Poor Folk and Other Stories (12 page)

Folly, folly, Varenka, the purest folly! Turn one is back on you for a moment and heaven alone knows what you get into that little head of yours. One thing is not right, and another thing is not right! But I can see now that it is just folly. I mean, what do you lack with us, little mother – just tell me that! We are fond of you, you are fond of us, we are all happy and content – what more could one wish? And in any case, what will you do among these strangers? I don't believe you even know yet what a stranger is!… No, you would do better to ask me, I will tell you a thing or two about what a stranger is. I know him, little mother, I know him well; I have had occasion to eat his bread. he is mean, Varenka, mean, so mean that your little heart will not suffice you, so cruelly will he torment it with his reprimands, reproaches and dirty looks. Here with us you are warm, you are comfortable – you have found shelter as in a little nest. Why, we shall feel as though we had lost an arm or a leg if you leave. What will we do without you; what will I, old man that I am, do? Do you suppose we do not need you? Do you suppose that you are of no assistance to us? No assistance? How can you think such a thing? No, little mother, consider for yourself: how can you be of no assistance to us? You are of great assistance to me, Varenka. You have such a beneficial influence… See, I am thinking about you now, and it cheers me up… From time to time I write you a letter in which I set forth all my feelings, and receive back a detailed reply from you. I buy you some clothes, I make you a bonnet; sometimes
you give me an errand, and I carry it out… No, how can you say you are of no assistance to me? What will I do alone in my old age, what will become of me? Perhaps you have not thought about that, Varenka; but you must think about it – you must say to yourself, what will become of him without me? I have grown accustomed to you, my dear. What will happen otherwise? I shall go down to the Neva, and that will be the end of it. Yes, truly, Varenka, that is what will happen; what else will there remain for me to do with you gone? Oh my darling Varenka! You evidently want the drayman to cart me to the cemetery at Volkovo, with only a mire-sodden old beggar-woman to accompany my coffin, and my grave to be filled in with sand, and my corpse left there alone. That is wrong of you, wrong of you, little mother! Truly, it is wrong of you, well and truly wrong! I am returning your book to you, Varenka, my little friend, and if, my little friend, you ask me my opinion of your book, I shall reply that never in all my life have I read such a wonderful book. And now I ask myself, little mother, how I could possibly have been content to be such a blockhead all my life, may the Lord forgive me. What have I been doing? From what backwoods have I emerged? I mean, I know nothing, little mother, I know nothing at all! I know absolutely nothing! I will tell you with an open heart, Varenka–I am an uneducated man; I have read little until now, very little, practically nothing:
The Picture of Man,
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a clever book;
The Little Bell-ringer,
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and
The Cranes of lbicus
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– that is all, I have never read any more than that. Now I have read
The Stationmaster
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in the book you have sent me here; let me tell you, little mother, it can happen that one spends one is life not realizing that right at one is side there is a book in which one is entire life is set forth as if on the ends of one is fingers. As one begins to read it, one gradually starts to remember and guess and unravel all that was hitherto obscure. And lastly, here is one other reason why I am fond of your book: there are some books which one reads and reads, yet try as one may one can't make head nor tail of them. Take me, for example: I'm stupid, I'm stupid by nature, so I can't read books that are too grand; yet when I read this one, it is as though I had written it myself, just as if, in a manner of speaking, I had taken my own heart, exactly as it is, and turned it inside out so that people could see what was in it, and described it all in detail – that is what it is like! And it is so simple, as God is my witness; but do you know, I really think I should have written it in the same way; why shouldn't I have written it? After all, I have the
same feelings, exactly the same ones as are described in the book, and I have sometimes found myself in situations like that of that poor unfortunate fellow Samson Vyrin, for example. How many Samson Vyrins there are going about in our midst, all of them the same poor hapless wretches! And how skilfully it is all described! The tears almost came to my eyes, little mother, when I read the bit where he drinks himself unconsious, the poor sinner, becomes a hopeless drunkard and sleeps all day under his sheepskin coat, staving off his grief with punch and weeping piteously, wiping his eyes with his dirty coat-hem as he remembers his poor lost lamb, his daughter Dunyasha! Oh, that is lifelike! Read it: it is lifelike, it is alive! I have seen it myself – it is what is all around me; Teresa, for example – but has one to look far? Look at our poor clerk – he might very well be Samson Vyrin under another name:
Gorshkov.
It is a matter of common concern, little mother, it might happen to you or to me. Even a count who lives on the Nevsky Prospekt or the Embankment, even he can experience the same thing, and it only appears to be different because they live in their own way, according to the laws of fashion, but even he can experience the same thing – anything can happen, and it can happen to me, too. That is how it is, little mother, and yet here you are wanting to leave us; don't you see, Varenka, that sin may overtake me? You may ruin both yourself and me, my dear. Oh, my darling, for the love of God put all these capricious thoughts out of your little head and do not cause me unnecessary suffering. Where, my delicate little bird, as yet unfledged, where will you find the means to sustain yourself, to keep yourself from perdition, to defend yourself against villains? Enough, Varenka, you must come to your senses; don't listen to foolish counsel, don't listen to the wicked things they say about us – read your book again, read it carefully: you will derive benefit from that.

I spoke of
The Stationmaster
to Ratazyayev. He told me that was all old hat, and said that the vogue now was for books with illustrations and various kinds of description;
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actually, I did not really quite grasp what he was talking about. He ended by saying that Pushkin was good and that he brought fame to Holy Russia, and told me a lot of other things about him. Yes, it's very good, Varenka, very good; read your book once again carefully, follow the advice I have given you and make me happy by your obedience, old man that
I am. Then the Lord Himself will reward you, my dear, He will not fail to reward you.

Today Fedora brought me fifteen silver rubles. How pleased she was, poor woman, when I let her have three! I write to you in haste. I am making you a waistcoat – it's a gorgeous material, yellow with flowers. I am sending you a book: it contains all sorts of stories; I've read one or two of them; read the one called
The Overcoat.
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You are trying to persuade me to go to the theatre with you; won't that be rather expensive? Perhaps we could get seats in the gallery. It is a very long time since I went to the theatre, in fact I can't actually remember when it last was. The only thing that makes me hesitate is again the question of whether it won't be too expensive. Fedora merely shakes her head. She says you have started to live far beyond your means; indeed I can see that for myself, in all the money you have spent on me! My friend, be careful you do not get into trouble. Fedora has hinted to me that there are certain rumours – that you have had a quarrel with your landlady about the non-payment of rent; I am very concerned for you. Well, goodbye; I must hurry. I have a little business to attend to, I'm changing the ribbon on my hat.

I hasten to return your book, which I received on the 6th of this month, and at the same time to write to you in order to have the matter out with you. It is not good, little mother, not good that you should place me in such an extremity. If I may make so bold, little mother: every station that falls to a man is lot in this world is ordained by the Almighty. This man is ordained to wear a general's epaulettes, while that one is ordained to work in the service as a titular councillor; this man's to give the orders, and that man is to obey them in fear and trembling, without so much as a murmur. Everything is calculated according to a man's aptitude; one man has an aptitude for one thing, and another has an aptitude for something else, but those aptitudes themselves are arranged by God. I have worked for nearly thirty years now in the service; my work has been above reproach, my behaviour has been sober, and no disorderly conduct has ever been ascribed to me. As a citizen I consider myself, by my own admission, to possess certain defects, but also some virtues. I am respected by the administration, and even His Excellency himself is satisfied with my performance; even though he has not so far shown me any particular signs of favour, I know that he is satisfied. I have lived to see my hair turn grey – I am unaware of having committed any greater sin than that. Of course, who is not guilty of minor sins? Everyone is sinful – even you, little mother! But no major misdemeanours or insolent actions have ever been ascribed to me, such as doing anything against the regulations or causing a breach of public order, nothing like that has ever been laid at my door, there has been none of that: I even got a medal – but what is the good of telling you? You ought in all conscience to have known that, little mother, and so ought he; if you were going to write about me you ought to have known all the facts. No, I did not expect this of you, little mother; no, Varenka! From you in particular I did not expect it.

Here's a fine to-do! After this I can't live quietly in my own little corner any more, even though it is not up to much; now I can't go
on living ‘without muddying the water', as the proverb has it, not troubling anyone, knowing only myself and the fear of God and not having other people troubling me, forcing their way into my hideaway and spying on me to see what my private life is like, whether I have a good waistcoat or not, or whether I have all that I ought to have in the way of underwear; whether I have boots, and what they are lined with; what I eat, what I drink, what I am copying… So what if I do sometimes walk on tiptoe in order to save my boots where the pavement's bad, little mother? Why write about someone that he sometimes has no money, that he can't even afford tea? As though everyone were under some kind of obligation to drink tea! Do I look into other people's mouths to see what they're eating? Whom have I ever insulted in that way? No, little mother, why should I offend others when they are not troubling me? Look, here is another example, Varvara Alekseyevna, this is what it boils down to: I work and work, ardently, assiduously – how else? – and the administration respects me (whatever else it may be thinking, it does respect one) – and then along comes someone who, right under one is very nose, without any provocation and for no reason in particular, writes a lampoon about me. Of course, it's true that sometimes I do manage to get some new clothes, and then I'm delighted, I lie awake at night, overjoyed, as when I get a new pair of boots, for instance: I put them on with such voluptuous pleasure – I've found that to be true, it's because it's so good to see my leg covered by a slender, elegant boot – that's correctly described! But I'm none the less truly surprised that Fyodor Fyodorovich should have let a book of this kind pass without sticking up for himself. It's true that he is only a young bigwig, and likes to raise his voice at times; and why shouldn't he? Why shouldn't he give us a good telling-off if we need it? Suppose he does it to keep up the general tone of the place-well, that's all right; we need to be kept on our toes, to be given a warning, because – and this is just between the two of us, Varenka – none of us will do anything without being given a warning, each one of us merely seeks to figure on this or that official list so he can say ‘I'm there, and I'm there', just so long as he can keep to one side and avoid doing any work. And since there are various different ranks and each rank requires a completely different kind of telling-off, it is natural that the tone of the telling-off varies in rank, too – thatis in the order of things! I mean, it's what holds the world together, little mother: that we all set the tone for one another, that
each of us tells the other off. Without that precaution the world would fall apart and there would be no order anywhere. I am truly astonished that Fyodor Fyodorovich should have let such an insult pass unnoticed!

And what is the point of writing things like that? What use do they serve? Will a person who reads that story make me an overcoat, do you suppose? Do you suppose that he will buy me a new pair of boots? No, Varenka, that person will simply read the story and then demand a sequel to it. I sometimes hide myself away, I hide myself away in order to conceal the things I have failed in, I'm sometimes afraid to show my face anywhere, because I tremble at the thought of what wicked tongues may be saying about me, because people can concoct a lampoon about one out of anything at all, anything, and then one is entire public and private life is held up for inspection in the form of literature, it is all published, read, ridiculed and gossiped about! Why, in this instance it will be impossible for me to go out in the street; in this instance everything has been described in such detail that I will now be instantly recognized by my walk alone. Well, I mean, the author might have at least made up for it a bit towards the end; for example,.he could have softened the impact by putting a bit in after the part where they scatter papers over the hero's head, to the effect that for all his faults he was a decent, virtuous citizen who did not deserve to be treated thus by his companions, that he was obedient to his seniors (here he could have inserted an example of some kind), wished no one any harm, believed in God and died (if he really must have his hero die) lamented. It would, however, have been much better not to have left him to die at all, the poor man, but to make his overcoat be found, to have that general find out more about his virtues, invite him into his office, raise him in rank and give him a good hike in salary, so that then, you see, vice would have been punished and virtue would have triumphed, and all those fellow-clerks would have been left empty-handed. That's how I, for one, would have written it; but the way it is, what is so special about it, what is good about it? It is just a trivial example of vile, everyday life. And why did you decide to send me a book like that, my dear? I mean, it's an ill-intentioned book, Varenka; it's simply not true to life, because a clerk of that kind could never exist. After reading such a book one feels like filing a complaint, Varenka, one feels like filing a formal complaint.