“How good!”
During the noon recess Manya sent him lunch wrapped in a snow-white napkin, and he ate it slowly, with pauses, to prolong the pleasure, and Ippolit Ippolitych, who usually lunched on nothing but a roll, watched him with respect and envy and said something well-known, like:
“Without food people cannot exist.”
From school Nikitin went to give private lessons, and when, after five o’clock, he was finally on his way home, he felt both joy and anxiety, as if he had not been home for a whole year. He ran up the stairs, out of breath, found Manya, embraced her, kissed her, swore that he loved her, could not live without her, assured her that he had missed her terribly, and in fear asked her if she was well and why her face was so cheerless. Then they both had supper. After supper he lay on the divan in his study and smoked, and she sat beside him and talked in a low voice.
The happiest days for him now were Sundays and holidays, when he stayed home from morning till evening. On those days he partook of a naïve but extraordinarily pleasant life, which reminded him of pastoral idylls. He ceaselessly observed how his sensible and positive Manya was making their nest, and, wishing to show that he was not superfluous in the house, he did something useless—for instance, he rolled the charabanc out of the shed and examined it all over. With three cows Manyusya started a veritable dairy farm, and had many jugs of milk and pots of sour cream in the cellar and cold pantry, and all of it she kept for making butter. Occasionally, as a joke, Nikitin would ask for a glass of milk; she would get frightened, because it was against the rules, but, laughing, he would hug her and say:
“Now, now, I was joking, my treasure! Joking!”
Or else he would chuckle at her punctiliousness, when, for instance, she would find a forgotten scrap of sausage or cheese in the cupboard, hard as a rock, and say pompously:
“They will eat it in the kitchen.”
He would point out to her that such a small scrap was good only for a mousetrap, and she would start insisting hotly that men understand nothing about housekeeping, and that servants are surprised at nothing, even if you send a hundred pounds of snacks to them in the kitchen, and he would agree and embrace her rapturously. What was right in her words seemed to him extraordinary, amazing; and what went against his convictions was, in his opinion, naïve and touching.
Occasionally a philosophical mood came over him, and he would start reflecting on an abstract subject, and she would listen and look into his face with curiosity.
“I’m endlessly happy with you, my joy,” he would say, playing with her fingers or undoing her braid and braiding it again. “But I don’t look upon this happiness of mine as something that has fallen upon me accidentally, as if from the sky. This happiness is a wholly natural phenomenon, consistent, logically correct. I believe that man is the creator of his own happiness, and now I am taking precisely what I myself have created. Yes, I say it without affectation, I created this happiness and I own it by right. You know my past. Orphanhood, poverty, unhappy childhood, dreary youth—all that struggle was the path I was laying down to happiness…”
In October the school suffered a heavy loss: Ippolit Ippolitych fell ill with erysipelas of the head and died. For the two last days before his death he was unconscious and delirious, but even in delirium he said only what was known to everyone:
“The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea…Horses eat oats and hay…”
On the day of his burial there were no classes at the school. Colleagues and students carried the lid and the coffin, and the school choir sang “Holy God” all the way to the cemetery.14 In the procession there were three priests, two deacons, the entire boys’ school, and the archbishop’s choir in festive caftans. And, looking at the solemn funeral, passersby crossed themselves and said:
“God grant everyone such a death.”
On coming home from the cemetery, the deeply moved Nikitin found his diary in his desk and wrote:
“Just lowered Ippolit Ippolitovich Ryzhitsky into his grave.
“Rest in peace, humble laborer! Manya, Varya, and all the women who attended the funeral wept sincerely, maybe because they knew that this uninteresting, downtrodden man had never been loved by a single woman. I wanted to say some warm words at my colleague’s grave, but I had been warned that it might displease the headmaster, because he did not like the deceased. Since my wedding, it seems this is the first day that my soul has not felt light…”
After that there were no special events for the whole school year.
Winter was mild, without frosts, with wet snow; on the eve of Theophany,15 for instance, the wind howled pitifully all night as in autumn and the roofs were dripping, and in the morning, during the blessing of the water, the police did not allow anyone to go to the river, because, they said, the ice was swollen and dark. But, despite the bad weather, Nikitin’s life was as happy as in summer. One extra diversion was even added: he learned to play whist. Only one thing occasionally upset and angered him, and seemed to keep him from being fully happy: this was the cats and dogs that came with the dowry. The rooms always smelled like a zoo, especially in the morning, and nothing could stifle that smell; the cats often fought with the dogs. Wicked Mushka was fed ten times a day, and she still did not acknowledge Nikitin and growled at him:
“Grrr…nya-nya-nya…”
Once during the Great Lent,16 at midnight, he was coming home from the club, where he had been playing cards. Rain was falling, it was dark and muddy. Nikitin had an unpleasant aftertaste in his soul and could not understand why: was it because he had lost twelve roubles at the club, or because, as they were settling accounts, one of his partners said that Nikitin was rolling in money, apparently alluding to the dowry? He was not sorry about the twelve roubles, and there was nothing offensive in his partner’s words, but all the same it was unpleasant. He did not even feel like going home.
“Pah, how disagreeble!” he said, stopping by a streetlight.
It occurred to him that he was not sorry about the twelve roubles, because they had come to him gratis. If he were a worker, he would know the value of every kopeck and would not have been indifferent to a gain or a loss. And his whole happiness, he went on reasoning, had come to him gratis, for nothing, and was in fact a luxury for him, like medicine for a healthy man; if he, like the vast majority of people, were weighed down by anxiety over a crust of bread, were struggling for existence, if his back and chest ached from work, then supper, a warm, cozy apartment and family happiness would be a necessity, a reward, and the adornment of his life; while now it all had a strange, indefinite significance.
“Pah, how disagreeable!” he repeated, understanding perfectly well that this reasoning itself was already a bad sign.
When he got home, Manya was in bed. She was breathing evenly, smiling, and apparently sleeping with great pleasure. Beside her lay a white cat curled up and purring. While Nikitin was lighting a candle and smoking, Manya woke up and greedily drank a glass of water.
“I ate a lot of marmalade,” she said and laughed. “Were you with our people?” she asked after a pause.
“No, I wasn’t.”