Nikitin already knew that Staff-Captain Polyansky, whom Varya had recently been counting on very much, was being transferred to one of the western provinces and was paying farewell visits, and therefore it was dreary at his father-in-law’s.
“Varya came by this evening,” Manya said, sitting up. “She didn’t say anything, but you could see by her face how hard it is for her, poor thing. I can’t stand Polyansky. Fat, flabby, when he walks or dances, his cheeks flop…Not my ideal. But still I considered him a decent man.”
“Even now I consider him a decent man.”
“And why did he act so badly with Varya?”
“Why badly?” Nikitin asked, beginning to be annoyed by the white cat, who stretched and arched his back. “As far as I know he made no proposals and gave no promises.”
“Then why did he come to the house so often? If you have no intention to marry, don’t come.”
Nikitin put out the candle and lay down. But he had no wish either to sleep or to lie down. It seemed to him that his head was huge and empty, like a barn, and that new, somehow special thoughts were wandering through it in the form of long shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft light of an icon lamp, smiling upon his quiet family happiness, apart from this little world in which he lived so peacefully and sweetly, along with this cat, there exists another world…And he suddenly wanted passionately, desperately, to be in that other world, so that he himself could work somewhere in a factory or a big workshop, speak from a podium, write, publish, make a noise, wear himself out, suffer…He wanted something that would absorb him to the point of self-forgetfulness, of indifference to his personal happiness, the sensations of which are so monotonous. And suddenly there rose up in his imagination, as if alive, the clean-shaven Shebaldin, who said with horror:
“You haven’t even read Lessing! You’re so far behind! My God, how low you’ve sunk!”
Manya again drank some water. He looked at her neck, her full shoulders and breast, and remembered what the brigadier general once said in church: a rose.
“A rose,” he murmured and laughed.
In reply the sleepy Mushka growled under the bed:
“Grrr…nya-nya-nya…”
Heavy spite, like a cold hammer, stirred in his soul, and he wanted to say something rude to Manya and even to jump up and hit her. His heart began to pound.
“You mean,” he asked, restraining himself, “that if I visited your house, I necessarily had to marry you?”
“Of course. You understand that perfectly well.”
“Nice.”
And a moment later he said again:
“Nice.”
To hold his tongue and quiet his heart, Nikitin went to his study and lay down on the divan without a pillow, then lay on the floor, on the carpet.
“What nonsense!” He tried to calm himself. “You’re a pedagogue, you work at a most noble profession…What need do you have of some other world? That’s all rubbish!”
But at once he told himself confidently that he was not a pedagogue at all, but a functionary, just as giftless and faceless as the Czech who taught Greek; he had never had any calling to be a teacher, was unfamiliar with pedagogy and had no interest in it, and did not know how to deal with children; the significance of what he taught was unknown to him, and he might even be teaching things that were not needed. The late Ippolit Ippolitych was plainly stupid, and all his colleagues and students knew who he was and what to expect of him; while he, Nikitin, like the Czech, was able to conceal his stupidity and cleverly deceive everybody, making it seem that with him, thank God, everything was going well. These new thoughts frightened Nikitin; he rejected them, called them foolish, and believed it was all caused by nerves, that he himself would come to laugh at himself.
And, indeed, by morning he was already laughing at his nervousness, called himself an old woman, but it was already clear to him that peace was lost, probably forever, and that in the two-story unstuccoed house happiness was already impossible for him. He felt that the illusion was exhausted, and that a new, nervous, conscious life was beginning, which was not in tune with peace and personal happiness.
The next day, Sunday, he went to the school church and met there with the headmaster and his colleagues. It seemed to him that they were all busy only with carefully concealing their ignorance and dissatisfaction with life, and he himself, so as not to betray his anxiety to them, smiled pleasantly and talked about trifles. Then he went to the station and saw the mail train come and go, and he was pleased to be alone and not to have to talk to anyone.
At home he found his father-in-law and Varya, who had come for dinner. Varya had tearful eyes and complained of a headache, and Shelestov ate a lot and talked about present-day young men being unreliable and having little of the gentleman about them.
“That’s boorishness!” he said. “I’ll tell him straight out: that’s boorishness, my dear sir!”
Nikitin smiled pleasantly and helped Manya to serve the guests, but after dinner he went to his study and shut the door.
The March sun was shining brightly, and hot rays fell on the desk through the windowpanes. It was still only the twentieth, but wheels were already rolling on the roads and starlings were making noise in the garden. It seemed as if Manyusya would now come in, put her arm around his neck, and say that saddle horses or the charabanc should be brought to the porch, and ask him what she should wear so as not to get chilled. Spring was beginning, as wonderful as the year before, and promising the same joys…But Nikitin was thinking how good it would be to take a vacation and go to Moscow and stay in the familiar furnished rooms on Neglinny Passage. In the next room they were drinking coffee and talking about Staff-Captain Polyansky, but he tried not to listen and wrote in his diary: “My God, where am I? I’m surrounded by banality upon banality. Boring, worthless people, pots of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women…There’s nothing more terrible, more insulting, more dreary than banality. I must flee from here, flee today, or I’ll go out of my mind!”
1894
IN A COUNTRY HOUSE
PAVEL ILYICH RASHEVICH walked about, stepping lightly on the floor covered with Ukrainian rugs, and casting a long, narrow shadow on the wall and ceiling, while his guest, Meier, the acting examining magistrate, sat on the Turkish divan, one leg tucked under, smoking and listening. The clock already showed eleven, and there were sounds of the table being set in the room next to the study.
“As you like, sir,” Rashevich was saying, “from the point of view of brotherhood, equality, and all that, the swineherd Mitka may be as much of a human being as Goethe or Frederick the Great; but put yourself on a scientific footing, have the courage to look facts straight in the face, and it will be obvious to you that blue blood is not a prejudice, not an old wives’ tale. Blue blood, my dear fellow, has a natural-historical justification, and to deny it, in my opinion, is as strange as to deny that a deer has antlers. We must reckon with the facts! You’re a jurist and haven’t sampled any other studies than the humanities, and you may still deceive yourself with illusions concerning equality, brotherhood, and all that. I’m an incorrigible Darwinist, and for me words like race, aristocratism, noble blood are not empty sounds.”
Rashevich was excited and spoke with feeling. His eyes flashed, his pince-nez refused to stay on his nose, he twitched his shoulders nervously, winked, and at the word “Darwinist” glanced dashingly in the mirror and stroked his gray beard with both hands. He was dressed in a very short, much-worn jacket and narrow trousers; his quick movements, dashing air, and this curtailed jacket somehow did not suit him; and it seemed that his big, long-haired, fine-looking head, reminiscent of a bishop or a venerable poet, had been attached to the body of a tall, lean, and affected adolescent. When he spread his legs wide, his long shadow resembled a pair of scissors.