The sun rose high; it turned hot. Zhukovo was left far behind. Walking was pleasant; Olga and Sasha soon for- got both the village and Marya; they were cheerful and everything entertained them: an ancient burial-mound; a row of telegraph posts marching one after another into the distance and disappearing on the horizon, the wires humming mysteriously; a farmhouse, half hidden by green foliage, and with a scent of dampness and hemp coming from it, a place that for some reason seemed in- habited by happy people; a horse's skeleton making a lonely white spot in the open fields. And the larks trilled tirelessly, quails called to one another, and the corn- crake cawed as though someone were jerking an old cramp-iron.
At noon Olga and Sasha came to a large village. There on the broad street they encountered the little old man who had been General Zhukov's cook. He was hot, and his red, perspiring bald spot shone in the sun. At first he and Olga failed to recognize each other, then they looked round at the same moment, did recognize each other, and went their separate ways without say- ing a word. Stopping before the open windows of a cottage w'nich looked newer and more prosperous than the rest, Olga bowed do^ and said in a loud, thin, singsong voice :
"Orthodox Christians, give ahns, for Christ's sake, as much as you can, and in the Kingdom of Heaven may
your parents know peace eternal."
"Orthodox Christians," Sasha echoed her chant, "give ahns, for Christ's sake, as much as you can, and in the Kingdom of Heaven. . . ."
1897
^fo Man Zn a Shell
O
N THE outskirts of the village of Mironositzkoe two belated huntsmen had settled for the night in the barn belonging to the Elder, Prokofy. They were the veterinary, Ivan Ivanych, and the high school teacher, Burkin. Ivan Ivanych had a rather queer dou- ble surname—Chimsha-Himalaisky—which did not suit him at all, and he was known as Ivan Ivanych all over the province. He lived on a stud-farm near the townwn, and had gone out shooting to breathe some fresh air. As for Burkin, the high school teacher, he spent every sum-
mer at Count P 's, and had long been thoroughly at
home in the district.
They did not sleep. Ivan lvanych, a tall, spare old man with long mustaches, was sitting outside the door, smoking a pipe in the moonlight. Burkin was lying in- side on the hay, and could not be seen for the darkness.
They were telling each other stories. Among other things, they spoke of the Elder's wife, Mavra, a healthy and by no means stupid woman, observing that she had never been beyond her native village, had never seen a city or a railway in her life, and had spent the last ten years hugging the stove and only going out into the street at night.
"There's nothing remarkable about that!" said Burkin. "There are not a few people in the world, temperamen- tally unsociable, who try to withdraw into a shell like a hermit crab or a snail. Perhaps it is a manifestation of atavism, a return to the time when man's ancestor was not yet a gregarious animal and lived alone in his lair, or perhaps it is only one of the varieties of human char- acter—who knows? I am no naturalist, and it is not my business to settle such questions; I only mean to say that people like Mavra are by no means rare. Why, not to go far afield, there was Belikov, a colleague of mine, a teacher of Greek, who died in our town two months ago. You have heard of him, no doubt. The curious thing about him was that he wore mbbers, and a warm coat with an interlining, and carried an umbrella even in the finest weather. And he kept his umbrella in its cover and his watch in a gray chamois case, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil, his pen- knife, too, was in a little case; and his face seemed to be in a case too, because it was always hidden in his turned-up collar. He wore dark spectacles and a sweater, s^fied his ears with cotton-wool, and when he got into a cab always told the driver to put up the hood. In short, the man showed a constant and irrepressible in- clination to keep a covering about himself, to create for himself a membrane, as it were, which would isolate him and protect him from outside influences. Actuality irtated him, frightened him, kept him in a state of continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the present, he would always laud the past and things that had never existed, and the dead languages that he taught were in effect for him the
same rubbers and umbrella in which he sought conceal-
ment from real life.
" 'Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful the Greek lan- guage is!' he would say, with a saccharine expression; and as though to prove his point, he would screw up his eyes and, raising one finger, utter: 'Anthropos!'
"His thoughts, too, Belikov tried to tuck away in a sheath. The only things that were clear to him were Government regulations and newspaper notices in which something was forbidden. When some ruling prohibited high school students from appearing on the streets after nine o'clock at night, or some article censured carnal love, this he found clear and definite: it was forbidden, and that was that. But there was always a doubtful element for him, something vague and not fully ex- pressed in any sanction or permission. When a dramatic club or a reading-room or a teahouse was licensed in the town, he would shake his head and say in a low voice:
" 'Of course, it's all very well, but you can't tell what may come of it.'
"Any infringement of the rules, any deviation or de- parture from them, plunged him into gloom, though one would have thought it was no concern of his. If one of his colleagues was late for the thanksgiving serv- ice, or if rumors reached him of some prank of the high school boys, or if one of the female members of the staff had been seen late in the evening in the company of an officer, he would become very much agitated and keep saying that one couldn't tell what might come of it. At faculty meetings he simply crushed us with his cautiousness, his suspiciousness, and his typical remarks to the effect that the young people in the girls' as weU as in the boys' high school were unruly, that there was much noise in the classrooms, that it might reach the ears of the authorities, that one couldn't tell what might come of it, and that it would be a good thing if Petrov were expelled from the second form and Yegorov from the fourth. And what do you think, with his sighs, his moping, the dark spectacles on his pale little face, a little face like a polecat's, you know, he weighed us all down, and we submitted, reduced Petrov's and Yego- rov's marks for conduct, detained them, and in the end expelled them both.
"He had a peculiar habit of visiting our lodgings. He would call on some teacher, would sit do^wn, and re- main silently staring, as though he were trying to de- tect something. He would sit like this in silence for an hour or two and then leave. "This he called 'maintaining good relations with his colleagues'; and it was obvious that making these calls and sitting there like that was painful to him, and that he went to see us simply be- cause he considered it his duty to his colleagues. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the principal was afraid of him. Would you believe it, our teachers were all thoughtful, decent people, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, yet this little man, who always wore rubbers and carried an umbrella, had the whole high school under his th^nb for fully fifteen years! The high school? The whole townwn! Our ladies did not get up private theatricals on Saturdays for fear he should find it out, and the clergy dared not eat meat in Lent or play cards in his presence. Under the influence of people like Belikov the whole town spent ten to fifteen frightened years. We were afraid to speak out loud, to write letters, to make acquaintances, to read books, to help the poor, to teach people how to read and write. . . "