“That’s not true!” she brought out in a soft and pleading voice. “I did a lot of good for people, you know that yourself!”
“Oh, enough!” cried the doctor. “Can you still go on considering your charity work as something serious and useful, and not as a puppet comedy? It was a comedy from beginning to end, it was a performance of loving one’s neighbor, such an obvious performance that even children and stupid peasant women understood it! Take your—what was it?—hospice for homeless old women, where you made me something like the head doctor, and you yourself were an honorary trustee. Oh, Lord God, what a splendid institution! You had a house built, with parquet floors and weathervanes on the roof, then a dozen old women were found in the villages and forced to sleep under flannel blankets, on Dutch linen sheets, and eat fruit drops.”
The doctor snorted maliciously into his hat and went on quickly, stammering:
“That was a performance! The lower-ranking hospice workers put the blankets and sheets under lock and key so that the old women wouldn’t dirty them, and let the old hags sleep on the floor! The old women didn’t dare sit on the beds, or put on bed jackets, or walk on the polished parquet. Everything was kept for display and hidden from the old women, as if from thieves, and the old women secretly went begging for food and clothing, and prayed to God day and night to get out of this jail as soon as possible and to be rid of the sanctimonious admonishments of the well-fed scoundrels you appointed to look after them. And what were the higher ranks up to? That was simply delightful! About twice a week, in the evening, thirty-five thousand messengers came galloping3 to announce that the next day the princess—you, that is—would come to the hospice. That meant that the next day I had to abandon my patients, dress up, and go to the parade. Very well, I arrive. The old women, all fresh and clean, are already lined up and waiting. Around them walks the retired garrison rat—the supervisor, with his sweet, lickspittle smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but they’re afraid to murmur. We wait. The junior manager comes galloping. Half an hour later the senior manager, then the head manager of the accounting office, then someone else, then someone else…no end to the galloping! They all have mysterious, solemn faces. We wait and wait, we shift our feet, we keep glancing at our watches—all this in sepulchral silence, because we all hate each other and are at daggers drawn…An hour goes by, then another, and now, finally, a carriage appears in the distance, and…and…”
The doctor dissolved in high-pitched laughter and in a high little voice squeaked:
“You step out of the carriage, and the old hags, at the command of the garrison rat, start to sing: ‘How glorious is our Lord in Zion, the tongue cannot tell…’4 Not bad, eh?”
The doctor guffawed in a bass voice and waved his hand, as if wishing to show that he could not utter a word more from laughter. He laughed painfully, sharply, with tightly clenched teeth, as unkind people laugh, and by his voice, his face, and his gleaming, slightly impudent eyes one could tell that he deeply despised the princess, and the hospice, and the old women. There was nothing funny or merry in anything he told so ineptly and crudely, but he guffawed with pleasure and even with glee.
“And the school?” he went on, breathing heavily from laughter. “Remember how you wanted to teach the peasant children yourself? You must have taught them very well, because soon all the boys ran away, so that they had to be whipped and then given money to come to you. And remember how you wanted to give bottles with your own hands to the nursing babies whose mothers worked in the fields? You went around the village lamenting that these babies were not at your service—the mothers had all taken them to the fields with them. Then the headman ordered the mothers to take turns leaving their babies for you to have fun with. It’s amazing! Everyone fled from your good deeds like mice from a cat! And why? Very simple! Not because our people are ignorant and ungrateful, as you always explained, but because in all your escapades—forgive me the expression—there was not a pennyworth of love and mercy! There was only a wish to amuse yourslf with living dolls and nothing else…Somebody who is unable to distinguish people from lapdogs should not get involved in charitable works. I assure you, there’s a big difference between people and lapdogs!”
The princess’s heart was pounding terribly, there was a throbbing in her ears, and she still felt as if the doctor was hammering her on the head with his hat. The doctor spoke quickly, heatedly, and unpleasantly, stammering and gesticulating excessively; she could only understand that this was a rude, ill-bred, spiteful, ungrateful man talking to her, but what he wanted from her and what he was talking about she did not understand.
“Go away!” she said in a tearful voice, raising her hands to protect her head from the doctor’s hat. “Go away!”
“And how you deal with your employees!” the doctor went on indignantly. “You don’t consider them human beings and treat them like the worst swindlers. For instance, allow me to ask, what did you fire me for? I worked ten years for your father, then for you, honorably, with no holidays, no vacations; I earned the love of everyone for a hundred miles around, and suddenly one fine day it was announced to me that I was no longer employed! What for? I still don’t understand! I, a doctor of medicine, a well-born man, a graduate of Moscow University, the father of a family, am such an insignificant little pipsqueak that I can be chucked out with no explanations! Why stand on ceremony with me? I heard later that my wife, without my knowledge, secretly went to you three times to plead for me, and you didn’t receive her even once. They say she wept in the front hall. And for that I can never forgive the late woman! Never!”
The doctor fell silent and clenched his teeth, straining to think of something else very unpleasant and vengeful to say. He remembered something, and his scowling, cold face suddenly brightened.
“Or take your relation with this monastery!” he began eagerly. “You never spared anybody, and the holier the place, the greater the chance that it will get the full dose of your loving kindness and angelic meekness. Why do you keep coming here? What do you need from the monks here, if I may ask? What is Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba?5 Again it’s an amusement, a game, a blasphemy against human beings, and nothing else. You don’t believe in the monks’ God, you have your own God in your heart, whom you arrived at with your own mind at spiritualistic séances; you look condescendingly at church rites, you don’t go to the liturgies or vigils, you sleep till noon…Why do you come here?…You come with your own God to other people’s monastery, and you imagine the monastery considers it a great honor! Oh, yes, of course! Have you ever asked, incidentally, what your visits cost the monks? You were pleased to arrive here tonight, but two days ago a messenger already came here on horseback, sent from your estate to warn them you were coming. Yesterday they spent the whole day preparing rooms for you and waiting. Today the advance guard arrived—an impudent maid, who keeps running around the yard, rustling, pestering with questions, giving orders…I can’t stand it! Today the monks have been on the lookout all day: If you’re not met with ceremony—it’s bad! You’ll complain to the bishop! ‘Your Grace, the monks don’t love me. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. True, I’m a great sinner, but I’m so unhappy!’ One monastery already got a roasting because of you. The archimandrite is a busy, learned man who doesn’t have a free moment, and you keep on summoning him to your rooms. No respect either for his old age or for his cloth. It would be one thing if you donated a lot, it wouldn’t be so bad, but in all this time the monks haven’t received even a hundred roubles from you!”