Having parted from the old man, Kirila stood in the middle of the square, thought it over and went away from the town. He decided to go to Zolotovo.
Five days later, as the doctor was walking home after seeing his patients, he saw Kirila in his yard again. This time he was not alone but with a thin and very pale old man who kept nodding his head like a pendulum, and mumbled with his lips.
“Your lordship, I’ve come to see you,” Kirila started. “This is my father; please do us a favor, let Basil go! The permanent member didn’t want to talk to me. He said: ‘Go away!’”
“Your lordship,” the old man hissed with his throat, raising his trembling brows. “Be gracious! We’re poor people, we cannot thank your honor properly, but if you so wish, Kiriushka here or Basil can work for you. Let them work.”
“We’ll work for you,” said Kirila, and raised his hand as if wishing to take an oath. “Let him go! They’re dying with hunger, crying their eyes out, your lordship!”
The young man glanced quickly at his father, pulled him by the sleeve, and both of them, as if on command, fell down at the doctor’s feet. The latter waved his hand hopelessly, and, without looking back, walked quickly to his door.
TASK
The strictest measures are taken to keep the Uskovs’ family secret within the walls of their house. One half of the servants have been sent to the theater and the circus, and the others are sitting in the kitchen and not allowed out. It has been ordered that no visitors be received. The wife of the uncle, the Colonel, her sister, and the governess, although initiated into the secret, pretend they do not know anything; they are sitting in the dining room and do not show up in the drawing room or the hall.
Sasha Uskov, a young man of twenty-five, the cause of the turmoil, arrived long ago and, advised by his defender, his uncle on his mother’s side, Ivan Markovich, a kind man, he is now sitting humbly in the hall next to the study’s door, getting ready for a sincere, open explanation.
Behind the door a family council is taking place. The subject is highly disagreeable and delicate. Sasha Uskov sold a false promissory note to a bank, and three days ago the note became due for payment. At present, his two uncles on his father’s side, and Ivan Markovich, his uncle on his mother’s side, are considering whether they should pay the note and save the family honor, or wash their hands of it and let the case go to court.
To outsiders with no personal interest in the issue, such matters seem simple; meanwhile, for those who have the misfortune to resolve them in a serious way, they turn out to be exceedingly difficult. The uncles have been talking for a long time, but they have not come a single step nearer to the solution.
“Gentlemen!” says the uncle Colonel, his voice sounding tired and bitter. “Gentlemen, who says that family honor is a mere prejudice? I don’t say that at all. All I want is to warn you against a false opinion and reveal the possibility of a fatal mistake. How can you not see it? I am not speaking Chinese, after all, I am speaking Russian!”
“We do understand it, my dear,” Ivan Markovich states gently.
“How do you understand it then, when you say that I deny family honor? I repeat it once again: fa-mi-ly ho-nor is a prejudice when false-ly un-der-stood! Falsely understood! That’s what I say! It is against the law to conceal a swindler and help him get away with it for whatever reasons you may have and whoever he may be. It is unworthy of a gentleman, it is not saving family honor; it’s civic cowardice! Take the army, for example. We value the honor of the army above all else, yet we don’t conceal the army’s guilty members, but send them to trial. And does the honor of the army suffer because of it? Quite the opposite!”
The other paternal uncle, a Treasury official, a taciturn, narrow-minded, and rheumatic man, either keeps silence or has only one subject on his mind: if the case goes to court, the Uskov name will certainly get into the newspapers. In his opinion, the case should be hushed up from the very beginning and not made known to the public. Apart from referring to the newspapers, he has no other arguments to support his position.
The maternal uncle, kind Ivan Markovich, speaks smoothly, softly, and with a tremor in his voice. He starts by saying that youth has its rights and that passion goes hand in hand with it. Is there anyone among us who has not been young, and has not been carried away? Even great men fall prey to temptation and errors in their youth, let alone simple mortals. Take the biographies of great writers, for example.
Was there one among them who, when he was young, did not gamble, drink, or enrage his elders? If Sasha’s mistake borders on crime, then they must take into account that Sasha has received practically no education, as he was expelled from fifth grade in secondary school. As a little boy, he lost his parents, and thus, has known no supervision and good, benevolent influences from a tender age. He is a nervous, easily excitable young man, who has no firm ground underneath his feet and, above all, who has known no happiness in life. Even if he is guilty, he still deserves the indulgence and sympathy of all compassionate souls. He should be punished, of course, but he is already punished by his conscience and the suffering that he is going through now, while waiting for the decision of his relatives.
The comparison with the army made by the Colonel is delightful and proves his elevated intelligence; his appeal to the feeling of civic duty speaks of the nobility of his self, but still, we must not forget that the citizen side in each individual is closely linked with his Christian nature….
“Will we go against our civic duty,” Ivan Markovich exclaims with inspiration, “if instead of punishing a mistaken boy we give him a helping hand?”
Ivan Markovich talks further of family honor. He himself does not have the honor of belonging to the outstanding family of the Uskovs, but he is well aware of the fact that the family’s history goes back to the thirteenth century; he also does not forget for a minute that his cherished, most beloved sister was the wife of one of the representatives of that family. In short, the family is dear to him for many reasons, and he will never believe that, for the sake of a mere fifteen hundred rubles, a shadow should be cast on the priceless heraldic tree. If all the above lines of reasoning do not sound convincing enough, in conclusion he proposes to clarify what the word ‘crime’ actually means. Crime is an immoral act based on evil intentions. But can human intentions be considered free? Science has not yet given a positive answer to this question.
Scientists have different views on the subject. The latest school of Lombroso, for instance, does not believe in free will, and every crime is considered to be a product of the anatomical characteristics of the individual.
“Ivan Markovich,” says the Colonel in a pleading voice, “we are talking seriously about the important matter at hand, and you bring in Lombroso. You are an intelligent man; give it some thought: why are you going into this stuff? Do you really believe that all this empty chatter and your rhetoric can provide us with the answer to the question?”
Sasha Uskov is sitting at the door listening. He is neither afraid, nor ashamed, nor bored, he just feels tired and empty inside. It seems to him that it makes no difference whatsoever whether they forgive him or not; the only reason he has come here to sit and wait for the decision was because the very kind Ivan Markovich talked him into doing so.
He has no fear for the future. It is all the same to him whether he is sitting here in the hall, or in prison, or sent to Siberia.
“If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, to hell with it!”
He has grown sick of life and feels it is all unbearably hard. He is hopelessly weighed down with debts, not a penny in his pocket, he is disgusted with his family, and he understands he will have to part sooner or later from his acquaintances and ladies, as they have started to treat him with contempt in his role as a sponger. The future looks gloomy. Sasha is indifferent; there is only one circumstance that troubles him: that they are calling him a scoundrel and a criminal behind that door. Every minute he is ready to jump to his feet, burst into the study, and shout in reply to the detestable metallic voice of the Coloneclass="underline" “You are lying!”