it's
blizzard in the mountains. But when it came to the tram workers' strike in
Naples, and the meeting with Maxim Gorky, and the emigres, then Gavrik's
eyes sparkled, knots of muscle appeared at the sides of his jaw, and
bringing his fist down on Petya's knee he cried, "Aha! That was grand! That
was well done!"
But when Petya, in a half-whisper, afraid that Gavrik might not believe
him, said that he thought he had seen Rodion Zhukov in Naples, Gavrik not
only believed it, he even nodded and said, "That's right. It was him. We
know about it. You probably saw him when he left the Capri school for
Longjumeau, to go to Ulyanov-Lenin."
Petya stared at his friend in surprise. How he had changed! It was not
only that he was taller and more mature, there was a concentrated
determination about him, an assurance and even-this struck Petya most of
all-a certain confidence and ease. Look how freely and easily he pronounced
the French word Longjumeau, and how ordinary and natural the name
Ulyanov-Lenin sounded when he spoke it.
"Oh, so you know Longjumeau too?" said Petya ingenuously.
"Of course," Gavrik answered, smiling with eyes alone.
"They've got a ... Party school there," Petya went on, not quite sure
of himself and hesitating before the words "Party school."
Gavrik regarded Petya thoughtfully as though weighing him up, then
laughed gaily.
"Seems like you didn't waste your time abroad, brother! You've started
to understand a few things. Good!"
Petya dropped his eyes modestly, then suddenly jumped as though stung.
He had just remembered the incident at the frontier and felt instinctively
that it had something to do with Gavrik's last words or, to be more exact,
with the thought behind them.
"Gavrik, listen," he began excitedly, then glanced at Motya and stopped
uncertainly.
"Motya, you go off and take a walk somewhere," said Gavrik firmly,
patting her on the shoulder over which her fair braid with its bow of cotton
was prettily, flung.
The girl pouted, but rose obediently and went away at once, from which
Petya concluded that this was nothing uncommon in the Chernoivanenko family.
"Well, what is it?" Gavrik asked.
"Osipov wanted his comrades told that he'd .been caught at the
frontier," said Petya, lowering his voice; he then told Gavrik all that had
happened in the customhouse at Volochisk the day they had crossed.
Gavrik listened in silence, with a serious face, then said, "Just a
minute."
He went into the cottage and came out again in a moment, followed by
Terenty.
"Ah, here's our foreign traveller," said Terenty, holding out his hand.
"Welcome home! And thank you very much about the letter. You helped us a
lot, got us out of a hole."
Petya noticed that Terenty too seemed somehow to have changed during
the summer. Although his broad, pock-marked workman's face was as rough-hewn
and frank as before, Petya read a greater firmness and independence in its
features. Like Gavrik he was comfortably barefoot, but his trousers were new
and of good quality, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders and his clean
shirt had a metal stud in a buttonhole at the top, from which it could be
concluded that Terenty wore stiff collars.
He sat down where Motya had sat, beside Petya, flung his strong, heavy
arm round the boy's shoulders, and gave him a hug.
"Well? Let's have it."
Petya repeated the story in great detail.
"A bad business," said Terenty, scratching one bare foot with the
other. "That's the second mail-bag gone wrong. Those students are no good at
all. I said we ought to arrange it through-" Terenty and Gavrik exchanged
meaning looks. "Well, and of course," Terenty turned back to Petya, "you
know all this doesn't concern anyone else."
"He understands a bit already," said Gavrik.
"So much the better," Terenty said casually and then changed the
subject quite definitely. "You won't be going abroad again? Well, all right.
It's not so bad at home, either. And about the letter, thanks again. You did
a big thing for us. Stay here a while, take a walk, maybe, and I'll go back
inside, I've got visitors. I'll be seeing you. Look, the best thing you can
do is to go on the common, Zhenya's there, he's got a new kite. I bought it
at Kolpakchi's. It's the latest construction, and will fly in any wind."
He was clearly anxious to get back to his guests.
"Motya, why've you gone off and left Petya?" he called. "Come and take
him to the common. I've got to go, excuse me."
Terenty walked quickly back into the cottage; through the small windows
Petya could see it was full of people. He had a feeling Terenty wanted to
get rid of him, but before he had time to formulate a feeling of offence
Motya appeared, Gavrik took him by the arm and all three went off to the
common. Eight-year-old Zhenya, Motya's brother, was very much like Gavrik at
the same age, only plumper and better dressed. Surrounded by all the boys of
Near Mills, he was trying to fly a strange kind of kite, not a bit like the
ones which Petya's generation had made out of reeds, newspaper, glue, thread
and coarse grass for a tail.
It was a shop kite that looked like a geometrical drawing, with
canary-yellow calico stretched over it and tight connecting wires that made
it look like the Wright brothers' biplane. Two boys stood on tiptoe
zealously holding the apparatus as high as they could reach, while Zhenya,
holding the thin cord, waited for the best moment to race across the common,
pulling his flying machine after him. At last he screwed up his eyes and ran
into the wind, butting it with his head. The kite shot up, swayed
uncertainly, circled and fell back on the grass.
"The brute just won't fly," Zhenya hissed through his teeth, wiping his
wet, angry, freckled face with the tail of his shirt. Evidently, this was
not the first time the kite had flopped.
All the boys of Near Mills rushed to the kite, whooping and chattering,
but Zhenya pushed them angrily aside. "Keep your hands off," he said and
started untangling the cord.
"Zhora, Kolya, go back and hold it up again. As high as you can, but
don't let it go till I shout. See?"
He seemed used to giving orders, and the others to obeying them,
although he was the youngest there. The real Chernoivanenko breed, thought
Gavrik with a sense of pride, as he watched Zhora and Kolya take their
places again and hold up the kite while Zhenya spat on his index finger and
raised it to gauge the wind.
"This time you're going to fly, see if you don't," he muttered like an
invocation, and took a firm grip of the cord. "Are you ready there?" he
called. "One, two, three- let go!"
The kite shot up-and fell. Mocking laughter came from the boys.
"It won't fly, no good trying," someone shouted.
"Bone-head!" Zhenya replied. "D'you know what kind of kite this is? Dad
bought it at Kolpakchi's on Yekaterininskaya Street; it cost one ruble
forty-five kopeks."
"A lot your Dad knows about kites!"
"You leave my Dad alone, or I'll give you a sock in the jaw!"
"It won't fly anyway, it's got no tail."
"You fool, it's not an ordinary kite, it's from a shop, I'll show you
whether it'll fly or not."
But try as he would, the shop kite flopped back on the ground every
time.
"Your Dad just threw away his money."
It was a painful situation. The disappointed spectators began drifting
away.
"Wait a bit, where are you going, stupids?" cried Zhenya, trying to
smile as he squatted on his heels by the kite. "Come back here, it'll fly
all right this time."
But his authority was now completely gone and like a defeated general,
he could get none to heed him. At first Petya and Gavrik exchanged glances
and contemptuous observations about the shop toy which couldn't come
anywhere near the good old home-made kites. But after a while Gavrik began
to feel the family honour was in danger.
He frowned and paced weightily over to the kite. "Keep off, it's not
yours," whined Zhenya, almost in tears, trying to push his uncle away with
his elbow.
"Is that so?" remarked Gavrik; raising Zhenya by the shoulders, he gave
him a shove with his knee on the seat. Then he walked unhurriedly all round
the kite without touching it, carefully examining all its struts and
fastenings.
"So that's it. Now I see," he said at last and bent a stern look on
Zhenya. "Can't you see where the centre of gravity is, dunderhead?"
"Where?" asked Zhenya.
"Utochkin the flyer," Gavrik scoffed, without condescending to explain.
Once more he bent a keen-eyed gaze on the kite, stooped over it,
refastened a string and moved an aluminium ring a little.
"Now it's a different matter. Come on, let's show 'em." And he winked
at Petya.
Petya and Motya took the ends of the kite and held it over their heads.
Gavrik picked up the ball of string lying on the ground among the withered
immortelles, shouted, "Let go!" and ran against the wind.
The kite slipped out of Petya's and Motya's hands and shot upward-but
this time it did not falter and fall, it hung lightly in the air and
followed the running Gavrik in a graceful curve. Petya and Motya stood there
with hands still raised, as though reaching out to the kite, begging it to
return. But it flew on, drawn by the cord, mounting smoothly higher.
Gavrik stopped and the kite stopped too, almost directly over his head.
"Aha! That's taught you!" he called up, wagging a finger at the kite.
He began carefully twitching the taut line and the kite twitched too, like a
fish on a hook. Then he moved the ball forward and back, carefully unwinding
the line which slid off- arid up in little jerks. The kite obediently rose
higher and higher, catching the wind and repeating the movements of the ball
in Gavrik's hands, but with a smoother, wider sweep. It was so high now that
they had to throw their heads far back to see it.
The kite became smaller, it floated against the deep-blue August sky,
slender and golden, bathed in the warm sunshine, every surface catching the
fresh sea breeze.
Zhenya ran along beside his Uncle Gavrik, begging and pleading to be
allowed to hold the line, but it was no good.
"Keep off, kid," said Gavrik, watching the kite through narrowed eyes.
It was only when the whole line had been paid out and Gavrik had given a
final twitch to the kite as though making sure it was firmly fastened, that
he handed it over to Zhenya.
"Hold it tight, if you let that go you'll not catch it again."
Motya ran home for paper and they began "sending up letters." There was
something magical in the way a fragment of paper with a hole in the middle
threaded on to the stick began hesitantly rising up the line, sometimes
stopping as though it had caught on something. The nearer the "letter" came
to the kite, the faster it climbed until at last it slipped quickly up and
clung to the kite like steel to a magnet, while a second and a third
followed it up, and Petya imagined that letters from him full of love and
complaint were sliding up one after the other into the blue emptiness, to
... Longjumeau.
Suddenly the line slipped out of Zhenya's hands. The kite, liberated,
flew up with the wind, carrying a long garland of "letters." They all had to
run for a long time, jumping ditches and climbing fences, before they found
it at last outside the town, in the steppe, lying in thick silver wormwood.
When they at last came home to Near Mills, it was evening, the big moon
still shed little light but faint ashy shadows were cast by fences and
trees, the air was perfumed with four-o'clocks, and grey moths circled and
fluttered mysteriously in the darkness of the hedges.
As they neared the house, Petya saw a number of people coming out of
the gate. One of them he recognized as Uncle Fedya, the sailor from the
tailor shop at Sabarisky Barracks who had made him the navy blouse. But the
sailor seemed not to recognize him in the dim light.
Petya also noticed a young woman in a hat and a blouse, and an elderly
man in a jacket and top-boots carrying a railwayman's lantern, evidently a
guard or engine-driver. Fragments of talk came to him.
"Levitsky writes in Our Dawn that the failure of the 1905 Revolution
was partly due to the fact that no bourgeois government was formed," the
young woman's voice said.
"Your Levitsky's just a Liberal and nothing more, he only makes a show
of being a Marxist," a man's voice replied. "You read the Star, there's an
article by Lenin, that'll help you to get things straight."
"I propose we keep off discussion out of doors. You can start
quarrelling again next Sunday," said a third voice.
There was smothered laughter and the figures disappeared in the
shadows.
"Who are those visitors?" Petya asked and felt at once that he should
not have asked.
"Oh, just people," said Gavrik reluctantly. "It's a sort of Sunday
school." To change the subject he went on, "On the fourteenth of August I
want to take the exams for three forms. I've been through everything. If
you'll just help me with the Latin a bit." "Of course I will," said Petya.
The Chernoivanenko family would not hear of letting Petya go before supper.
Terenty placed a candle with a glass shade on the table under the mulberry
tree, at once attracting a whole swarm of moths. His wife, washing the
teacups after the visitors, wiped her hands on her apron and went up to
Petya. Of all the Chernoivanenko family she had changed the least. She
greeted the boy country-fashion, holding out her hand with stiff fingers.
Motya brought a big dish covered with a homespun cloth out of the
larder.
"Maybe you'd like to try our plum dumplings, Petya?" she asked shyly.
After supper Petya set off home. Gavrik walked with him almost to the
station. It was a warm summer night, a harvest moon in a misty ring shone
through the dark branches, crickets were shrilling everywhere, on the
outskirts dogs barked as they do in villages, and somewhere a gramophone was
playing. Petya felt a pleasant weariness after this long delightful day
which had imperceptibly opened before him something new, something he had
previously sensed only vaguely.
On that day Petya matured inwardly, as though he had grown older by
several years. Perhaps it was on that day the boy finally became a youth.
Now he no longer had any doubts that it was to a certain extent from
Near Mills, from Terenty's cottage, that this thing called the
"revolutionary movement" came.
The new term opened on the fifteenth of August and some days before
that, Vasily Petrovich went to Faig's school to conduct re-examinations of
pupils who had failed in the end-of-term exams. He came home to dinner in a
radiant mood, for Mr. Faig had been more than affable to him, and had
personally taken him all over the school, showing him the gym and the
physics laboratory fitted up with all the best, modern equipment imported
from abroad. Finally Mr. Faig had taken him home in his own carriage, so
that the whole street had seen Vasily Petrovich in his frock-coat, with
exercise books under his arm, jump rather awkwardly out of the carriage and
bow to Mr. Faig who vouchsafed a glimpse of his dyed side-whiskers and a
wave of a hand in Swiss glove in the window.
At dinner Vasily Petrovich was in high spirits and re-dated a number of
humorous incidents illustrating the ' ways and customs of the Faig school
where certain pupils, the spoiled sons of rich parents, stayed two or even
three years in each form, grew whiskers, married and started families while
still within the walls of that god-forsaken establishment; why, there had
even been a case when a Faig pupil came to school with his own son, the only
difference being that father was in the sixth form, and son in the first.
"Se non e vero e ben trovafo!" cried Vasily Petrovich laughing
infectiously-it's not true, but it's well invented.
Auntie, however, did not appear to share his mood. She kept shaking her
head doubtfully and saying, "Well, well, I somehow can't see you stopping
there long."
In the evening Vasily Petrovich sat down to correct the exercise books.
The boys heard him snort a number of times, and once he muttered, "What the
devil is all this? Disgraceful! It's got to be put a stop to, and at once,"
and threw down his pencil.
Out of the ten boys taking their Russian exam a second time, Vasily
Petrovich failed seven, and although at the teachers' meeting Mr. Faig made
no objections, his expression was one of grieved indignation. This time
Vasily Petrovich came home by horse-tram, and not in high spirits.
At the end of the first term the teaching staff learned that a certain
Blizhensky was to enter the school. This Blizhensky was the son of a
broadcloth millionaire, a young man who had been to a number of high schools
in St. Petersburg, then to others in Moscow and Kharkov, and finally to the
Pavel Galagan College in Kiev, known as a school that accepted the worst
pupils in the Russian Empire, even those who had been expelled in disgrace.
However, strange as it might be, the Pavel Galagan College too had got
rid of this prodigy. So now he was to enter the fifth form at Faig's.
Although entrance examinations in the middle of the year were strictly
prohibited, an exception was made in some roundabout way for the millionaire
Blizhensky's son.
A few days before this examination Mr. Faig, meeting Vasily Petrovich
in the assembly hall before morning prayers, took his arm and walked up and
down the corridor with him, confiding some of his ideas with regard to the
latest West-European pedagogical trends.
"I have a great respect for your strictness," he concluded. "In fact, I
really admire it. I am strict myself- but I am also fair. And I stand by my
principles. You failed seven boys not long ago, and did I ever say a word
against it? But, my dear Vasily Petrovich, let us be frank-" He took a very
thin gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. "There are
times when pedagogical strictness can bring results which are just the
opposite of those desired. Rejected by an establishment of learning,
standing outside its walls, a young man, instead of becoming an educated,
useful member of our young constitutional society, may enter the service of
the police, may perhaps-entre nous soit dit- become an agent of the secret
police, a spy, and in the end fall under the influence of the Black Hundred.
I believe that to you, a Tolstoian and ... h'm ... perhaps a revolutionary,
this would be very undesirable."
"I am not a Tolstoian, still less a revolutionary," said Vasily
Petrovich with a touch of irritation.
"I say it only between ourselves. You may depend on my discretion. But
everybody in this town knows that you have had differences with the
authorities and have perhaps to a certain extent suffered for it. You are a
Red, Vasily Petrovich. I will say no more. Not a word! But I would be
extremely disappointed, nay! grieved, if this young man were to fail in his
entrance examination. He is the only heir to a million, and ... he has
already suffered much. In a word, I beg of you," Mr. Faig concluded in his
softest, gentlest voice, "do not cause me any more unpleasantness. Be strict
but merciful. This, in the interests of our educational establishment which
I hope are as dear to you as to me. I think you understand me."
On this day Vasily Petrovich again rolled home in Mr. Faig's carriage.
For some days he felt as though he had eaten tainted fish.
"To hell with it!" he decided at last. "I'll give the young swine a
bare pass. You can't knock down a wall with a pea-shooter."
When the exam was actually held, however, a few days later, and Vasily
Petrovich saw the "young swine" sitting alone in his glory at a table in the
middle of the assembly hall, before the entire Areopagus of teachers- for he
was to be examined in all subjects simultaneously and briefly-the blood
rushed to his head.
The young man, about twenty years of age, was in the full-dress uniform
of the Pavel Galagan College, and the high, stiff collar constricted his
throat and pushed against his powdered cheeks, making him look as though he
were choking. The back of his clipped neck displayed a liberal amount of
pimples, and his reddish-chestnut hair parted in the middle was so plastered
with brilliantine that his flat, snaky head shone like a mirror. Now, Vasily
Petrovich could not stand men who used lotions, and the smell of
brilliantine made him feel sick. But most of all his sense of what was
proper was outraged by the gold pince-nez which perched most incongruously
on the young man's coarse nose, giving his little pig's eyes a frankly
impudent expression.
What a blockhead, thought Vasily Petrovich, irritated, tossing his head
and fastening all the buttons of his frock-coat.
As he stood to attention to answer the examiners' questions, the young
man thrust out his broad rear, which seemed to be poured into his uniform.
When Vasily Petrovich's turn came, he put a number of simple questions
in an indifferent voice, received answers that brought a melancholy smile
from Mr. Faig, drew the report form towards him with trembling fingers and
put down a fail. The exam ended in funereal silence. Vasily Petrovich went
home on the horse-tram, took off his collar that seemed to have become too
tight, removed his frock-coat and boots, refused any dinner and lay down on
his bed, face to the wall. Neither Auntie nor the boys ventured to ask him
anything, but all understood something very serious must have happened.
In the evening the bell rang, and when Petya opened the door he saw an
old man in a long beaver coat and a young man with gold pince-nez wearing
the smart uniform cap of the Ravel Galagan College.
"Is Vasily Petrovich at home?" the old man asked, and without waiting
for an answer marched straight towards the dining-room in his coat and hat,
pointing towards the half-open door with his ivory-headed stick and asking,
"In there, eh?"
Vasily Petrovich barely had time to get into his frock-coat and boots.
"I'm Blizhensky. Good evening," the old man wheezed. "You failed this
idiot of mine today, and you were quite right. In your place I'd have bashed
his face in as well. Come here, you worthless lout." And he turned round.
The young man emerged from behind his father, took off his cap and held
it in both hands, his glistening head hanging.
"Down on your knees!" his father rasped, striking his stick on the
floor. "Kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand!"
The young man did not kneel, nor did he kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand,
he gulped and then began to cry noisily, rubbing a red nose with his
handkerchief.
"He's sorry, he'll not do it again," the old man said. "Now you will
give him private lessons at home twice a week, and pull him up. As for the
entrance examination, we can settle it like this." The old man felt in the
pocket of his frock-coat, on the lapel of which Vasily Petrovich saw the
silver medal of the Society of Michael the Archangel ( A reactionary
Black-Hundred organization.-Tr.) on its tricolour ribbon, took out a blank
exam report form and handed it to Vasily Petrovich. "Here you will put down
a pass for the young fool, and the old report with God's help we will
destroy. Faig and the other teachers have agreed."
He then took out a note-case and laid two "Peters" on the table-two
five-hundred-ruble notes with a Peter I watermark.
"What is it?" mumbled Vasily Petrovich confusedly, with a weak gesture,
glancing at the money through his pince-nez. Then he realized the outrageous
insult of the proposal. He paled until even his ears were white, he shook
from head to foot so that Petya feared he would die of heart failure now,
this very instant. Then the colour flooded back to his face until it was
purple and he gasped dumbly.
"Sir, you are a scoundrel!" he screamed. He sobbed with rage. "Get out
of here! How dare you?... In my own house!... Get out! Get out this minute!"
The old man, startled and frightened, crossed himself rapidly several
times and then ran at top speed from the room, through the hall and out of
the door, overturning the rickety what-not with its piles of music. And
Vasily Petrovich ran after him, awkwardly pushing at his back, trying to
strike him on the back of the head, while Petya pulled his father's coat,
crying, "Daddy, please! Daddy, don't!"
Altogether, it was a disgraceful scene which ended with the old man and
the young one pelting down the stairs, while Vasily Petrovich on the landing
flung after them the five-hundred-ruble notes which fluttered slowly from
wall to wall of the stair-well.
The two Blizhenskys, father and son, picked up the money, then looked
up, and the old man yelled senselessly, "Mangy Jews!" and threatened with
his ivory-topped stick.
The next day a messenger brought Vasily Petrovich a letter from Mr.
Faig in a long, elegant envelope of thick paper with a fantastic
coat-of-arms embossed on it. In most courteous terms Vasily Petrovich was
informed that in consideration of differences of views on questions of
education, his further services at the school had become superfluous. The
letter was written for some reason in French and ended with the signature:
Baron Faig.
Although this was a terrible blow for the Bachei family, Vasily
Petrovich accepted it with perfect calm. He could have expected nothing
else.
"Well, Tatyana Ivanovna," he said to Auntie, cracking his fingers, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities ..." he smiled ironically, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities are ended and I shall have to seek
some other profession."
"But why?" Auntie asked. "You could give private lessons."
"To swine like that?" cried Vasily Petrovich, his voice rising almost
to a scream. "Never! I'll carry sacks at the port first!"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Auntie could not restrain a
faint, melancholy smile. Vasily Petrovich jumped up as though stung and
began pacing the room.
"Yes, sacks!" he said excitedly. "And I see nothing shameful or amusing
in it. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Russian Empire are
engaged in manual labour. Why should I be any exception?"
"But you are a man of learning."
"Of learning?" said Vasily Petrovich bitterly. "Yes, I don't dispute
it. But I'm not a man, I'm a slave!"
"What did you say?" cried Auntie, raising her hands.
"You heard me. A slave. That's the only word for it. First, I was a
slave of the Ministry of Education as represented by the head of the
Education Department, and he drove me out like a dog because I presumed to
have my own opinion about Tolstoi. Then, I became the slave of Faig, a slimy
scoundrel, and he drove me out like a dog, too, because I was honest and
refused to give a pass to that dolt, that blockhead Blizhensky, for the sole
reason that he was the son of a millionaire, if you please. To hell with
both of them and the whole Russian government into the bargain!" he shouted;
it burst out of him, and for a second he himself was frightened at what he
had said. But he could no longer stop. "And if in this Russia of ours I have
to be somebody's slave," he went on, "then I'd sooner be an ordinary slave
and not an intellectual one. At least I'll keep my inner integrity.... Oh
God," he groaned with sudden tears in his eyes and looked at the icon. "What
a blessing that He in His mercy took my poor Zhenya, that she does not have
to share these indignities with me! How would she have borne it, seeing
nothing left to her husband but to carry sacks down at the port."
"How you keep harping on those sacks," said Auntie, wiping her eyes.
"Yes, sacks, sacks!" Vasily Petrovich repeated defiantly.
Night had fallen. Pavlik was asleep, breathing heavily, but Petya lay
awake, listening to the voices in the dining-room. He had a vivid mental
picture of his father, for some reason without overcoat and hat, in his
frock-coat and old boots, going down the famous Odessa steps to the port and
then dragging about the heavy jute sacks of copra. But there was something
false, artificial about the picture. Petya himself could not take it
seriously, yet nevertheless he was so sorry for his father that he wanted to
weep, to run to him, embrace him and cry, "Never mind, Daddy, it'll be all
right, I'll carry sacks with you too, we'll manage somehow!"
AUNTIE'S NEW IDEA
Of course, Vasily Petrovich did not carry sacks, and although the
situation continued to be dreadful, even tragic, time went on and there was
no outward change to be seen in the life of the Bachei family, except that
Vasily Petrovich spent most of his time at home, trying not to go out
anywhere.
The approach of poverty was so unnoticeable that a kind of tranquillity
settled on them all. As for the outside world-friends and neighbours-the
Faig episode passed unremarked, or rather, it was tacitly agreed that if
Vasily Petrovich had quarrelled with two school principals in the course of
one year, he must be impossible to get on with and he had nobody to blame
but himself.
A factor which helped to distract attention from Vasily Petrovich's
affairs was the murder of Stolypin in Kiev, an event which shook up the
whole Russian Empire. Some were horrified, others felt the rise of vague,
undefined hopes. For a month people talked of nothing but the "Bagrov shot,"
and were quite sure it smelt of revolution, although all knew that Stolypin
had been shot by one of his own body-guards and the incident probably had
nothing to do with revolution at all.
"Say what you like, Vasily Petrovich, but something's got to be done,"
said Auntie very decidedly one day. "We can't go on like this."
"What do you suggest?" Vasily Petrovich asked wearily.
"I've thought of a plan, but I don't know how you will regard it. Not
far from Kovalevsky's country-house there's a really beautiful little
place," said Auntie insinuatingly.
"Never in this world!" cried Vasily Petrovich resolutely.
"Wait a minute," Auntie said gently. "You don't even let me finish."
"Never in this world!" he cut in with still greater resolution.
"But look-"
"Oh, heavens," snapped Vasily Petrovich, frowning. "I know everything
you're going to say."
"Now that's just where you're wrong."
"I'm not. But it's all nonsense. And you're only building castles in
the air. I don't want to hear another word about it. To start off with,
where's the money to come from?"
"We'd hardly need any. Perhaps just a very little."
"Never!" Vasily Petrovich cut her short.
"Now, why not?"
"Because I am against the whole principle of private property in land.
You'll never make me become a real estate owner. The land belongs to God.
Yes, to God and the people who till it. I will not do it, and that's all I
have to say. Besides, it's only empty dreams."
Auntie waited patiently for Vasily Petrovich to finish.
"I've listened to you," she said gently, "and now you listen to me.
After all, it isn't even polite to interrupt in the middle of a sentence."
"Be so kind as to say all you want to say; but I do not wish to own any
real estate whatsoever and I won't. And that's the end of it."
"In the first place, you don't have to own property. Madame
Vasyutinskaya is prepared to rent the place. And secondly, we need pay her
at first only about as much as we're paying for this flat; the rest of the
money will come from the sale of the crop."
Hearing Auntie talk of sales of crops, Vasily Petrovich boiled up
again.
"So that's it! And may I be permitted to inquire where this sale will
take place and what this crop is to be?"
"Black and white cherries, pears, apples and grapes," said Auntie.
"So you suggest that I start trading in fruit?"
"But why not?"
"Well, of all things...." Unable to find words, Vasily Petrovich
shrugged his shoulders.
Auntie ignored his impatient gesture. "We could do very well, and get
out of all our difficulties at once."
"If that's the case, then why doesn't your Madame Vasyutinskaya want to
reap all these benefits for herself?"
"Because she's an old lady and all alone, and she intends to go
abroad."
Vasily Petrovich snorted.
"So your lonely old do-nothing wants to go abroad and shift all her
worries on to our shoulders, is that it?"
"All right, have it your own way," said Auntie shortly, leaving the
final question unanswered. "I thought you'd be attracted by my- idea of
renting a delightful cottage close to town, close to the sea, tilling the
soil, eating the produce of your own labour and at least being independent.
It's completely according to your principles. But if you don't like the
idea...."
"I don't!" said Vasily Petrovich stubbornly, and Auntie dropped the
subject.
She understood her brother-in-law well enough to know that she had said
enough for the present. Let him calm down and think it over, get used to the
idea.
A few days later he opened the subject himself.
"You do get fantastic ideas," he- said. "I've noticed you've always got
something foolish in your head-letting rooms, or cooking dinners-things of
that sort. And nothing ever comes of it all."
"Something will come of this," said Auntie calmly.
"Just another of your castles in the air."
Auntie made no reply.
A few more days passed.
"It's absurd to think that we'd even have the physical strength to run
a place like that."
"The house is quite a small one," Auntie said, "and there are only
thirteen acres of land attached to it." With a faint smile she added, "In
any case, I don't think it would be any harder than carrying sacks down at
the docks."
"That is not funny at all," said Vasily Petrovich flushing.
Again the subject was dropped, but now Auntie knew that Vasily
Petrovich would soon give way. And she was right.
Gradually, imperceptibly, Auntie's idea was capturing his imagination.
It was not such a foolish one after all; in fact, it contained a good deal
of common sense, and Vasily Petrovich was secretly much taken with it, it
fell into line with the views of life which had recently been taking form in
his mind, especially since his visit to Switzerland. These views were still
vague and undefined, a mixture of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Narodniks,
of "going to the people" and of natural education. He pictured a clean,
uncomplicated, patriarchal country life, independent of the state. A
flourishing little patch of soil cultivated by his own hands and those of
his family, without the use of hired labour. Something in the spirit of
Switzerland, of the cantons.
Now it appeared that his dream was close to realization. Everything was
there-the small patch of land, the orchard, even the vineyard which made it
particularly like southern Switzerland. True, there were no mountains, but
there was the sea with bathing and fishing. And most important of
all-freedom, independence from the state. What a wonderful upbringing for
the children!
The end of it was that Vasily Petrovich finally took fire and asked
Auntie to tell him all the details. From her room she brought a plan of the
place. It appeared she had already gone quite a long way in her negotiations
with Madame Vasyutinskaya. The house itself was a five-room affair with an
outside kitchen, then there was a stable, a labourer's hut, a rain-water
cistern and a shed which, Auntie said, held the wine press.
"Why, it's not just a summer cottage, it's a whole manor house!" Vasily
Petrovich cried gaily.
Then they set to work counting the fruit trees and the vines, which
were indicated by circles. Their calculations showed that within a year they
would pay the whole rent and have a solid sum left over. But perhaps all
this was only on paper? Auntie suggested going to see for themselves.
They boarded the little suburban train that passed their house and went
to the sixteenth station, from which a horse-tram took them to the
Kovalevsky country-house. After that, guided by Auntie, they walked a mile
or so across the steppe to "their cottage."
Auntie was evidently familiar with the place. She stroked the dog as it
rattled its chain, and tapped at the watchman's window. A sleepy-looking boy
came out, whom Auntie called Gavrila. He was the last of Madame
Vasyutinskaya's labourers and acted as watchman, stableman and vineyard
tender. Now he showed the Bacheis over the house and grounds.
They saw the vineyard, the orchard, and even more trees than they had
expected, for about three acres of recently planted cherry trees had not
been included in the plan.
Everything was in excellent condition: the vines were bent over and
covered with soil for the winter, and the trunks of the apple trees were
swathed in straw to protect them from rabbits and field mice.
It had been a mild winter with little snow. Some still lay on the
mounds of earth over the vines but it had already thawed on the sunny side.
Near the house, however, where some very thick dark-green fir trees stood,
great snow-drifts still lay on the flower-beds, gilded by the setting sun,
with the clearly etched dark-blue shadows of garden seats and of shrubs
lying in long, wavy lines across them. The windows shone like gold tinsel.
It was exactly like those winter landscapes which Petya saw every year at
the spring exhibitions held by South Russian artists, where Auntie took the
boys to teach them the love of beauty.
With a great rattling Gavrila opened the glass door of the house, and
they went through the empty, cold rooms lighted by slanting rays of frosty
sunshine.
All round about lay the dead, snow-covered steppe, criss-crossed by
rabbit tracks and with nothing but Kovalevsky's house roof and a distant
stretch of sea to catch the eye.
They went through the house and other buildings, then back to the
orchard. Vasily Petrovich noticed that one carelessly wrapped apple tree had
been gnawed. He stopped and turned a stern look on Gavrila.
"Look at that, that won't do," he said. "We'll have the rabbits eating
our whole crop!"
The next day final negotiations began with Ma-dame Vasyutinskayia-and
so did the search for money to pay the initial instalment of rent, the
inevitable expenses attached to removal and starting in a new place.
For the first time Petya discovered that money was not only earned, it
could also be "found." But to find money appeared to be something extremely
complicated, worrying and, worst of all, humiliating. His father was often
out, but now nobody said Vasily Petrovich was at school, or had gone to a
teachers' meeting, they simply said he had "gone to town."
Father and Auntie used new words, words which Petya had never heard
before, such as mutual credit association, short-term loan, pawnbroker, note
of hand, six per cent per annum, and second mortgage.
Very often, after going to town a number of times, Vasily Petrovich
would come home disturbed and upset, refuse any dinner, take off his
frock-coat and lie down on the bed with his face to the wall. That
mysterious lottery-loan bond, part of Mother's dowry, emerged from the
drawer. Up to now Petya had only heard of it once a year, when Vasily
Petrovich crossed himself and opened the Odessa Leaflet to see whether it
had won two hundred thousand.
One day when they came home from school Petya and Pavlik found that the
piano-also part of Mother's dowry-had disappeared from the dining-room,
leaving a patch of floor that looked clean and freshly painted. The room
seemed so bare without it that Petya nearly burst into tears.
Then the rings disappeared from Auntie's fingers.
Finally the day came, a Sunday, when Auntie with trembling fingers
pushed a thick package of bank-notes, notes of hand and a receipt signed by
a notary into her reticule, put on her hat, gloves and best squirrel cape
left by her late sister, and said decisively, "Vasily Petrovich, I'm going!"
"Very well," Vasily Petrovich replied dully through the door.
"Come, Petya," Auntie said resolutely. The boy was to accompany her, in
case anyone tried to rob her on the way.
Auntie clutched the reticule containing their whole possessions to her
chest while Petya walked grimly behind with sharp glances right and left.
But there was nothing to arouse suspicion. It was Lent, the bells rang
funerally over the town, and most of the people they met were old women in
dark clothes returning from morning service with strings of convent-made
bread-rings, soft but very sour-looking.
Madame Vasyutinskaya lived quite nearby, in a time-darkened house of
limestone standing in a quiet side-street near the sea.
Petya saw an old woman in mourning, sunk deep into an old arm-chair. He
had heard it said that Madame Vasyutinskaya was paralyzed and "had lost her
legs," but the last bit seemed to be wrong, for he could quite plainly see
feet in fur slippers on a soft footstool. The room was small and very hot;
it had a tiled stove with brass fittings and a great deal of old-fashioned
mahogany furniture. In the corner numerous lamps burned with blue and
crimson flames before icons hung with a multitude of Easter decorations,
large and small, of crystal, porcelain and gold, dangling on silk ribbons.
Outside the window he could see lilac bushes and a flock of sparrows that
fluttered and squabbled among the grey, bare twigs with their swelling buds.
In front of the old lady stood a Japanese table with a coffee-set, a
round bast box of chocolate halvah and a silver bread-basket with
convent-made bread-rings. The room smelt of coffee and the cigarettes which
Madame Vasyutinskaya smoked. She glanced at Petya, nodded her massive head
in its old-fashioned black bonnet and talked to Auntie a little while about
the weather and politics. Then she rang a silver bell and at once an old
footman in a tailcoat and soft slippers came in on his shaky legs from a
neighbouring room, letting in the monotonous trilling of canaries, and
placed an inlaid rosewood box on the table before his mistress.
Nervous and for some reason flushing, Auntie took the money and notes
of hand from her reticule and handed them to the old woman, who put them in
her box without counting them and gave Auntie a paper folded in four,
bearing a number of coloured stamps-the agreement. Petya noticed that the
box was lined with pink quilted satin like a wedding coach.
The old woman locked the box with a small key that hung round her neck.
The sharp click gave Petya a momentary feeling of fright.
Auntie carefully tucked the agreement into her reticule. Then the old
footman shuffled out noiselessly with the box, and Madame Vasyutinskaya,
puffing, poured three cups of coffee out of the brass pot.
"What a lovely thing!" said Auntie, taking the dark-blue cup with its
gleam of worn gold inside. "It's Gardner, isn't it?"
"Old Popov," the old woman answered in her deep baritone, and emitted
two streams of tobacco smoke from her nose.
"Really? I quite took it for Gardner," said Auntie, and raising her
veil, began drinking coffee in tiny, elegant sips. The old woman put a piece
of chocolate halvah on a saucer and held it out to Petya.
"No, it's old Popov," she said, turning her bloated face to Auntie. "It
was a wedding present from my late husband. He was a man of great taste. We
had an estate near Chernigov, forty hundred acres, but after the peasants
burned the house and killed my husband in 1905, I sold the land and came to
live here. But I think you know all that. Until Stolypin was killed," she
continued in the same wheezing monotonous baritone, "I still preserved some
illusions. Now I have none. Russia needs a firm hand and the late Pyotr
Arkadyevich Stolypin, peace to his soul, was the last real nobleman and
administrator who could have saved the Empire from revolution. That is why
they shot him. But our Emperor, God forgive me, he's worth nothing. A
dish-rag.... Don't you listen," she added sternly, turning to Petya, "it's