Poor Folk and Other Stories (5 page)

Your constant and faithful friend,

M
AKAR
D
EVUSHKIN

April 25

Makar Alekseyevich, Sir,

Today I met my cousin Sasha! What a terrible thing to happen! She too will be ruined, poor woman! I also heard from the certain quarter that Anna Fyodorovna is still making enquiries about me. I do not think she will ever stop trying to make my life a misery. She says she wants to
forgive me
, to forget all that has been, and that she will come to visit me. She says that your are no relation to me at all, that she is a closer relation, that you have no right to enter into our family affairs and that I ought to be ashamed and embarrassed to live on your charity and your salary… she says I have forgotten her hospitality, that she probably saved mother and me from death by starvation, that she fed us and looked after us and was out of pocket on our account for more than two-and-a-half years, that in addition to all that she agreed to overlook a debt we owed her. And she hadn't a good word to say for mother! Oh, if poor mother only knew what they have done to me! God sees it!… Anna Fyodorovna says I was too stupid to and on to my luck, that she took me down the right path, that she is not to blame for any of the other things that have happened and that it was I who was either unable or, possibly, unwilling to stand up for my own honour. But who was to blame for that, Great God in Heaven? She says that Mr Bykov was entirely in the right, and that a man doesn't simply go and marry the first woman who… but why should I write about that? It is cruel to hear such slanders, Makar Alekseyevich! I do not know what is happening to me right now. I am trembling, weeping, sobbing; it has taken me two hours to write you this letter. I thought that at least she would admit her guilt in my regard; and look how she is behaving now! For God's sake, don't worry, my friend, my only well-wisher! Fedora exaggerates everything: I am not ill. I simply caught a slight cold yesterday when I went to Volkovo for mother's
funeral. Why did you not come with me? I told you that I wanted you to, so badly. Oh, my poor, poor mother, if only you were able to rise from your coffin, if only you knew, if only you could see what they have done to me!…

V. D.

May 20

Darling Varenka!

Your eternal, constant friend,

M
AKAR
D
EVUSHKIN

PS Oh, my darling, why do you write this again?… What game are you playing with me? How can I visit you so often, little mother, how? I ask you. Perhaps under cover of darkness; but it hardly gets dark at nights now,
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at this time of the year. You know, my little mother, little angel, I hardly left your side during all the time you were ill, when you lay unconscious; even now I don't really know how I managed to do all that I did; and afterwards I stopped visiting you, because people had started to get nosy and ask questions. Even without all that, there had been some kind of gossip going around here. I put my faith in Teresa; she knows how to hold her tongue; but even so, little mother, imagine how it will be when they find out everything about us, what they will think and what they will say. So you must be strong, my darling, and wait until you are better again; and then we shall arrange a rendezvous somewhere out of doors.

June 1

Dearest Makar Alekseyevich,

I so much want to do something nice for you in return for all the effort and trouble you have put yourself to because of me, and in recognition of your love for me, that I have finally determined to get the better of my reluctance to rummage around in my locker and fish out my exercise-book, which I am sending you now. I began it at a happy time in my life. You often used to ask with curiosity about the way I used to live, about my mother, about Pokrovsky, about the time I spent in the home of Anna Fyodorovna and about my recent troubles, and you were so impatient in your wish to read this exercise-book, in which I had the idea, heaven knows why, of jotting down random moments of my life, that I have no doubt my parcel
will bring you great enjoyment. As for myself, however – reading it over made me feel sad. I seem to have aged twice over since the time I wrote the last line of these notes. They were all written at different times. Goodbye, Makar Alekseyevich! I feel terribly low just now, and I am frequently tormented by insomnia. What a tiresome convalescence!

V. D.

I

I was only fourteen years old when Father died. My childhood was the happiest time of my life. It began not here, but far away, in the provinces, in the wilds. Father was the manager of the enormous estate belonging to Prince P., in the province of T. We lived in one of the Prince's villages, and our life was quiet, unobserved, and happy… I was ever such a playful little child; all I ever did was run around the fields, the woods and the orchard, and no one ever paid me the slightest attention. Father was constantly preoccupied with business matters, and my mother took care of the household; no one tried to give me any education, for which I was grateful. I can remember that from the earliest morning onwards I would be running off to the pond, or the wood, or the haymaking, or the reapers – and never mind that the sun was baking down, that I had wandered heaven only knows where away from the village, was covered in scratches from the bushes, and had torn my clothes – I would be given a scolding at home later on, but I did not care. And I think that I should have been truly happy if it had been necessary for me to spend my entire life never leaving the village and staying in the same place. As it turned out, I had to leave my native corner while still a child. I was only twelve when we moved to St Petersburg. Oh, with what sadness I recall our melancholy preparations. How I wept as I said goodbye to all that was so dear to me. Father began to shout at me, and Mother cried; she said that there was nothing for it, that Father's business demanded it. Old Prince P. had died. The inheritors had dismissed Father from his position. Father had some money which was being circulated among private individuals in St Petersburg. In the hope of easing his financial difficulties, he decided it would be best for him to be present here in the capital himself. I found all this out from Mother later on. We settled here
on the St Petersburg Side
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and lived in the same place right up until Father is death. How difficult I found it to accustom myself to my new life! We went to St Petersburg in the autumn. The day we left the village was such a bright, warm, clear one; the work on the farms was drawing to a close; enormous stacks of grain were already piling up on the threshing floors, and shrill flocks of birds were wheeling about; everything was so serene and cheerful. Yet here, as we arrived in the city, we were greeted by rain, a damp autumn drizzle, foul weather, sleet and a host of new, unfamiliar faces – hostile, malcontent, and angry! Somehow we settled in. I remember that we were all in such a state of excitement, constantly fussing about as we set up our new home. Father was, as usual, not at home, and Mother had not a single free moment – I was completely ignored. I felt sad when I got up in the morning after my first night in our new quarters. Our windows looked out on to some kind of yellow fencing. The street was in a perpetual state of mire. Passers-by were few, and they were always well wrapped up, everyone felt the cold so. In our home a terrible sense of depression and tedium would reign for whole days on end. We had practically no relatives or close acquaintances. Father was on bad terms with Anna Fyodorovna. (He owed her a certain amount of money.) People did come to see us quite frequently on business, but they usually spent the time arguing, making a fuss and shouting. After each visit Father would become so ill-pleased and angry; I can remember that he used to pace the floor hour after hour, frowning, and never exchanging a word with anyone. At such times Mother did not dare to speak to him, and she kept silent. I would sit down somewhere in a corner with a book, as quiet as a mouse, not daring to make the slightest movement. Three months after we arrived in St Petersburg, I was sent to a girls' boarding-school. How sad I felt initially at being among strangers! Everything was so cold, so unfriendly – the governesses were such shouters, the girls were such scoffers, and I was such a savage. It was so strict and severe! The fixed times for everything, the communal eating, the obnoxious teachers – at first I found all that utterly tormenting. I could not sleep there, either. I would cry all night, all the long, cold, dreary night. In the evenings the girls usually repeated their lessons aloud, or learned them by heart; I would sit with my French conversations or vocabulary, not daring to stir a limb, and constantly thinking about our bit of home, about Father and Mother, about our old nurse, about nurse's stories… Oh, how depressed
I would feel! I would find myself remembering even the most trivial objects in the house with affection. I would think and think: how good it would be to be at home now! I would sit in our little room, by the samovar, together with my own folk; it would be so warm, so good, so familiar. How tightly, how warmly I would embrace Mother, I would think. I would think and think, and quietly start to cry from heartbreak, choking back the tears, and forgetting all my vocabulary. It was always impossible for me to learn my lesson for the following day; all night I would dream of the male teacher, the madame, the girls; all night I would repeat my lessons in my sleep, but next day my head would be empty. I would be made to kneel, and given only one dish for my main meal. I was such a dull, miserable creature. At first the other girls kept laughing at me, teasing me, putting me off when I was saying my lessons, pinching me when we walked in lines to take our main meal, or tea, made complaints about me to the governess for no reason at all. On the other hand, what a paradise it was when nurse would come for me on Saturday evenings. I would hug the old woman in an ecstasy of joy. She would help me to put on my coat and shoes, and see that I was well wrapped up, and then would be unable to keep up with me as we walked, and I would chatter and chatter to her, telling her everything. I would arrive home cheerful and joyful, and would hug all the members of our household fiercely, as though I had been away for ten years. Gossip, conversations and stories would begin; I would say hello to everyone, laugh, giggle, skip and run about. I would have serious talks with Father about my studies, about our teachers, about the French language, about Lomond's grammar
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– and we would all be so pleased, so happy. Even now I feel happy just remembering those moments. I did all that I could to apply myself to my studies and thus please Father. I could see that he was sacrificing the last of his money for my sake, and was struggling to get by, God knew how. With every day that passed he grew more gloomy, more ill-humoured, angrier; his character had been quite ruined; his business affairs were not going well, and there was a multitude of debts. Mother would be afraid to cry, afraid to say a word, in case she angered Father; she grew ill; became thinner and thinner and developed a nasty cough. I would arrive home from my boarding-school to such sad faces; Mother would be crying quietly to herself, and Father would be angry. There would be admonitions and rebukes. Father would say that I had brought him no joy, no consolation;
that they were depriving themselves of the last that they owned because of me, yet still I could not speak French; in other words, all his failures, all his misfortunes, all, all were unloaded on to Mother and me. And how could he torment poor Mother? My heart used to break just at the sight of her: her cheeks had grown sunken, her eyes had retreated into their sockets, her face bore a consumptive hue. I was the one who caught it more often than not. It would always start with trivia, but would subsequently develop into heaven only knows what; often I did not even understand what it was all about. What was there that was not the matter? That I could not speak French, that I was a great numbskull, and that the headmistress of our boarding-school was a stupid, negligent woman, who paid no attention to our morals; that Father still could not find a job, and that Lomond's grammar was no good, Zapolsky's
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was far better; that they had thrown away a lot of money on me for nothing; that it was plain to see I was unfeeling, with a heart of stone – in other words, I, poor girl, struggled with all my might to do my lessons and vocabularies, but was guilty for everything, responsible for everything! And this was not at all because Father did not love me: he loved both Mother and me deeply. It was just what had happened to his character.