Poor Folk and Other Stories (8 page)

And truly, I do not remember what we talked about during those sweet but tormenting hours when we would rendezvous by night, by the trembling flame of the icon-lamp, practically by the very bedside of my poor, sick mother… We talked about everything that came into our heads, that burst from our hearts, that begged to be given expression – and we were almost happy… Oh, that was a sad and joyful time – both at once; and it is with both sadness and joy that I now recall it. Memories, whether bitter or joyful, are always a source of torment; that, at least, is how I find it; but even this torment is sweet. And when the heart grows heavy, sick, anguished and sad, then memories refresh it and revive it, as on a dewy evening after a hot day the drops of moisture refresh and revive the poor, withered flower which has been scorched by the afternoon sun.

Mother's health began to improve, but still I continued to sit by her bedside at night. Pokrovsky would often lend me books; I read them, at first merely in order not to fall asleep, then with greater attention, then with avidity; suddenly there was revealed to me much that was new and that had previously been unknown or unfamiliar to me. New thoughts and new impressions came flooding into my heart in an instant, overwhelming rush. And the greater the agitation, the turmoil and effort these new sensations cost me, the more attractive I began to find them, the more sweetly they made my soul tremble. At once, in a flash they came thronging into my heart, denying it all rest. A strange chaos began to disturb my entire being. But this spiritual onslaught was unable to put me completely off balance. I was in too much of a dreamlike condition, and that was my saving.

When Mother's illness was over, our evening rendezvous and long conversations came to an end; we sometimes succeeded in exchanging words, often trivial and of little significance, but I took pleasure in giving everything its own special meaning, its own particular, implied value. My life was full, and I was happy – calmly, quietly happy. In this fashion several weeks went by…

One day old man Pokrovsky came to see us. He prattled on to us for a long time, and was unusually animated, cheerful and loquacious; he laughed, made jokes in his own peculiar way, and finally solved for us the mystery of his enraptured state by revealing to us that in exactly a week's time it would be Petenka's birthday, on which occasion he would most certainly pay him a visit; he would put on a new waistcoat, and his wife had promised to buy him a new pair of boots. In short, the old man was thoroughly happy and went prattling on about everything that came into his head.

His birthday! That birthday gave me no peace either by day or by night. I determined to show Pokrovsky that I cared for him by giving him a present. But what? I finally had the idea of giving him some books. I knew that he wanted the complete collection of Pushkin is works in the most recent edition,
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and I resolved to buy it. I had about thirty rubles of my own, earned from needlework. I had been saving this money in order to buy a dress. I immediately sent our old cook Matryona to find out what a complete Pushkin cost. Alas! The price of all eleven volumes, including the cost of the bindings, was at least sixty rubles. Where would I get the money? I racked my brains, but could not think what to do. I did not want to ask Mother. She would, of course, have helped me; but then everyone in the house would have found out about our present; what was more, the present would have turned into a token of gratitude, a kind of repayment for the year of effort Pokrovsky had devoted to me. I wanted to give him the present alone, in secret from everyone else. And for his efforts with me I wanted to be for ever in his debt, without any repayment whatsoever apart from my friendly feelings for him. At last I conceived a way out of the problem.

I knew that at the second-hand bookstalls of the Gostiny Dvor it was sometimes possible, with a little bargaining, to buy books at half price, scarcely used and almost completely new. I decided to go down to the Gostiny Dvor. So it was; on the following day it turned out that both Anna Fyodorovna and ourselves needed certain purchases. Mother was slightly unwell, and Anna Fyodorovna very conveniently felt too lazy, so I was the one who had to do all the errands, and I set off together with Matryona.

As luck would have it, I found a complete edition of Pushkin very quickly – it was one in a very nice binding. I began to bargain. At first the stallowner demanded more than was charged in the bookshops; but after a while, though not without difficulty, and
walking away several times, I succeeded in persuading him to reduce the price to only ten silver rubles. The bargaining was such fun!… Poor Matryona could not understand what had got into me, and why I wanted to buy so many books. But horror! My entire capital amounted to only thirty paper rubles, and the stallowner would not agree to part with the books more cheaply. Finally I began to implore him, beseech him, and in the end got my way. He yielded, but only by two and a half rubles, and he swore that he was only doing this as a special favour to me, since I was such a nice lady; he would not do it for anyone else. I was short of the necessary amount by two and a half rubles! I could almost have wept with frustration. But in my misery a most unexpected circumstance came to my aid.

Not far from me, at another table of books, I saw old man Pokrovsky. He was surrounded by four or five stallowners; they had succeeded in utterly bewildering him, bothering him to death. Each of them was offering him his wares, and what was there not on offer, and what did he not wish to buy! The poor old man stood in their midst like one of the downtrodden, at a loss to know what to do with all that was being offered him. I went up to him and asked him what he was doing here. The old man was very glad to see me; he was fond of me to the point of distraction, perhaps no less fond than he was of Petenka. ‘Oh, I'm buying some books, Varvara Alekseyevna,' he replied to me. ‘I'm buying some books for Petenka. You see, it's his birthday soon, and he likes books, so I'm buying some for him…' The old man always expressed himself in a comical sort of way, and now, what was more, he was in the most dreadful state of confusion. Whatever he asked the price of, it was always one silver ruble, two or three silver rubles; he had by this time given up asking the prices of the larger books, but was merely throwing a covetous glance at them, turning over their pages with his fingers, feeling them in his hands and putting them back in their places. ‘No, no, that's too expensive,' he would say in a low voice, ‘but perhaps over here there'll be something,' and at that point he would begin to rummage through thin folios, songbooks and almanacs; these were all very cheap. ‘But why do you want to buy things like that?' I asked him. ‘They're all the most terrible rubbish.' ‘Oh no,' he replied, ‘no, just look at what nice books there are here; very, very nice books!' These last words he drawled in a singsong voice so plaintively that he seemed on the point of bursting into tears with frustration that the ‘nice books' were so expensive; I thought that at any moment a
tear would roll down his pale cheeks on to his red nose. I asked him if he had much money. ‘Look, here's what I have,' he said, taking out all his money, wrapped up in a greasy scrap of newspaper. ‘I've half a ruble, a twenty-copeck bit and twenty copecks in copper.' I immediately hauled him off to my secondhand bookseller. ‘Here,' I said,'these eleven books only cost thirty-two and a half rubles; I have thirty; if you add two and a half we can buy all these books and give them to your son together.' The old man nearly fainted with joy, emptied out all his money, and the bookseller loaded on to him the whole of our common library. My old man filled all his pockets with books, took some in his hands, and the rest under his arms, and carried them all off to his home, having promised to bring them all to me in secret the following day.

On the following afternoon the old man came to visit his son, sat with him for an hour or so as he usually did, then looked in to see us and sat down beside me with a most comical enigmatic expression. First, with a smile, and rubbing his hands with proud satisfaction at being in possession of a confidentiality, he told me that all the books had been brought to us in the greatest secrecy and were being kept in a corner of the kitchen under Matryona is supervision. Then the conversation naturally turned to the day we were waiting for; the old man talked for some time about how we would present the gift, and the more deeply he became engrossed in his subject, the more obvious it became to me that he had something on his mind, something he was unable, did not dare, was even afraid to talk about. I bided my time and remained silent. The secret joy, the secret satisfaction which I had had no difficulty in reading from his strange mannerisms, his grimaces, his winking of his left eye, had vanished. From moment to moment he was becoming more and more restless and uneasy; finally he could restrain himself no longer.

‘Listen,' he began timidly, in a low voice. ‘Listen, Varvara Alekseyevna… Do you know what, Varvara Alekseyevna?…' The old man was in a dreadfully confused state of mind. ‘Look: when his birthday arrives, you take ten of the books and give them to him yourself, from you, I mean; then I'll just take the eleventh one and give it to him from me, separately, as it were; that way you will have something to give him, and I will have something to give him.' At this point the old man grew flustered and fell silent. I gave him a quick look; he was awaiting my verdict in timid expectancy. ‘But
why do you want us to give him our presents separately, Zakhar Petrovich?' ‘Well, Varvara Alekseyevna, you see… it's, well, I mean…' In short, the old man grew embarrassed, blushed, unable to finish his sentence or to make any further headway.

‘It's like this, you see,' he explained finally. ‘I sometimes indulge myself, Varvara Alekseyevna… that's to say, I have to inform you that I am constantly induling, practically always indulging myself… I follow practices that are unhealthy… that's to say, you know how cold it can get out on the streets, and sometimes, too, there are various troubles that come along, or something unpleasant happens, and sometimes I can't help it, I indulge myself and sometimes drink too much. Petenka doesn't like that at all. You see, Varvara Alekseyevna, he loses his temper, shouts nasty things at me and gives me lectures on how I ought to behave. So you see I want to show him by means of my present that I'm mending my ways and starting to behave decently. It's taken me a long time to save up this money to buy a book, because I hardly ever get any money except for what Petenka gives me sometimes. He knows that. Consequently, when he sees the use to which I have put my money, he will realize that I have done it for him alone.'

I started to feel terribly sorry for the old man. I thought for a moment. He was looking at me uneasily. ‘Listen, Zakhar Petrovich,' I said, ‘you give him all of them!'

‘All of them? You mean all the books?…' ‘Yes, all the books.' ‘From me?' ‘Yes, from you.' ‘From me alone? You mean, in my name?' ‘Yes, in your name…' I thought I was expressing myself very clearly, but for a long time the old man could not fathom my meaning.

‘Well, yes,' he said, after pausing to reflect for a while. ‘Yes, that would be very good, but what will you give him, Varvara Alekseyevna?' ‘Oh, I won't give him anything.' ‘What?' the old man cried in a tone that verged on fear. ‘So you won't give Petenka anything, you don't want to give him anything?' Now the fear was real; at that moment I think the old man would have been prepared to give up his proposal so that I could be enabled to give his son a present. He had a kind heart. I assured the old man that I should be glad to give Petenka something, only I did not wish to deprive him, the father, of doing so. ‘If your son is happy,' I added, ‘and you are pleased, then I will be pleased too, because secretly in my heart I will feel as though I had also given him the present.' At this the old man grew
much calmer. He stayed another two hours with us, but during all that time he was unable to sit still; he kept getting up, fussing about, talking incessantly, playing with Sasha, kissing me on the sly, pinching my arm, and making faces at Anna Fyodorovna when her back was turned. In the end, Anna Fyodorovna chased him out of the house. In short, the old man abandoned himself to his delight to a degree that was probably unprecedented for him.

On the morning of Pokrovsky's birthday the old man appeared at exactly eleven o'clock, having come straight from church, his overcoat properly darned, and wearing, as he had promised, a new waistcoat and new boots. He had a bundle of books under both arms. Just then we were all sitting in Anna Fyodorovna is drawing-room having coffee (it was Sunday). I think the old man started off by saying that Pushkin was a very good poet; then, losing his thread and becoming confused, he suddenly changed the subject and began talking about how it was necessary to behave well, and about how if a person did not behave well, that meant he was self-indulgent; how bad habits could be a man's undoing and destroy him; he even cited several fatal examples of intemperance, and concluded by saying that for some time now he had entirely mended his ways, and that he was presently behaving in an exemplary manner. He said that even previously he had sensed the correctness of his son is admonitions, that he had sensed it all for a long time now and had taken it all to heart, but that only now had he begun to abstain. As a proof of this, he was making his son this gift, bought with money he had managed to save over a long period of time.

As I listened to the poor old man I was unable to keep myself from both laughter and tears; he certainly knew how to tell a lie when the occasion demanded! The books were taken into Pokrovsky's room and placed on one of the shelves. Pokrovsky immediately guessed the true state of affairs. The old man was invited to stay to dinner. We were all in such lively spirits that day. After dinner we played cards and forfeits; Sasha was in a playful, excited mood, and I was not much better. Pokrovsky was affectionate to me, and kept trying to find an opportunity of speaking to me alone, but I would not yield to his wishes. That was the best day of that entire four-year period of my life.