“I’m on my way to see Bakvist,” he went on, addressing Marya Vassilyevna, “but they say he’s not home.”
From the highway they turned off onto a dirt road: Khanov went ahead, Semyon followed him. The team of four drove along the road, slowly, straining to pull the heavy coach through the mud. Semyon, avoiding the road, maneuvered now over a hummock, now across a meadow, often jumping off the cart and helping the horse. Marya Vassilyevna kept thinking about school, about whether the math problem at the examination would be difficult or simple. She was also upset with the zemstvo office,1 where she had not found anyone yesterday. What disorder! It was already two years that she had been asking them to fire the caretaker, who did nothing, was rude to her, and beat the pupils, but no one listened to her. The chairman was hard to catch in his office, and if you did, he said with tears in his eyes that he had no time; the inspector visited the school once in three years and had no idea what he was doing, because he had formerly worked in an excise office and got the job of inspector through connections; the school board met very rarely and no one ever knew where it would meet; the custodian was a barely literate peasant, the owner of a tannery, unintelligent, rude, and great friends with the caretaker—so God only knew who she could turn to with complaints or for information…
“He really is handsome,” she thought, glancing at Khanov.
But the road was getting worse and worse…They rode into the forest. Here there was no way to turn off. The ruts were deep, and water flowed and gurgled in them. And prickly branches kept hitting her in the face.
“Some road, eh?” Khanov asked and laughed.
The teacher looked at him and could not understand: Why does this odd fellow live here? What good can his money, his imposing appearance, his refined politeness do him in this backwoods, with its mud and boredom? He gets no advantages from life, and, just like Semyon, drives slowly over the execrable road, and suffers the same inconveniences. Why live here, if it’s possible to live in Petersburg or abroad? And it would seem worth his while, rich man as he is, to make a good road out of this bad one, so as not to suffer and not to see the despair written on the faces of his coachman and Semyon; but he just laughs, and it seems to make no difference to him, and he needs no better life. He’s kind, gentle, naïve, he doesn’t understand this coarse life, he doesn’t know it, just as he didn’t know the prayers at the examination. He only donates globes to the school, and sincerely considers himself a useful person and a prominent activist in the people’s education. And who here needs his globes!
“Hold tight, Vassilyevna!” said Semyon.
The cart tilted sharply and nearly overturned; something heavy landed on Marya Vassilyevna’s feet—it was her purchases. They climbed steeply uphill, on clay; there noisy streams flowed through meandering ditches, the water seemed to gnaw away at the road—how could you even drive there! The horses snorted. Khanov got out of the carriage and walked along the edge of the road in his long coat. He felt hot.
“Some road, eh?” he said again and laughed. “Bad enough to break the carriage.”
“Who told you to drive in such weather!” Semyon said sternly. “Better to stay home.”
“Home is boring, grandpa. I don’t like staying home.”
Next to old Semyon he looked trim, vigorous, but in his gait there was something barely noticeable that betrayed him as being already poisoned, weak, close to ruin. And it was as if the forest suddenly smelled of drink. Marya Vassilyevna became frightened and felt sorry for this man, who was perishing no one knew why, and it occurred to her that if she were his wife or sister, she might give her whole life to save him from ruin. To be a wife? Life was so arranged that he lived alone in a big manor house, she lived alone in a remote village, but for some reason even the notion that he and she could be close and equal seemed impossible, absurd. In fact, all of life was so arranged, and human relations had become complicated to such an incomprehensible degree, that once you thought about it, you felt eerie and your heart sank.
“And it’s incomprehensible,” she thought, “why God gives this beauty, this affability, these sad, sweet eyes to weak, unhappy, useless people, and why they’re so attractive.”
“We turn right here,” Khanov said, getting into his carriage. “Goodbye! All the best!”
And again she began to think about her pupils, about the examination, the caretaker, the school board; and when the wind from the right brought the sound of the carriage driving away, these thoughts mixed with the others. She wanted to think about beautiful eyes, about love, about the happiness that was never to be…
To be a wife? In the morning it is cold, there is no one to light the stove, the caretaker has gone off somewhere; the pupils come at the crack of dawn, bring in snow and mud, make noise; everything is so uncomfortable, uninviting. Her apartment is one room, plus a little kitchen. Every day after classes she has a headache, and after dinner she has heartburn. She has to collect money from the pupils for firewood, for the caretaker, and give it to the custodian, and then beg that well-fed, insolent peasant for God’s sake to send the firewood. And at night she dreams about examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And she has grown old and coarse from such a life, become unattractive, angular, awkward, as if she were filled with lead; and she is afraid of everything; and she stands up and does not dare to sit down in the presence of a member of the board or the custodian; and when she speaks about any of them, it is in deferential terms. And no one likes her, and her life goes by dully, with no gentleness, no friendly concern, no interesting acquaintances. In her situation, how terrible it would be if she fell in love!
“Hold tight, Vassilyevna!”
Again they climbed steeply uphill…
She had become a teacher out of necessity, without any sense of vocation; and she never thought about the vocation, about the usefulness of education, and it always seemed to her that the main thing in what she was doing was not the pupils and not the education, but the examinations. And when was she to think about the vocation, about the usefulness of education? Teachers, poor doctors, medical aides, with their enormous workload, do not even have the comfort of thinking they are serving an idea, or the people, because their heads are always crammed with thoughts about a crust of bread, firewood, bad roads, illnesses. It is a hard, uninteresting life, and only silent dray horses like this Marya Vassilyevna could bear it for long; the lively, high-strung, impressionable ones, who talked about their vocation, about serving an idea, soon became tired and dropped out.
Semyon kept choosing the drier and shorter way to go, across meadows, over back roads; but here the peasants would not let them pass, there it was a priest’s land and couldn’t be crossed, elsewhere Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from his master and surrounded it with a ditch. They kept having to turn back.
They arrived at Nizhny Gorodishche. Carts stood by a tavern, where the lingering snow was covered with dung: they carried big glass jugs full of oil of vitriol. There were many men in the tavern, all coachmen, and there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskin. There was loud talk, the slamming of the door on its pulley. In a shop on the other side of the wall, someone was playing a concertina without stopping for a moment. Marya Vassilyevna sat and drank tea, but the peasants at the next table, steamed up by tea and the stifling tavern air, were drinking vodka and beer.