Poor Folk and Other Stories (23 page)

He was in a thoroughly unpleasant state of mind, and was mentally kicking himself for having wasted the day, tired himself out for no reason and, what was even worse, behaved stupidly in having blown the incident up into something out of the ordinary.

However vexed with himself for his unsociability he might have been that morning, it was none the less an instinct with him to avoid anything in the outer world that might distract, startle or shock him in his inner, artistic one. Now he thought of his tranquil room with
sadness and a kind of remorse; after that, he suffered an attack of depression and worry about his unsettled position and about the fuss and bother that lay ahead, at the same time annoyed that he could be preoccupied by such a trivial matter. At last, worn out and incapable of putting two ideas together, he limped home to his room, stopping short in amazement when he realized that without noticing he had nearly walked past the house in which he lived. Stunned, and shaking his head at his own absent-mindedness, he ascribed it to exhaustion and, climbing the staircase up to the attic, at long last entered his room. There he lit a candle – and a moment later in his mind's eye he saw a vivid image of the weeping woman. Such was the strength and ardour of the image, so lovingly did his heart reproduce those gentle, tranquil features, riven by a mysterious tenderness and horror, suffused with tears of ecstasy or childish remorse, that his eyes grew misty and fire seemed to shoot through all his limbs. But the vision did not last long. The ecstasy was superseded by reflection, then by a sense of annoyance, and then by a kind of impotent rage; without bothering to undress he wrapped himself in a blanket and threw himself on his hard bed…

It was quite late when Ordynov awoke the following morning in an irritable, timid and depressed state of mind, quickly made himself ready, almost forcibly trying to apply his mind to his immediate practical concerns, and set off in the opposite direction from that of his adventure of the day before; at last he managed to find himself a corner in the garret of a poor German nicknamed Spiess,
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who lived alone with his daughter, Tinchen. When he had been given a deposit, Spiess immediately took down the advertisement which had been nailed to the gate in order to attract prospective tenants, praised Ordynov for his love of learning, and promised to attend to him diligently. Ordynov said he would move in that evening. He was about to return home, but thought better of it and set off in the other direction; his cheerful mood had returned, and he smiled inwardly at his own curiosity. In his impatience the way seemed excessively long; at last he reached the church he had visited the evening before. A mass was in progress. He selected a place from which he could see nearly all the worshippers; but the ones he was looking for were not there. After waiting for a long time, he came out, blushing. He was making a steady effort to suppress an involuntary upsurge of emotion, and he stubbornly forced himself to attempt to alter the trend of his thoughts. As he rediance on ordi-
nary, everyday matters, it occurred to him that it was dinner-time and, discovering that he was, indeed, hungry, he visited the same inn where he had dined the day before. For a long time he wandered through lanes both busy and deserted without any conscious purpose, finally reaching a remote area where the town stopped and gave way to an expanse of fields that were turning yellow; he awoke from his reverie only when the deathly silence startled him with a novel sensation, long unfamiliar to him. The day was dry and frosty, of a kind that is not infrequent during a St Petersburg October. Not far away stood an izba; beside it were two ricks of hay; a little horse with sticking-out ribs, its head sagging, its lower lip hanging down, stood unharnessed beside a two-wheeled cart, as though it were reflecting on something. A watchdog growled as it gnawed a bone near a broken wheel, and a three-year-old boy dressed in nothing but a shirt who was scratching the dog's white, shaggy head looked in wonderment at the solitary visitor from town. Behind the izba stretched fields and vegetable gardens. A line of forest showed black against the dark-blue horizon, and in the opposite direction the sky was covered in turbid snowclouds, which seemed to be driving before them a flock of migrating birds that moved across the sky without a cry, one after the other. Every-thing was quiet and somehow imbued with a majestic sadness, full of a kind of dying, conclealed expectation… Ordynov walked further and further; but the emptiness of the place weighed on him. Eventually he turned back towards the town, from which there suddenly wafted a dense rumbling of bells, summoning the faithful to evening service; he redoubled his stride and within a short space of time had once more entered the church that was so familiar to him from the previous day.

His mysterious lady was already there.

She was kneeling right beside the entrance amidst a crowd of worshippers. Ordynov squeezed a passage through the dense mass of beggars, ragged old women, sick people and cripples who were waiting for alms at the church door, and knelt down next to the unknown lady. His clothing touched hers, and he could hear the impetuous breathing that came from her mouthas it whispered an impassioned prayer. Her features were riven, as they had been earlier, by an emotion of boundless piety, and tears were again rolling down her hot cheeks and drying on them, as though washing away some terrible crime. The place in which they were both kneel-
ing was completely dark, and only from time to time did the dim flame of an icon-lamp, flickering in the draught that was coming through a narrow open window, illumine her face with its restless light, a faceevery feature of which was engraved on the young man's memory, clouding his vision and tearing his heart with a dull, intolerable pain. But this torment had a frenzied intoxication of its own. At last he could bear it no longer; in the twinkling of an eye his whole body shivered and ached with a strangely pleasurable yearning, and with a sob he lowered his burning head on to the cold paving of the church floor. He felt and sensed nothing except the pain in his heart, which froze with sweet torment.

Whether this extreme sensitivity to impressions, this defenceless-ness and vulnerability had been nurtured by solitude; whether such impetuosity of heart had been prepared in the agonizing, airless and claustrophobic silence of long, sleepless nights, amidst the unconscious yearnings and impatient convulsions of the spirit, until that heart was ready at last either to break or find an outlet, and simply had no alternative but to pour itself out – as when on a sweltering, sultry day the sky suddenly turns black and a thunderstorm pours rain and fire on to the parched earth, hanging raindrops on the emerald boughs like pearls, trampling the grass and the fields, and beating down to the earth the tender chalices of the flowers, so that afterwards everything can revive once more in the sun's first rays, surging and rising towards it and majestically wafting to the sky its sweet, luxurious incense, rejoicing and exulting in its new lease of life… Whatever the truth of the matter, Ordynov would not have been able to reflect on what was happening to him: he was now barely conscious…

He scarcely noticed when the service came to an end, and only came to himself as he was forcing his way through the dense crowd that had formed at the entrance, in pursuit of his mysterious lady. Occasionally he met her bright, astonished gaze. Held up for a moment by the emerging crowd, she turned towards him several times; it was evident that her astonishment was becoming greater and greater, and suddenly she flushed bright red, as though from the glow of a fire. At that moment the old man who had been with her the day before appeared from the throng and took her by the arm. Once again Ordynov encountered his jaundiced, mocking gaze, and a strange sense of hostility suddenly gripped his heart. At length in the darkness he lost them from view; then, with a superhuman
effort, he lunged forward and got out of the church. But the cool evening air did not refresh him: his breathing was constricted, locked up inside him, and his heart had begun to beat slow and hard, as though it was trying to hammer its way out of his chest. At last he saw that he really had lost his mysterious acquaintances; they were nowhere to be seen, neither on the street nor in the side-lane. But in Ordynov's head a thought had formed, one of those strange, determined plans which, although they are invariably crazy, in such cases none the less almost always succeed and are brought to fruition; at eight o'clock the following morning he went up to the tenement building from the side of the lane and entered the small, narrow, muddy and dirty yard, which was like a cesspit inside the building itself. The yardkeeper, who was busy with some task or other there, stopped what he was doing, leaned his chin on the handle of his shovel, looked Ordynov over from head to foot, and asked him what he wanted.

The yardkeeper was a young fellow of about twenty-five with extremely old-looking features, small and wrinkled, a Tatar by origin.

‘I'm looking for a room,' Ordynov replied, with impatience.

‘Which one?' said the yardkeeper with an ironic smile. He was looking at Ordynov as though he knew exactly what the latter was up to.

‘I want to rent one from some tenants,' Ordynov replied.

‘There are none on the other side of the building,' the yardkeeper said, mysteriously.

‘And what about this side?'

‘There are none on this side, either.' At that point the yardkeeper set to work with his shovel again.

‘But perhaps they'll change their minds,' said Ordynov, giving the yardkeeper a ten-copeck piece.

The Tatar looked at Ordynov, took the ten-copeck piece and then resumed working with his shovel. After a silence he said: ‘No, there are no rooms.' But the young man was no longer listening; he was walking over the rotten, unsteady planks which had been laid over a puddle towards the only entrance from that yard to the outbuilding, a black, muddy, dirty entrance that looked as though it were drowning in the puddle. On the ground floor lived a poor coffin-maker. Navigating his way past the coffin-maker's jolly workshop, Ordynov ascended by a slippery, semi-destroyed spiral staircase to
the upper floor, groped his way in the darkness towards a heavy, clumsy door covered with rags of bast matting, found the latch and opened the door slightly. He was not mistaken. Before him stood the old man he knew, staring fixedly at him in extreme astonishment.

‘What do you want?' the old man asked, using the familiar mode of address, abruptly and almost in a whisper.

‘Do you have a room to let?' Ordynov enquired, almost having forgotten the entire purpose of his visit. Over the old man's shoulder he could see his mysterious lady.

Silently the old man began to close the door, forcing Ordynov outside.

‘Yes, we have,' the young woman said suddenly, in a kind and tender voice.

The old man let go of the door.

‘I need a place to live,' Ordynov said, hurriedly entering the room and addressing the beautiful woman.

But when he glanced at his future landlord and landlady he stopped in amazement, as though rooted to the spot; an extraordinary dumb show was taking place before his eyes. The old man was as pale as death, and looked as though he were about to faint. He was looking at the woman with a leaden, immobile, penetrating stare. She had also turned pale at first; but then the blood rushed to her face and her eyes seemed to glitter strangely. She led Ordynov into another small room.

The entire apartment consisted of one fairly large room, divided into three by two partitions; from the passage one went straight into a dark, narrow antechamber; directly ahead there was a door, evidently leading to the bedroom of the master and mistress, on the other side of the first partition. On the right, through the antechamber, one entered the room which was to let. It was small, narrow and cramped, battened against two low windows by means of the partition. Every inch of available space was piled and cluttered with the objects necessary for day-to-day living: it was a meagre, poky dwelling, but it was tolerably clean. The furniture consisted of a plain, white table, two plain chairs and a long, low cupboard which ran along both sides of the wall. A large, old-style icon with a gilded nimbus stood above a shelf in the corner, an icon-lamp burning before it. In this room, and also partly in the antechamber, there was an enormous, ungainly Russian stove. It was clear that it would
be impossible for three people to live together in such a cramped space.

They began to discuss the amount of the rent, but the discussion was incoherent, and they could hardly understand each other. Ordy-nov, who was standing only two paces from her, could hear her heart beating; he could see that she was trembling all over with excitement and also, it seemed, with fear. Somehow at last they reached a settlement. The young man announced his intention of moving in at once, and he looked at his landlord. The old man was standing in the doorway; he still looked pale, but a quiet, almost reflective smile was stealing across his lips. As he met Ordynov's gazehe frowned once again.

‘Do you have a passport?' he asked suddenly in a loud, abrupt voice, opening the door into the passage for him.

‘Yes,' Ordynov replied, slightly puzzled.

‘What's your name, and what sort of a fellow are you?'

‘My name is Vasily Ordynov – I belong to the gentry, but I'm not employed in the service, I have work of my own,' he replied, imitating the old man's tone of voice.

‘So do I,' said the old man. 󈦏My name's Ilya Murin, and I'm an artisan; is that good enough for you? Off you go…'

An hour later Ordynov had moved into his new room, much to his own surprise and to that of the German who, together with his devoted Tinchen, was already beginning to suspect that his lately acquired tenant had deceived him. Ordynov himself did not understand how it had all happened, nor did he want to…