Poor Folk and Other Stories (31 page)

He could tolerate no more; he was like a man whose spirit has
been crushed; his consciousness was growing torpid. He had an obscure sense that his illness was suffocating him, but cold despair had settled in his soul, and all he could feel was a dull pain that cudgelled him, tormented him and sucked his breast with its fangs. At that moment he wanted to die. His legs gave way under him, and he sat down by the fence, taking no notice either of passers-by or of the curious crowd that had begun to form around him, calling to him and plying him with questions. But suddenly, in the multitude of voices, he heard above him the familiar intonations of Murin. Ordynov raised his head. The old man was indeed standing in front of him; his pale features were solemn and reflective. This was a completely different person from the one who had mocked at him so vulgarly in Yaroslav Ilyich's apartment. Ordynov rose to his feet; Murin took him by the arm and led him away from the crowd…

‘You'll be wanting to collect your things,' he said, giving Ordynov a sideways look. ‘Don't be downhearted, master!' he exclaimed. ‘You're young – why be downhearted?'

Ordynov made no reply.

‘Are you offended, master? You seem awfully angry… but you've no need to be; every man cherishes his own, every man looks after what is his.'

‘I don't know you,' Ordynov said, ‘and I don't want to know your secrets. But she, she!…' he said, and the tears came flooding from his eyes in rivulets. One by one the wind blew them from his cheeks… Ordynov wiped them with his hand. This gesture, together with his gaze and the involuntary movements of his quivering, blue lips, bore the unmistakable signs of approaching madness.

‘I told you before,' said Murin, frowning intensely. ‘She's half crazy! Why should you need to know what made her like that, or how she lost her wits? It's just the way she is – and she's dear to me! I love her more than my own life and I'll never surrender her to any other man. Now do you understand?'

For a moment a light flared in Ordynov's eyes.

‘But then why… why do I feel now as though I had lost my own life? Why does
my
heart ache? Why did I become intimate with Katerina?'

‘Why?' Murin smiled ironically and thought for a bit. ‘Why? I don't know why,' he ventured at last. ‘Woman's nature is not the sea's abyss, it can be fathomed, but it's cunning, determined and tenacious. What she wants she must have instantly. If you must
know, master, she wanted to leave me for you,' he went on, musing. ‘She was sick of the old man, she'd put up with all she was going to put up with from him. You seem to have really caught her fancy to begin with! Though if it hadn't been you, it'd have been another… I cross her in nothing, you see – if she wants bird's milk I get her bird's milk; if there's no bird that will give milk, I'll invent one for her! She's vain! She goes her own sweet way, yet she doesn't even know herself what her heart is hankering after. So finally she decided that things were better the way they were. Oh, master, you're awfully young! Your heart's still as passionate as that of a maiden wiping her tears away with her sleeve because she's been forsaken! You know, master, a weak man cannot control himself on his own. Give him everything, and he'll come of his own accord and give it all back to you; give him half the world, just try it, and what do you think he'll do? He'll hide himself in your shoe immediately, that small will he make himself. Give a weak man freedom and he'll fetter it himself and give it back to you. A foolish heart has no use for freedom! You won't last long with ways like
that
. I'm telling you all this because you're such a baby. What are you to me? You've been andgone – ifit hadn't been you it would have been someone else, it's all the same. I knew right at the outset it would be the same old story. But she can't be crossed! You can't contradict her, not if you want to hang on to your peace of mind. I mean, you know what people say, master,' Murin went on, philosophizing now: ‘anything can happen! You may grab hold of a knife in irritation, or your enemy, unarmed, may set about you with his bare hands as if you were a sheep and tear open your throat with his teeth. But just let them put the knife in your hand, and let your enemy bare his broad chest beforeyou – andsure as anything you'll step back!'

They entered the yard. The Tatar had spotted Murin a long way off; he doffed his cap to him and gave Ordynov a sly, fixed stare.

‘Where's your mother? Is she at home?' Murin shouted to the Tatar.

‘Yes.'

‘Tell her to give him a hand with his stuff! And as for yourself, be off with you, get moving!'

They climbed the staircase. The old woman who acted as the servant in Murin's household and who really did appear to be the yardkeeper's mother was fussing about with the belongings of die
erstwhile lodger and ill-temperedly tying them all into one large bundle.

‘Wait; I'll go and get something else that belongs to you, it's still in there…'

Murin went off to the bedroom. A moment later he returned and presented Ordynov with an expensive pillow, embroidered all over with silk and worsted – the very same pillow which Katerina had placed under his head when he had been taken iII.

‘She sends you this,' Murin said. ‘And now off you go, and mind you don't loiter on the way,' he added in a fatherly undertone, ‘or you'll be sorry you did.'

It was clear that he did not wish to offend his lodger. But as he threw him a final glance, it was impossible not to observe the surge of intense hostility that erupted on to his features. He closed the door on Ordynov with something that was almost loathing.

Two hours later Ordynov moved into the apartment of the German, Spiess. When Tinchen saw him, she gasped. She at once questioned him about his health and, having learnt what the trouble was, at once set about treating it. With some satisfaction the old German pointed out to his lodger the fact that he had just been about to go down and stick a new advertisement to the gate, because today the rent Ordynov had paid in advance had run out, precisely to the last copeck. As he did so, the old man did not lose an opportunity of cautiously praising German honesty and punctuality. On that very same day Ordynov was taken ill, and it was three months before he was able to get up again.

Little by little he recovered and began to go out once more. Life in the German's apartment was peaceful and monotonous. The German had no particular temperament to speak of: the pretty Tinchen, morality apart, was everything that could have been desired – but life seemed to have for ever lost its attraction for Ordynov. He had become broody and irritable; his sensitivity to impressions took on a morbid aspect, and he sank imperceptibly into a malignant, callous hypochondria. His books sometimes lay unopened for whole weeks on end. His future was closed, his money was running out and he had lost heart prematurely; he was not even thinking about the future. Occasionally his former passion for learning, his previous zeal, the old shapes he had himself created rose vividly before him out of the past, but they merely stifled and strangled his energy. His thoughts were not being translated into action. His creativity had
run dry. All these shapes seemed to have grown into giants in his imaginings with the sole purpose of mocking the impotence of him, their creator. At moments of sadness he found himself comparing himself to the sorcerer's boastful apprentice who, having stolen his master's secret, ordered the broom to carry the water and ended up drowning in it, as he had forgotten how to say'stop'. Perhaps a whole, original, distinctive idea would have manifested itself within him. Perhaps he had been destined to be an artist of learning. He at least had once believed so. Faith like that was a pledge for the future. But now at odd moments he found himself laughing at his blind conviction – and remained where he was.

Some six months earlier he had conceived, created and set down on paper the sketch of a work to which (because of his youth) he had in moments of creative infertility pinned the most substantial hopes. This work concerned the history of the Church, and into it he had poured his warmest, most fervent convictions. Now he read through the plan he had made, revised it somewhat, thought about it, read around it, dug in his references, and finally rejected his idea, without building anything on its ruins. But something resembling mysticism, a belief in predestination and the obscure began to seep its way into his soul. The unhappy man felt his sufferings, and prayed God for deliverance. The German's housemaid, a God-fearing old Russian woman, would relate with satisfaction how her quiet lodger occupied himself in prayer, and how for whole hours on end he would lie like a lifeless corpse on the church's floor…

He never said a word to anyone about what had happened to him. But from time to time, especially at dusk, at the hour when the clamour of the church bells would remind him of the moment when his entire body had first trembled and ached with an emotion hitherto unknown to him, when he had knelt beside her in the church, oblivious of everything, aware only of the beating of her timid heart, when with tears of joy and ecstasy he had greeted the new, bright hope that had flashed towards him in his lonely life – thena storm would arise in his for ever wounded soul. Then his spirit would shudder and the agony of love would once again flare up like a scorching blaze within his bosom. Then his heart would ache mournfully and passionately, and his love grow stronger together with his sadness. Often he would sit for whole hours on end in the same spot, having forgotten himself and his day-to-day existence, having forgotten everything in the world, lonely and downcast;
he would shake his head in despair and, as he shed silent tears, whisper to himself: ‘Katerina! My sweet dove! My only sister!…'

A hideous thought began increasingly to torment him. It pursued him more and more insistently, and with each day it appeared to him more probable, more actual. It seemed to him – and he ended by believing this totally – that Katerina was of perfectly sound mind, but that in his own way Murin had been right when he had called her a ‘weak heart'. It seemed to him that some mystery bound her to the old man, and that she, though ignorant of any crime and as pure as a dove, had somehow fallen into his power. Who were they, the two of them? He did not know. But in his mind's eye he kept envisaging a deep, desperate tyranny over a poor, defenceless creature; and his heart grew troubled and quivered with impotent indignation within his breast. It seemed to him that the frightened eyes of her suddenly awakened soul had been insidiously presented with the notion of its downfall, her poor, ‘weak' heart subjected to insidious torture, the truth gratuitously distorted to her; that she had been intentionally kept in the dark when necessary, that the inexperienced susceptibilities of her impetuous, troubled heart had been exposed to cunning flattery, and that little by little the wings of her free, untrammelled soul had been clipped, until finally it was incapable either of rebellion or of an unconstrained break through into real life…

Little by little Ordynov grew even more withdrawn than he had been previously, a tendency in which, to be fair to them, the Germans did nothing to hinder him. He often liked to wander about the streets, for a long time, and without purpose. He selected by preference for his walks the hour of twilight, and the places he visited during them were godforsaken, remote ones, seldom frequented by ordinary people. It was in one such back street that, one wet, insalubrious spring evening, he ran across Yaroslav Ilyich.

Yaroslav Ilyich had grown noticeably thinner; his pleasant eyes had lost their twinkle, and he looked thoroughly disillusioned. He was hurrying about some business that would brook no delay, was soaked through and covered in mud-stains, and in what was almost a touch of the bizarre, a raindrop clung, where it had clung all evening, to his highly decorous, but now blue-tinged, nose. He had, what was more, grown sidewhiskers.
^*
These, and the fact that Yaroslav Ilyich looked as though he wanted to avoid meeting his
old friend, produced an effect on Ordynov that was almost one of shock… It was a remarkable thing, but it even wounded and offended his heart, which until that moment had not required anyone's compassion. In the end, he decided that he found the old Yaroslav Ilyich more to his liking – a simple, goodhearted, naïve fellow, a man who was, if one were to be quite frank, a little stupid, but who had no pretensions to disillusionment or wisdom. It is never pleasant when a
stupid
person, of whom we have previously been fond perhaps because of his very stupidity,
suddenly acquires some wisdom,
no, it is never pleasant. Even so, the distrust with which he looked at Ordynov was immediately smoothed from his features. For all his disillusionment, he had not lost his native obduracy, which, as is well known, a man takes to the grave with him, and he began to worm himself with pleasure into Ordynov's confidence and favour. He began by announcing that he was very busy, and then remarked that it was a long time since they had seen each other; suddenly, however, the conversation took a rather strange turn. Yaroslav Ilyich proceeded to speak of the mendacity of people in general, of the flimsiness of the blessings of this world, of
vanitas vanitatis;
in passing, with something even less than indifference, he did not lose an opportunity of mentioning Pushkin, talked of his acquaintances with a certain degree of cynicism and in conclusion even hinted at the perfidy and falsehood of those who call themselves friends, though true friendship has not existed in the world since the day it began. In short, Yaroslav Ilyich had acquired some wisdom. Ordynov did not say a word to contradict him, but he began to feel unspeakably, agonizingly sad: it was as though he had buried his best friend!

‘Ah, just fancy, I nearly forgot to tell you,' said Yaroslav Ilyich suddenly, as though he had just remembered something very interesting. ‘I have some news! I shall tell you it in confidence. You remember that house where you were living?'